Trade Likely to be Flash Point in Senate Climate Bill

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) are expected to unveil the draft of their climate bill on Wednesday, but other legislators are already lining up to talk about what they’d like to see changed in the bill. It’s already looking like there will need to be substantial revisions on the manufacturing and trade side if they’re hoping to break the deadlock in the Senate.

E&E reports that the bill is not expected to include the language in the House bill that focuses on how to protect trade-exposed and energy-intensive industries like cement, steel, refining, paper, and glass. These provisions are seen as key to getting the votes of many Midwestern, industrial-state Democrats.

“It’s going to need a lot of work,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), told E&E. “My understanding is they did not include the House language on manufacturing … But I’ve been talking to them about it. They are very open to it. They are in no way dismissive.”

Brown is seen as a leader in the Senate on these issues, and perhaps a bellwether for how a vote on a climate bill might turn out. He’s a progressive Democrat from a manufacturing and coal-dependent state, who in June 2008 voted against the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. After that vote, he vowed his support for climate action—but only if a proposal insulated states like Ohio.

 

Brown said in a recent interview that he “probably wouldn’t” have voted to pass the House bill, but also that it is “a place to start working.” He’s been working to get language included in a bill that would provide retooling loans for manufacturers, and has been supportive of increased funding for energy technologies.

But the biggest sticking point may be the bill’s trade provisions, for Brown and other Midwestern Dems. A group of ten senators sent a letter to Obama last month stressing that they will not support a climate and energy bill that they believe puts American businesses on an uneven playing field internationally. Senators from Michigan (Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin), Pennsylvania (Robert Casey and Arlen Specter) West Virginia (Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller), Indiana (Evan Bayh), Wisconsin (Russell Feingold) and Minnesota (Al Franken) also signed the letter. Limits on domestic emissions will increase the costs of energy-intensive industries and will push jobs in those industries to countries that do not have such limits, they wrote, and a climate bill should “include provisions to maintain a level playing field for American manufacturing,” they wrote.

One of the biggest challenges on this matter may well be the White House, which balked at some of the trade-protection elements included in the House bill. Waxman-Markey would give the president the power to attach special levies on goods from countries that are not abiding by an international agreement. Obama criticized this border adjustment provision as being too “protectionist.”

Brown, meanwhile, says he can’t vote for a bill that doesn’t include a border adjustment. “Border equalization has to be in there,” he said. “If it isn’t I certainly can’t vote for that.”

Hoping to head off disputes on this subject, Brown, Bayh, Specter, Stabenow, and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) sent a letter to White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy director Carol Browner recently asking for her help in analyzing how to best protect domestic industries. In the letter, they ask her office to provide guidance on which industrial sectors should be eligible for free allocation of pollution permits in a climate bill, as well as assessments of potential competitiveness concerns and analysis of other measures that may be beneficial to those industries.

What, if anything, the Boxer-Kerry bill has to say on the subject of trade-exposed, energy-intensive industries will be one of the developments to watch this week. It’s shaping up to be an issue that will determine whether a bill gets the support it needs to move forward.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate