Once we cut fossil fuel subsidies and employ strict environmental regulations for manufacturing here in the US, corporations will want to move their operations overseas. After moving their operations to countries that allow fossil fuel production, these corporations will then sell their products back to the US through various trade deals that protect the fossil fuel industry. This would render our efforts to stop fossil fuel production useless because corporations would literally be incentivized to take away American jobs while polluting the environment.
Additionally, the fossil fuel industries lobby to get trade deals to provide them with incentives for development, preferential treatment in trade, or carve outs to allow them to more aggressively combat the efforts of other countries to regulate their industry. We need to ensure that our trade deals with other countries match our values and environmental goals. We need to renegotiate our trade deals that protect the fossil fuel industry. Instead, our trade deals need to ensure that any goods manufactured using unsustainable methods are appropriately costed, and the fossil fuel industries don’t get unwarranted power in the deals.
Problems to be Solved
- checkCorporations have incentives to avoid our environmental standard regulations by moving their manufacturing overseas.
- We can make the United States the center of a new global, sustainable energy sector. This will bring money to the American people, and will create jobs in installation and maintenance that will be local and less likely to be automated. It will also reduce a primary source of income used by some of our biggest adversaries - Russia, Iran, Venezuela all rely on oil, and terrorist organizations utilize it as a primary fundraising mechanism.
Goals
- checkKeeping jobs and sustainable manufacturing practices here in the US
As President I will...
- Ensure that any trade negotiation includes stringent environmental standards.
- Ensure that any trade deal doesn’t include carve-outs or exclusives for oil, gas, or coal.
- Renegotiate any trade deal that includes carve-outs for fossil fuel industries, including the ISDS exceptions in NAFTA/USMCA.