Sec. 172. Findings related to the People’s Republic of China’s industrial pollution
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Congress makes the following findings: State-owned enterprises of the PRC are subject to the direction of both the state and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the CCP strives to increase their influence over the global economy by pursuing predatory and exploitative trade, economic, and industrial practices designed to out-compete the United States and other market economies. The PRC’s control of key components of critical global supply chains, including critical minerals, semiconductors, batteries, solar panels, and pharmaceuticals, as outlined in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s February 2023 Annual Threat Assessment , represents a direct threat to United States national security and harms global economic competition.
The CCP’s industrial strategy, as articulated in the Made in China 2025 plan, aims to dominate global manufacturing in crucial energy technologies, including advanced materials, batteries, and power equipment. The PRC, by far the world’s largest polluter, accounts for approximately 1/3 of global carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions according to the International Energy Administration and subsidizes its industries, manufacturers, and exports by neither implementing nor enforcing adequate environmental or labor protection standards.
The PRC’s industrial sectors like agriculture, mining, automotive production, and computer and electronics manufacturing emit 3 times more carbon dioxide as compared to the United States’ same industrial sectors, and nearly 2 times more carbon dioxide than the global average of the production of comparable goods in other foreign countries, according to industry tracking data from the International Energy Agency. The CCP seeks to utilize the Belt and Road Initiative
(BRI)and the Global Development Initiative
(GDI)to increase the dependence of low-income and lower-middle income countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas on the PRC at the expense of trapping such countries in long-term, high-polluting, debt-ridden, low-quality infrastructure projects that undermine developing countries’ efforts to sustainably grow and industrialize their economies to maximize benefits and participation for their citizenry, while increasing global pollution. The United States— has adopted many environmental protections, including the Clean Air Act ( 42 U.S.C. 7401 et seq. ), the Federal Water Pollution Control Act ( 33 U.S.C. 1251 et seq. ), the Toxic Substances Control Act ( 15 U.S.C. 2601 et seq. ), and more than 15 other major environmental protection laws that— add costs to the production of goods in order to secure the benefits of environmental protection and conservation efforts; and serve to meaningfully decrease greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane (CH 4 ), nitrous oxide (N 2 O), sulfur hexafluoride (SF 6 ), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and other fluorinated greenhouse gases; is the world’s largest consumer market and its economy is highly integrated into the world; and bears responsibility to ensure that the United States market does not incentivize forum shopping for the production of goods to jurisdictions with low environmental standards to obtain a competitive cost advantage while undermining efforts to address transnational environmental and resource challenges as well as global public health. Any realistic pathway to substantially reduce global carbon emissions will require the PRC to be held accountable for its role as the world’s largest polluter.