EEN Applauds Foreign Pollution Fee Act
APRIL 9, 2025 | WASHINGTON, DC — On April 8, 2025, Senators Bill Cassidy (R, LA) and Lindsey Graham (R, SC) introduced the Foreign Pollution Fee Act of 2025. Unlike other tariffs recently announced, this bill would impose a fee on eight referenced categories based on the intensity of their carbon emissions, namely: aluminum, cement, iron and steel, fertilizer, glass, hydrogen, solar products, and long-term storage batteries. This trade policy would ensure that American companies and workers have a level playing field with foreign manufacturers, who are often held to a lower environmental standard that creates a perverse effect on American workers, our economy, and our health. In absence of a fee on foreign pollution, American manufacturers can be put at a competitive disadvantage for their clean practices, resulting in companies offshoring their factories to countries with fewer environmental safeguards as well as unchecked emissions of health-harming pollution. This pollution includes the neuro-toxin mercury, which medical research links to developmental delays and lower IQs that rob our children, both born and unborn, from reaching their God-given potential.
In response, the Rev. Dr. Jessica Moerman, President/CEO of the Evangelical Environmental Network, released the following statement:
“The Foreign Pollution Fee Act of 2025 delivers a three-fold win, defending the health of our children from harmful pollution, protecting the livelihoods of American workers, and leveling the playing field for American firms leading the way in clean manufacturing. The majority of products named in the Foreign Pollution Fee Act are powered by or directly utilize mercury-containing coal for production. While the United States reined in harmful mercury pollution a decade ago, other countries like China have no such protections on the books. China is responsible for 25-30% of the world’s mercury emissions, and unfortunately, air pollution doesn’t recognize national boundaries. Mercury pollution from coal combustion in China travels across the Pacific and is deposited in American oceans, lakes, and streams, resulting in widespread fish consumption advisories and continued risk of mercury-induced brain damage to our children, especially those in Alaska and our Western states. The Foreign Pollution Fee Act will help create the healthy environment and bright future that all God’s children, both here in the United States and across the world, deserve by ensuring foreign manufacturers finally clean up their act. On behalf of our children, we thank Senators Bill Cassidy (R, LA) and Lindsey Graham (R, SC) for their leadership advancing this critical bill.”
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The Evangelical Environmental Network is a ministry whose mission is to inspire, equip, educate, and mobilize evangelical Christians to love God and others by rediscovering and reclaiming the Biblical mandate to care for creation and working toward a stable climate and a healthy, pollution-free world.
Photo by Ella Ivanescu on Unsplash
