Quibbling Over Carbon Metrics: Senator Cramer’s Ill-Advised, Unauthorized Carbon Tax Trojan Horse

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The U.S. may stumble into a carbon taxed future due to a provision furtively inserted into the House committee report accompanying the energy and water appropriations bill that was part of the “minibus,” enacted in late January. The provision, for which Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) claims credit, directs the Department of Energy (DOE) to estimate the average carbon emission intensities of US- and foreign-made goods. That may seem harmless, but it is potentially a seed of considerable mischief.

Estimates of carbon intensity (tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions per ton of goods produced) are the analytic backbone of a carbon border tax, or “carbon border adjustment mechanism” (CBAM), as the European Union calls it. Carbon border taxes can undercut opposition to costly and aggressive national climate policies by inflicting some of the pain experienced by domestic producers on their foreign competitors as well. In effect, Cramer’s language tells DOE to prepare a database critical to carbon tax advocacy and implementation.

Although report language is not legally binding, agencies tend to listen when appropriators speak. Cramer’s action raises two questions for conservatives generally and DOE Secretary Christopher Wright in particular. Is Cramer’s directive a legitimate use of committee report language? Would adopting a system of carbon border taxes advance or undermine President Trump’s rollback of Biden and Obama administration climate policies?  

Report Language

Cramer’s language directs DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) “to determine the average emissions intensity of certain goods produced in the U.S. compared to those from other countries,” including “all items implicated by the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.” The directive is easy to miss, as it forms one paragraph (on p. 112) of the 263-page House report.

Moreover, reportedly by his own account, Cramer did not tell the White House and DOE about the language he placed in the July 2025 House report until after Trump signed the minibus into law in January 2026.

How much weight should DOE give to Cramer’s language? Little to none, if we consult constitutional logic and Supreme Court case law. As the Court stated in Shannon v. United States, 512 U.S. 573, 583–84 (1994), it has never “given authoritative weight to a single passage of legislative history that is in no way anchored in the text of the statute.” Why? Doing so would “abandon altogether the text of the statute as a guide in the interpretative process.”

That is effectively what Cramer asks DOE to do—implement a policy directive in no way anchored to the text of the statute. Nothing in the corresponding section of the minibus (pp. 26-49) mentions or alludes to NETL, emissions intensity, the European Union, or carbon border adjustment.

Despite initially taking a bow for the “discipline” he exerted to keep his language on the Q.T. during minibus deliberations, Cramer now denies he did anything “surreptitious.” The language, he explains, “mirrors” a bill he introduced in the 118th Congress, the PROVE IT Act (S. 1863), which “has been publicly available, debated in committees, covered in the press and even favorably voted out of committee.” Thus, Cramer contends, when President Trump signed the minibus, the language had been “in plain sight, like a billboard on the interstate, for more than 500 days.”

That is ludicrous. The fact that many legislators knew about the PROVE IT Act during the 118th Congress is not evidence anyone outside of Cramer’s inner circle knew about the report’s “mirror” language when the 119th Congress voted on the minibus.

The House report’s detailed table of contents contains nothing on Cramer’s paragraph—neither its subtitle nor its subject matter. Cramer’s three-sentence paragraph is quite literally tucked away in the middle of a 263-page document. It bears no resemblance to a billboard in plain sight on the interstate.

Cramer’s decision to keep mum about his language for six months is not surprising. If conservatives got wind of it, they would have alerted the White House and DOE and urged its deletion. Recall the fate of the PROVE IT Act on which Cramer’s language is based. It died without a floor vote in the 118th Congress after 43 conservative organizations opposed it as the setup for a carbon tax.

No senator acting behind the scenes, using report language condensed from legislation considered but not passed by a previous Congress, has authority to reset trade policy for a new Congress and administration. On basic constitutional grounds, Energy Secretary Wright should just say no to Cramer’s directive. Wright should do so for policy reasons as well.

