The White House has announced the formation of a new “White House Climate and Trade Task Force,” noting that, according to President Biden’s Senior Advisor for Clean Energy Innovation & Implementation John Podesta, “…if the global trade of goods was its own country, it would be the second-largest carbon polluter in the world after [China].”

A tariff by another name? The arguably ill-defined promise of the new initiative is to “develop a more sustainable U.S. trade policy, boost emissions monitoring and promote clean manufacturing to reduce emissions caused by global trade.”

United States Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai will add the new assignment to her portfolio after emphasizing before the House Ways & Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee this week the Biden Administration’s focus on building green practices into trade negotiations.

According to Podesta, “Our current global trading system was built to promote open and competitive markets, which it has done well, but it wasn’t built to curb emissions.”

To paraphrase Podesta, “The elephant in the room is producing a lot of emissions and that is global trade.”

Podesta argues that global trade is responsible for 25% of emissions, presumably CO2 emissions. This makes either reducing global trade or prioritizing what might be termed “Green Trade” (as opposed to “Fair Trade” or “Free Trade”) a key element of solving the perceived problem of global warming or just simply, climate change.

It is a new paradigm, just expressed concretely, although antecedents have been found in many recent trade initiatives.

Besides Tai and Podesta, the other members of the initiative have not been named.

Podesta argues that the lengthy negotiations on steel and aluminum between the U.S. and the EU will provide a formative basis for the direction of the new initiative.

The new White House initiative, thus far, has gotten little attention from Congress, but attention may be expected. While partisan lines are almost certain to emerge depending on how the new initiative develops, look to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to focus on China in buttressing their arguments against trade with the country despite China’s advancement in electric vehicles (EVs) which both Tai and Podesta argue is critical to decarbonization.

Podesta states that the new initiative will focus on “developing our climate and trade policy toolkit with an open mind about what features and approaches will be most effective at addressing carbon leakage, carbon dumping, and embodied carbon in general.” The terms may need more definition. Arguably, a tree might be considered “embodied carbon.”

Podesta, like similar remarks from Tai also this week, characterizes the Biden Administration’s goals as a “new race-to-the-top environment.” Podesta insists, however, that financing will be available for developing countries to support green manufacturing and trade.

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