[CTC] 100+ members of Congress: We need climate standards, not Trump's NAFTA 2.0

Thu Sep 19 06:52:25 PDT 2019

Begin forwarded message:

From: Ben Beachy <ben.beachy at sierraclub.org>
Subject: 100+ members of Congress: We need climate standards, not Trump's NAFTA 2.0
Date: September 19, 2019 at 9:33:00 AM EDT

Reply-To: Ben Beachy <ben.beachy at sierraclub.org>

Good morning.  More than 100 House Democrats in the U.S. Congress just sent a letter to Donald Trump to make clear that a renegotiated NAFTA needs to meaningfully address the climate crisis.  

See here for the letter <https://katiehill.house.gov/rep-hill-letter-urging-president-trump-prioritize-climate-renegotiated-nafta>, led by Congresswoman Katie Hill and supported by the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the League of Conservation Voters. 

The letter's 110 co-signers include 18 House committee chairs, plus members of Democratic leadership and leaders of relevant House caucuses.  The co-signers range from freshmen members of Congress to long-time congressional leaders, from moderates to progressives, from districts on the coasts to those in the heartland -- all calling for binding climate standards in a renegotiated NAFTA to halt the outsourcing of climate pollution and jobs.  See here (and below) for the full breakdown of the letter's co-signers <https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/Climate%20NAFTA%20Letter%20Cosigners.pdf>.  

The broadly supported congressional letter comes on the eve of global climate strikes <https://www.vox.com/2019/9/17/20864740/greta-thunberg-youth-climate-strike-fridays-future>, at a time when an unprecedented 76% of Americans <https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/americans-increasingly-see-climate-change-as-a-crisis-poll-shows/2019/09/12/74234db0-cd2a-11e9-87fa-8501a456c003_story.html?arc404=true> say that climate change is a crisis or major problem.  

And it comes on the heels of the latest NAFTA 2.0 proposal from the Trump administration, which once again failed to address the climate crisis.  As written, Trump’s NAFTA 2.0 not only ignores the climate crisis, but would contribute to it <https://www.sierraclub.org/trade/trump-s-nafta-deal-threatens-our-air-water-and-climate>.  In response, the letter calls for "fundamental changes to the current deal," including "binding climate standards" in a renegotiated NAFTA and "a decision for the United States to remain in the Paris Climate Agreement."  See here (and below) for Politico's coverage of the letter <https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/17/democrats-trump-paris-climate-deal-usmca-1739745>.  

This letter reinforces the longstanding call for a climate-friendly NAFTA replacement -- a call that environmental organizations, labor-environment coalitions, climate economists, and leading members of Congress have been elevating <https://www.sierraclub.org/trade/everyone-wants-climate-friendly-nafta-replacement> over the last two years of NAFTA 2.0 talks.  This demand is critical because trade deals like NAFTA that ignore climate change have helped corporate polluters to dodge our hard-fought climate policies by shifting their climate pollution -- and jobs -- to countries with lower standards.  Indeed, the U.S. is already the world’s largest outsourcer of climate pollution <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/climate/outsourcing-carbon-emissions.html>, thanks in part to climate-denying trade deals.  

As today's congressional letter clearly states, we cannot afford another unfair trade deal that is on the wrong side of our historic fight to tackle the climate crisis.  We cannot afford Trump's NAFTA 2.0. 

Cheers, 
Ben Beachy

Director, A Living Economy
Sierra Club

POLITICO
Democrats press Trump to commit to Paris climate deal as part of USMCA <https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/17/democrats-trump-paris-climate-deal-usmca-1739745>
By Megan Cassella

09/17/2019 05:31 PM EDT

More than 100 House Democrats are urging President Donald Trump to ensure his new North American trade deal will “meaningfully address climate change” by including binding environmental standards and a commitment from the United States to remain in the Paris climate agreement.

The demands are laid out in a new letter House Democrats will send to Trump later this week. Rep. Katie Hill <https://cd.politicopro.com/member/307572> (D-Calif.) is spearheading the letter, a draft of which was obtained by POLITICO.

“To remove these climate threats and support workers and communities, the renegotiated NAFTA deal should include binding climate standards and be paired with a decision for the United States to remain in the Paris Climate Agreement,” the draft letter says.

It adds that the standards Democrats would like to see “will require fundamental changes to the current deal on the table.”

The letter — which organizers say has support from across the party and signatures from more than a dozen committee chairs — portends a clash between Democrats and the Trump administration over the climate issue.

For months, Democrats have been emphasizing a need to make changes to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement to better reflect their priorities in four core areas, environment among them, and the Trump administration last week sent lawmakers formal proposals <https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/13/trump-usmca-trade-1733491> for how it would attempt to satisfy their concerns.

But while the administration went some distance toward addressing Democratic demands to use the USMCA as a tool for strengthening the enforcement of seven international environmental agreements, it stopped short of acknowledging climate change or including any commitments on the Paris deal, several people briefed on the responses told POLITICO.

The letter, which is coming after USTR’s responses were sent to Capitol Hill, suggests that more than 40 percent of the Democratic conference believes the administration's proposals do not go far enough toward addressing the issue, and that more work is left to be done.

The text USTR sent over "failed to address the climate crisis," said Ben Beachy, a trade expert with the Sierra Club, which is backing the letter. "Trump’s NAFTA deal would not only ignore the climate crisis but contribute to it," he added.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.citizenstrade.org/pipermail/ctcfield-citizenstrade.org/attachments/20190919/43e060bd/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Climate NAFTA Letter Cosigners.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 220430 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.citizenstrade.org/pipermail/ctcfield-citizenstrade.org/attachments/20190919/43e060bd/attachment-0001.jpg>