Trump’s Tariffs Target Filthy Chinese Pollution

While LA burns in another round of left-wing “fiery, but mostly peaceful” protests, the real battle that will shape the future of our nation is happening with President Trump’s international tariff negotiations – particularly with China.

As these negotiations have led to a tentative agreement, we should remember that the president isn’t concerned merely with tariff rates on particular goods or access to rare earth minerals. He is also using the trade war to fix other major international issues, including, in his words, “non-monetary barriers” like “filthy pollution havens.” This means the fight might be just getting started.

Using tariffs to fight pollution isn’t as strange as it seems. In fact, this has been a concern of President Trump since his first term.

Let’s look back. In late 2020, the Trump administration started to target foreign pollution, submitting a proposal to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to allow member nations to impose countervailing duties on products from countries with “insufficient or unenforced environmental laws, regulations, and standards.”

In doing this, the Trump administration recognized — and began to address — a significant cause of trade imbalances.

One of the reasons it costs more to manufacture in America than in China is because America sets high environmental standards to keep our air, water, and consumer products clean. On the other hand, Chinese manufacturers undercut America by producing goods with little concern for pollution.

This fact would be bad enough if China were merely poisoning itself, but that’s not how the environment works. While China unfairly produces goods cheaper than America, their trash ends up in our shared ocean, their products end up on American shelves, and their pollution is released into our shared atmosphere.

As Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said during his confirmation hearing about how other countries produce resources, “we’re worried about the fact that we would do it a hundred times better for the atmosphere, but instead we don’t do it, we buy from them, they spew it in the air and then they put it on a tanker and drive it to us and pollute all the way across… America is amazing, but we are not using our assets to the best that we possibly can and it is time that we do it.”

As Energy Secretary Chris Wright also pointed out, it’s a “destructive habit” for countries to move “their energy-intensive manufacturing out of their country.”

Based on the impact of pollution as a non-tariff trade barrier, it seems highly likely that the Trump administration may pursue a pollution tariff to counter perhaps the single biggest factor that allows nations like China to gain an unfair advantage over American producers in the first place.

Congress may be poised to get in on the action as well. Senators Cassidy (R-LA) and Graham (R-SC) are working on their “Foreign Pollution Fee Act,” which would finally put an end to this reality. While the courts threaten President Trump’s tariff powers, such a bill from Congress would renew the president’s negotiating position on a rock-solid legal foundation while taking on our greatest geopolitical adversary.

Imposing tariffs linked to emissions from the production of goods would incentivize investment in American industries and force China to improve its production quality, taking away their unfair advantage while curbing their environmental degradation that impacts the rest of the world. This approach turns their advantage into ours, as U.S. manufacturing is nearly four times more emissions-efficient than the Chinese equivalent.

A pollution tariff is also the natural extension of President Trump’s overarching trade agenda. In fact, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signaled that a pollution tariff could be part of “an entire tariff plan.” At the same time, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said when asked about a pollution tariff, “[w]e need to be utilizing all instruments of national power to be able to deal with adversaries abroad, across the spectrum of all the issues that face our country.”

Unlike across-the-board country-of-origin tariffs that are politically dicey and continue to be contested in the courts, pollution tariffs have the rare potential to garner domestic and international support, further augmenting their effects on those adversaries.

At home, when asked about “placing a pollution fee on high pollution imports from China,” 90% of Republicans supported the idea, and a majority said they supported it even if it led to higher costs on goods they buy. With support for such a tariff even among Democrats, there is huge political upside for Trump and the GOP. As such, a pollution tariff is practical, popular, and could persist for some time.

President Trump now has the opportunity to implement a tariff policy that China can’t skirt, that hits them where it hurts, and that will re-shore manufacturing. That’s how to do tariffs right.

Chris Johnson is President of the American Energy Leadership Institute, a conservative advocacy organization championing America First energy policy. He also serves as a senior adviser to the National Federation of College Republicans.