Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., told Newsmax that China is able to compete economically with the United States because it can avoid environmental regulations.
Speaking to "The Record With Greta Van Susteren" about how China could be held accountable for its role in pollution and slave labor, among other things, Cassidy said that "we already have laws in place" to sanction China for its use of slave-labor practices.
"The second thing is," the senator said, "we need to have a set of policies which recognize that one way that China is able to better compete is they ignore environmental regulations.
"So whereas we have a certain cost, how to keep pollutants from going up in the air, they don't enforce those regulations, making it cheaper to produce goods there. I'm advocating policies that would make them pay a penalty. We call it the foreign pollution fee."
While it's unclear what a foreign pollution fee would look like or how it would be implemented, Cassidy nonetheless advocated for such legislation.
In an op-ed published by Newsweek, the Lousiana senator concluded, "We should develop a system whereby China's polluting of international air and water is reflected in access to markets. These actions are not to harm China; they are to address China's actions harming everyone else."
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