The Biden administration is making a dramatic break from the past by putting climate concerns at the center of its trade policy, a White House official said Wednesday.
“The era of climate-agnostic trade policies is over,” said Ben Beachy, special assistant to the president for climate and related issues, in a speech at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank, where he also criticized China’s industrial policies as a source of the problem. “The era of companies dumping their pollution overseas is over. The era of countries using lax standards to undercut our workers and clean manufacturing is over.”
Beachy said the new White House Climate and Trade Task Force announced earlier this year has already started work “to close the climate loophole in our trade policies” and to build on the clean energy subsidies provided under the Inflation Reduction Act.
“If we get the details right, and there are a lot of details, we have the opportunity to spur deeper cuts in industrial emissions across borders, while supporting good jobs, while supporting industrial competitiveness,” he added.
