Net emissions targets require balancing out remaining residual emissions with carbon removals. While an increasing number of countries are adopting such targets, it remains unclear how governments determine the level of residual emissions at which they plan to achieve them. This paper examines the role of strategic environmental policy in shaping this choice. Using a theoretical model of two regions trading a polluting good and carbon removals, I show that governments have strategic incentives to unilaterally deviate from first-best residual emissions to enhance domestic welfare. Under imperfect competition, the optimal unilateral policy leads to inefficiently high residual emissions, partly due to rent-shifting motives that could be referred to as removal dumping. A numerical illustration suggests that these effects can be quantitatively significant: unilaterally optimal residual emissions in the German steel sector are nearly twice as high as the cooperative level, increasing German industry profits by about one percent. However, the sign and magnitude of the distortion generally depend on the assumed market structure. Finally, I discuss how unilateral strategic incentives are influenced by the type of net emissions target adopted in other regions.