S. Congresswoman Susan K. Delbene has reintroduced the Clean Competition Act, arguing that the United States has lost a significant share of global manufacturing over the past five decades. According to DelBene, this shift has led to factory closures, job losses, and increased vulnerability in supply chains, while manufacturing is increasingly shifting from relatively clean economies such as the United States to jurisdictions with much higher carbon intensity.
She noted that this trend has weakened global climate impacts, while penalizing producers who operate according to stricter environmental standards. On average, the U.
S. economy produces more than 50 percent fewer emissions per unit of output than the economies of its trading partners. By comparison, China's economy is more than three times more carbon-intensive than the U.
S. economy, while the Indian and Russian economies are about four and five times more carbon-intensive, respectively.
Calling for a stable trade framework
DelBene argues that the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), although formulated as corrective measures, have added instability to trade relations and they worsened the structural relations. imbalances. She stressed the need for Congress to establish clearer and more predictable trade frameworks that would encourage cleaner production and support global emissions reductions.Carbon boundary adjustment and sector coverage
The Clean Competition Act offers a mechanism for adjusting carbon emission boundaries aimed at producers with the highest emissions. It will be applied to a wide range of energy-intensive industries, including oil, gas, coal, refining, petrochemicals, fertilizers, hydrogen, adipic acid, cement, iron and steel, aluminum, glass, pulp and paper, and ethanol. The Environmental Protection Agency, as well as emissions related to electricity consumption.
The benchmarks will be gradually tightened over time. Emissions exceeding the reference level, whether as a result of imports or domestic production, will be subject to a carbon intensity fee starting at US$60 per tonne and increasing by six percent plus inflation annually. Given the relatively low carbon footprint of manufacturing in the United States, this mechanism is designed to change
