I’ve written before about the “carbon tariff” debate, and will continue to do so as the Senate gears up to write a climate change bill. Indeed, I have a paper coming out in early September with a fuller analysis of the effects of slapping tariffs on countries in an effort to force them to sign up to international carbon-limiting agreements. [Spoiler alert: you’ll be shocked to know that I conclude that using trade measures in climate change policy is possibly illegal under world trade rules, definitely costly to the U.S. economy, and more than likely counterproductive in the efforts to forge a climate agreement (for what that’s worth).]

Seemingly unconcerned about the costs of green protectionism, ten Democratic senators crucial to the upcoming Senate vote (long-standing protectionists all, with the exception of newbie Al Franken) sent a letter to the White House yesterday, urging President Obama to rethink his (lukewarm) resistance to carbon tariffs. They argue that a dreaded “unlevel playing field” would result from saddling U.S. industries with higher carbon costs while, say, Chinese ones remain unencumbered.

You’ll have to wait for my paper for a full examination of those arguments, but in the meantime here’s some excellent analysis of the politics of it all by former Catoite, international trade lawyer, and friend of liberty Scott Lincicome. He assesses the scorecard as follows:

Pro carbon tariffs — Ten protectionist Senators, the US House of Representatives (in Waxman-Markey), France [link added], and Paul Krugman.

Anti carbon tariffs — the rest of the world.