Why some Republicans voted for more carbon emissions tracking

As the Trump administration eliminates the collection of climate-related data across the federal government, Congress has directed one agency to study the carbon intensity of certain industrial products exported to the European Union.

Starting this year, the EU is requiring importers of industrial products such as steel, fertilizer and aluminum to pay a surcharge on the carbon emissions associated with their production. Under an appropriations bill signed by President Donald Trump last month, the U.S. Department of Energy has been charged with assessing the carbon footprint of those sectors.

That study comes as the Trump administration is proposing ending requirements that power plants, oil refineries and other industrial facilities report their greenhouse gas emissions. Yet the measure for steel and other products gained bipartisan support in part because some Republicans believe the U.S. will gain a competitive trade advantage over other exporters of these products due to its cleaner manufacturing processes.

“We are better off if we have some good, not just good and not even just valid, but authoritative data to push back against any effort to attack American products,” Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said. “I firmly believe we do it as clean, if not cleaner, than anybody.”

Cramer, who had previously co-sponsored similar but unsuccessful legislation with Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, said he didn’t inform the White House of the emissions intensity study provision tucked in the appropriations bill. “They’re not against using tariffs and I would guess that they’re not against using defensive mechanisms against tariffs that are imposed on us,” Cramer said.

The White House referred a request for comment to the Energy Department, which didn’t respond to an inquiry.

The levy imposed by the EU program, called the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism , is tied to EU carbon market prices and will eventually fluctuate. This year, though, the surcharge is set as a quarterly average and the current price is around $95 per ton of emissions. It’ll be phased in, applying to only 2.5% of a product’s reported emissions in 2026 before reaching 100% in 2034.

Four of the industries regulated by CBAM – steel, aluminum, cement and fertilizer – account for 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2025 paper published by researchers at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The EU is a relatively small market for U.S. products currently covered by CBAM, accounting for less than 2% of the $380 billion in goods the country exported to Europe in 2025 according to Coco Zhang, vice president of ESG research at bank ING Groep NV. That could change if CBAM eventually expands to cover industries such as chemicals where the EU is a key U.S. market, researchers said.

Zhang said that although U.S. companies should hold a “carbon advantage,” many manufacturers lack data on emissions intensity.

To preserve that competitive edge over countries where manufacturing is more carbon intensive, they have to prove it, said Catherine Wolfram, a professor of energy economics at MIT Sloan School of Management who studies CBAM.

If the Trump administration succeeds in scuttling greenhouse gas reporting requirements, the new study “would potentially be a good way to replace the types of data that were collected under that program,” she said.

The legislation signed by Trump directs the Energy department’s National Energy Technology Laboratory to complete a study of the average emissions intensity of the industrial sectors covered by CBAM by January 2027.

John Milko, a senior managing policy adviser at climate nonprofit Carbon180, said that various studies have shown that U.S. manufacturers generally emit fewer emissions than competitors but there hasn’t been a comprehensive survey of the data. “This effort is really a chance to publish a definitive accounting of the U.S.’s carbon advantage across industries,” he said.

If a manufacturer’s home country already levies a carbon tax on emissions, the company can deduct that cost from surcharge imposed by CBAM. So far, 82% of countries, including China, have imposed carbon pricing on the industries that fall under CBAM or are planning such a tax, according to the MIT paper.

There’s been little bipartisan support for carbon pricing in the U.S., though. “I don’t think it’s necessary and I don’t support that,” said Cramer.