Senators Press For Green Energy Trade War

Four Democratic senators have come out in favor of green energy protectionism according to an AP story the New York Times:

A group of Democratic senators urged the Obama administration to suspend an economic stimulus program aimed at financing renewable energy, complaining that money is going to projects that are creating jobs in foreign countries.

"We can't jump-start our economy and pull ourselves out of this recession if we are putting Chinese workers ahead of American workers," New York Sen. Chuck Schumer said at a news conference Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Schumer and three other senators wrote to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to request a moratorium on the Recovery Act program. They asked that the moratorium remain in place until they can pass legislation mandating stimulus aid flow only to projects which preserve and create U.S. jobs. …

"A critical Recovery Act priority is investment in the domestic renewable and clean energy industry, not investment in foreign manufacturers," the senators wrote in the letter, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press. The letter was also signed by Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Robert Casey of Pennsylvania and Jon Tester of Montana.

The lawmakers cited a report by the Investigative Reporting Workshop, a project of the School of Communication at American University that does investigative journalism, which found that a majority of the program's grants went to foreign-owned companies, and that a majority of the turbines purchased with the money were built by foreign manufacturers.

Just when you think that Congress can't get any stupider, some would-be lawgivers propose to simultaneously start an economically damaging trade war and make sure that green energy is even more expensive for American consumers than it is already going to be. Just brilliant!

Whole story here.