Louisiana Senator Calls for 'Foreign Pollution Fee'
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., recently authored an opinion piece in The Washington Times calling for a "foreign pollution fee" to combat Chinese emissions. The fee would target imports, "like Chinese steel and chemicals, produced with lower environmental standards than cleaner American production," he said.
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The fee would limit China’s ability to undercut U.S. manufacturers by penalizing it for not meeting "the same reasonable environmental standards" to which American manufacturers are held, Cassidy wrote. Such a fee would "level the playing field for American workers," he said, making it less likely that manufacturing jobs would migrate to China.
Cassidy said it's time America received a return on investment for its stricter pollution regulations and funding of research for cleaner energy sources "like natural gas, renewables, and nuclear." The current system undercuts environmental protections and "incentivizes countries like China, India, and Vietnam to ignore environmental standards," he said. "To illustrate, in the early 2000s, China was 19th and 20th in manufacturing and emissions. Today, China is number one in both categories with no close second. This economic development allows China to extend its military and geopolitical influence worldwide in competition with American interests. China harnesses this nexus to our detriment when the U.S. should be capitalizing on it for the positive."
A foreign pollution fee would encourage more manufacturing in the U.S. while decreasing global emissions and is "a realistic alternative to proposals for job-killing regulations and domestic carbon taxes," Cassidy said.