I never meant to say that data does not have value, it definitely tells a country how they could best reduce emissions, like in your example by improving the cleanliness of manufacturing products that are exported.
It does not say how sustainably a specific country is operating (or the EU in this case). If you move manufacture abroad e.g. where it’s made with less clean energy so it emits more, when counting local emissions this still counts as an emission reduction. It doesn’t matter if it’s easier to compute if it’s wrong, and it seems to be entirely the wrong statistic to use for this article.
I don’t know for sure, but I think most products are not usually made in the country they are sold, but I haven’t seen data of proportions. I don’t trust that it’s a decent proxy just because some people gut feeling tells them it is. Data on consumption based emissions exists, and it should be used.
Yeah, and I really hope we get those carbon tariffs in place despite China’s complaints!