By Saul Anuzis
In the last week, there has been a wide range of responses to President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Understandable, but the response I cannot wrap my mind around is that of confusion. President Trump has been abundantly clear about his desire to use tariffs to boost American jobs and hold countries like China accountable for their undercutting of American workers.
But there may be some merit to the response of concern about the specifics of the approach. This is where the Administration and Republicans in Congress should get aligned and communicate clearly where we hope to go from here.
The Administration has been in lockstep with Trump’s approach to trade, and can speak quite effectively for him. Every member of the Cabinet explained in great detail during their confirmation hearings how they viewed our biggest challenges, and were confirmed accordingly.
They laid out their plans to protect the border, get the economy back on track, and perhaps most importantly, take on China. But one idea all Republicans (and especially the Administration) could align on is also an idea that I (and many other conservatives[link to previous piece in outlet]) personally have come to love: tariffs on Chinese pollution.
It is no secret that President Trump wants to use tariffs as both a trade tool and a mechanism for funding the government. This will require folks like Scott Bessent, Trump’s TreasurySecretary, to get quite creative in policy implementation. That’s why it was so encouraging that when discussing the Trump trade agenda, Bessent signaled that this approach will be a part of “an entire tariff plan”.
This would be fantastic even just as a political tool. If we want to unify the Party at this fraught movement, we will have to be careful not to alienate members of the movement and focus on widely-supported policies. On this issue, recent polling shows that 90% of Republicans support “placing a pollution fee on high pollution imports from China”, which is as close to consensus I can imagine.
There is already support among Congressional Republicans, who will be crucial in implementing the MAGA agenda. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) have introduced the Foreign Pollution Fee Act, which would charge for imports from higher-polluting countries. This creates an opportunity to make a tool that the Administration is already saying they want into law, creating a lasting victory for the America First movement and President Trump’s legacy.
That kind of political winning will also come with clear economic and policy upside as well. As the Administration looks to cut taxes and spending, it will still need pay-fors in order to ensure funding for defense, border security, and law enforcement. A pollution tariff would raise up to an estimated $240 billion, a significant fiscal help while moving the America First agenda forward.
There has to be funding from somewhere, and we need to rein in the Chinese Communist Party. This approach accomplishes both with efficiency and effectiveness. Since it is merely correcting for an imbalance in the global market—China’s inherent subsidy of their manufacturing—it also accomplishes those goals with limited tradeoffs.
That is why this strategy has the support of so many different sectors of society, from policy experts to manufacturers to Republican elected officials. As an example of this, Chris Wright (President Trump’s Energy Secretary) responded positively regarding this concept in his confirmation hearing, pointing out how companies offshore their energy-intensive processes to countries with lower environmental standards, which is a major challenge. As a businessman, energy entrepreneur, and now policymaker, he is a great representative of all the folks becoming interested in this idea.
So now that the President’s Cabinet is hard at work doing the will of the people, they (and Republicans in Congress) should embrace the approach being laid out by Treasury Secretary Bessent and Energy Secretary Wright, using a pollution tariff to hit China and boost American businesses. Like EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said about this policy, “[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.” The Foreign Pollution Fee Act would be a great instrument for that.
We have four years to right the ship after the disastrous last four. It will take a monumental, all-of-government approach. Fixing our disastrous trade regime that has hollowed out the middle of America will not be easy, but targeted policies like this would get to the heart of the issue, allowing us to truly rebuild from the bottom-up and the middle-out. That kind of creativity, combined with the hard work of our leaders and the citizenry, can truly Make America Great Again.
