Trade and climate change are closely connected issues. Think just about the carbon emissions of planes and ships traversing the globe carrying stuff that we consume. I’ll come back to that in a sec.

   Yesterday, Rep. Mike Michaud of Maine introduced the House version of the TRADE Act; the Senate’s sponsor is Sherrod Brown. Eyes On Trade reports:

This year’s version of the legislation is backed by 106 original cosponsors, including nine committee chairs and 45 subcommittee chairs. The cosponsors come from the full range of Democratic caucuses and from around the country. The full list of cosponsors is available here. The Trade Act – 2009 version – has double the number of original cosponsors as the Trade Act introduced last June, showing that support is rapidly growing for a fair-trade alternative to our current failed NAFTA-WTO model.

   What the bill means is nicely summed up by Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch Division:

The premise of the TRADE Act is that America’s trade agenda must be brought into conformity with America’s domestic agenda of good jobs, a clean environment, safe food, quality and affordable medicines, and essential services. By removing provisions that limit imported food and product safety and financial service regulation, provide foreign investors with rights to attack domestic environmental and health laws, and incentivize the offshoring of jobs to low-wage countries – and adding effective labor, environmental, health and safety standards to provide the floor of decency necessary to ensuring trade agreements benefit more people – the road map provided by the TRADE Act would lead to trade agreements that could enjoy broad public support.

   At the same time, there is some question about whether the current energy bill does enough to deal with global warming and whether the president has given up too much just to get a bill passed, per The Financial Times:

Others argue that the dozens of compromises Democratic leaders have struck with their colleagues from the rural and manufacturing belts have made a hash of the bill’s framework.

"In order to get the votes, the bill’s managers have taken off most of its environmental edge," said Rob Shapiro, chairman of the US climate change taskforce, which backs a carbon tax. "If we were to pass a toothless bill like this, we would probably have to wait five or 10 years for another chance to do it right."

For example, in contrast to Mr Obama’s campaign promise that 100 per cent of the permits would be auctioned off, the bill gives away 85 per cent for free and only moves to a full auction in 2030.

   So, back to the trade-climate change link. The story that caught my eye this morning was in The Wall Street Journal:

House Democratic leaders Thursday weighed tough trade penalties on countries that don’t cap so-called greenhouse-gas emissions, while President Barack Obama sought support from wavering lawmakers ahead of a vote on a climate bill.

The trade proposal is designed to protect a half dozen trade-sensitive U.S. industries, including steel, cement and chemical manufacturers, from competitors in countries that don’t cap their output of greenhouse gases.

Top House Democrats and many members of the Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over trade policy, led the negotiations and effectively signed off on details of the plan late Thursday.

The measure — expected to be folded into the 1,200-page proposal to curb U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions — is tougher than a provision approved last month by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. It would impose the sanctions in 2020, five years before the earlier-approved version would, and give Congress authority to levy a border fee, if the president chooses not to act, that would raise the cost of imported goods.

   I don’t have a problem trying to force other countries to stop polluting. But, here’s what I think makes one pause: would it not be best to get to this by revisting our entire failed trade policy? In other words, to see trade and the environment as linked by wrestling with the merits of the TRADE Act. My concern is that the proponents of so-called "free trade" will point to the trade penalties inserted into the energy bill as "protectionist" legislation, an indirect a way to attack people who want to re-imagine trade as something that we need to see as touching every part of our life.