Big Steel Is Right
The joke of “free” trade that has destroyed the American commons and impoverished American workers is about more than just the near-slave labor multinational corporations often employ in other countries.. Overseas, especially, corporations don’t have to give a damn about how many rivers and lakes they destroy, or how many kids die of asthma from the pollutants they spew into the air, or how much farmland becomes to toxic to use anymore. Calling what we’ve been practicing for the last 30 years “free” trade is akin to sending me into the ring with Holyfield and calling it a “fair” fight because we both have 2 arms.
I generally do not agree with big steel, having seen how ruthlessly they have been with their workers the last few years. But I agree with them 100% on their stance regarding carbon emissions. The only possible way to (1.) end the fouling of our environment and (2.) having a truly equitable trade platform is to make imported steel from polluters just as costly as any steel made domestically.
This is one corporate position that I think we can all get behind. Save the wingtards, of course, who hate any worker that makes anything above a subsistence wage.
China’s steel industry should face fees on its exports into the United States if Washington adopts greenhouse gas cuts and Beijing does not, U.S. steel industry officials and advocates said.
As President Barack Obama begins to form plants to regulate greenhouse gases, U.S. steelmakers are nervous they will lose market share if rapidly developing steelmaking countries, like China and India, do not commit to similar emissions goals.
U.S. steelmakers say they have already invested far more in pollution control on pollutants like particulates and components of acid rain, sharply boosting production costs.
“Chinese steelmakers enjoy an unfair advantage in global trade due to the lack of enforcement of exceptionally weak pollution standards,” Scott Paul, the executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, told reporters in a teleconference.
Paul said Chinese steelmaking emits two to three times as much carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, as U.S. industry does. Also, U.S. steel production has fallen during the global recession, while China’s has held mostly steady.
Terry Straub, a senior vice president at U.S. Steel Corp, said the industry hopes the U.S. Congress does not rush greenhouse gas legislation without considering how the rest of the world will cut emissions.
“Let’s take the time to do this right and not do it in a hasty fashion and end up with a disaster on our hands,” Straub said.
He suggested leveling the playing field by putting carbon fees on imports of steel to the United States from any country that does not regulate greenhouse gas regulations.
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said that if other countries do not impose a cost on carbon emissions once Washington does, the United States would be at a disadvantage. The tax idea on imports was just one proposal the Obama administration should evaluate, he said.
Xie Zhenhua, head of China’s Climate Change and Coordinating Committee, during a visit to Washington last week rejected as protectionist the idea of tariffs on countries that do not place a price on carbon dioxide emissions.
Chinese climate officials have said countries that buy Chinese goods should be held responsible for the CO2 emitted by the factories that make them in any global plan to reduce greenhouse gases.
This is an absolute bullshit position. The Chinese, in other words, want US to write environmental laws for THEM. That’ll go over REAL good, won’t it? It’s a dodge, an attempt to try to keep from having to control pollution that is destroying one of the greatest civilizations in the history of mankind. We should absolutely reject it.
