GE Comes Out Strongly Against Trade Barriers

General Electric: Tear Down That Wall! The Green Tariff Wall, That Is

By Keith Johnson, Wall Street Journal

Embracing protectionism, after a fashion, is shaping up as one way to pass climate legislation and start saving the planet.
Wrong move, says General Electric, a company with an obvious and multi-billion dollar interest in keeping trade avenues open, especially when it comes to clean technology.
It’s a timely argument. This morning, the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection is holding a hearing on “Growing U.S. Trade in Green Technology,” part of the national hand-wringing over how to close the windmill gap. The question is how to jumpstart the U.S. clean-technology industry—by coddling it or by unleashing it?
GE’s argument: Cleaning up the world means installing more—not less—clean-tech gear. And that means fewer—not more—restrictions on clean-energy trade, even as the U.S. is desperate to jumpstart its domestic clean-energy industry and close a perceived gap with rivals such as China.
Granted, as GE’s managing director for international energy policy Tim Richards told Congress today, the U.S. is far from the worst offender. Countries such as China, Mexico, Russia, India, and South Korea all slap higher tariffs on wind turbines than the U.S. does. Other countries, especially China, also use other trade weapons, from “Buy Chinese” provisions to questionable bidding procedures for energy projects that seem to always exclude foreign firms.
The point is, that tearing down existing trade barriers and preventing their return would not only benefit America’s clean-tech sector in the long run (the global market is a little bigger than the domestic market) it would also bring quicker and bigger benefits to the environment.
“Liberalization of trade for green products and services offers a rapid, high-impact step governments can take to lower the cost of cleaner energy technologies, resulting in more economically viable solutions for reducing greenhouse gases,” Mr. Richards testified.
That doesn’t mean totally “free” trade in clean-tech gear. Like many other big U.S. companies, GE is worried about intellectual property protection, especially as developing countries are increasingly clamoring for cheap or free access to Western technology as the price for playing ball on climate change.
That would be “counterproductive” to the whole goal of cleaning up the world’s energy mix, GE says, since it would “deter innovation and technology deployment.”
In other words, GE’s recipe for creating a healthy clean-tech sector is simple: Keep it open, and keep it profitable.