Coons: Trump's Approach To China Was 'Better'

Senator Chris Coons of Delaware may be a Democrat, but he's one of the few left in America who still possesses common sense.

That is true at least in one area, namely, determining America's next step in regard to trade with China.

Coons thinks that the United States would do best if we went back to policies like the ones we saw during President Donald Trump's time in the Oval Office.

That's not something you hear often out of America's liberals.

"We’re trying to measure the emissions reductions that have already happened in the United States because of our regulations, and then advantage cleaner or lower-emissions heavy industrial products," Coons said. He added:

So, for example, American-made steel and aluminum should not face any tariffs, whereas perhaps steel and aluminum coming from Russia or China that are intensive in their emissions would, and imports from the E.U. or Canada or U.K. wouldn’t because they have regulatory schemes because of their carbon taxes and because of their regulations that are comparably low emissions to ours.

"This is an approach that doesn’t require warmer or closer relations between the United States and China," Coons said.

"That’s part of the beauty of an approach that says, if you want to access the American market, you have to prove that you have low-emissions heavy industrial products. The thing that is most likely to bend the curve of emissions in China and India is market forces through trade. … That will drive them to change their emissions profiles, to slow down the rate at which they’re currently building a record number of coal-fired power plants. That’s the thing that is going to drive global reductions in emissions, more than any agreement. Because, I frankly think our relations may continue to be strained, or even, as you put it, frosty for years to come. So, using the free market, using trade might well work. The agreements so far have not," the lawmaker concluded.