U.S. manufacturers across industries are highly carbon efficient compared to most of their key trading partners. As a result, America makes goods with fewer emissions than most countries in the world. We call this a carbon advantage .
The Council commissioned a model that follows the carbon embedded in global trade and calculates the emissions from 36 highly aggregated economic sectors across 64 individual countries. Weighted by economic output, the model reveals the relative carbon efficiency of production, by sector, across countries.
The table above provides a summary of the analysis and compares the U.S. carbon advantage to some of our most significant trading partners. To make inter-country comparisons more straightforward, the Council weights embodied emissions associated with economic output from each sector and country relative to the carbon intensity of U.S. output in the sector (U.S. = 1.0). If a number is larger than 1.0, it reflects that a country or sector is less carbon-efficient and that the U.S. has a carbon advantage; if t