Border Tax Debate

The ostensible purpose of a carbon border tax is to “level the playing field” for manufacturers in countries that “put a price on carbon,” whether via carbon taxes, emission trading schemes, or emission performance standards. The tax aims to mitigate losses domestic producers incur when competing with producers from countries with less stringent climate policies.

A better way to avoid competitive losses would be to reject carbon pricing in the first place. Perhaps Cramer thinks the U.S. could enact carbon taxes that apply only to foreign-produced goods or commodities. Fat chance.

By promising protection from less regulated foreign competition, a carbon border tax saps industry’s will to fight costly and infeasible domestic climate policies. That’s not mere theory. European industry’s unwillingness to organize opposition to the EU’s onerous “Green Deal” is partly due to border taxes being a core component of the deal.

In addition, enacting a policy that imposes carbon taxes solely on foreign-made goods would immediately trigger pressure campaigns for domestic carbon taxes. Invoking “fair trade” and America’s alleged “responsibility to lead on climate,” EU officials, green groups, renewable energy lobbyists, and blue-state politicians would urge Congress to level the playing field against carbon-intensive U.S. firms.

Unsurprisingly, carbon border taxes are almost always paired in both theory and practice with domestic carbon taxes.

Why does that matter? Because a carbon tax “involves the power to destroy” the economic viability of fossil fuels, which supply 83% of U.S. energy. Carbon taxes imperil consumer welfare, economic growth, industrial competitiveness, and the energy dominance critical to U.S. geopolitical security.

If you don’t want domestic carbon taxes, do not enact carbon border taxes—or the framework for administering the latter. That was the core message of conservative opposition to the PROVE IT Act in the 118th Congress.

Carbon Tax Setup

Cramer claims his report language is only about data. There are “No taxes. No fees.” He said the same about the PROVE IT Act. All it would do is create a database for checking the “math Europeans use” to slap border taxes on U.S. imports. Far from being pro-carbon tax, he argued, the PROVE IT Act expressly provides no “new authority” to impose, enforce, or collect climate taxes or fees.

That spiel is a red herring. The issue is not whether the PROVE IT Act (or its “mirror” language) authorizes carbon taxes but whether it facilitates their enactment via future budget reconciliation bills, which require only simple Senate majorities for passage.

In fact, we’ve seen this movie before. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act passed in the Senate by a vote of 51-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie breaker. In the IRA, Democrats took an existing methane emissions reporting program and used the data to impose first-ever climate taxes on the oil and gas industry.

When the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee reviewed the PROVE IT Act, then-ranking member Shelly Moore Capito (R-WVA) reminded colleagues of the IRA methane tax maneuver. She devised a simple way to test whether the Act is a carbon tax Trojan Horse. Ask supporters to amend the bill by adding a point of order that effectively requires a 60-vote supermajority in future budget reconciliations to enact taxes informed by PROVE IT Act data.

Her amendment lost on a strict party-line vote. Then-Chairman Tom Carper (D-DE) explained why he could not support it. The 60-vote threshold “prohibits any revenue measure based on the greenhouse gas emissions associated with commodities or products.”

So, there you have it. No EPW member disputed Capito’s IRA history lesson, and Carper revealed Democrats’ desire to use the PROVE IT Act as a carbon tax enabler. Cramer nonetheless voted for the unamended version and now endeavors to jumpstart its implementation via report language accompanying an unrelated bill.

Not MAGA

Supporters now contend the PROVE IT Act is America First—a policy Trump can use to fight back against unfair trade practices by the EU and China. They claim the Act would enable DOE to demonstrate that U.S. products are “cleaner” than the EU’s.

Even if carbon dioxide emissions were “dirty” (they are not), and even if process emissions literally embed in products (they do not), the alleged MAGA rationale for creating a U.S. border tax system fails for three main reasons.

First, although U.S. steel, aluminum, and cement may now have lower average process emission intensities than those of foreign producers, it would be unwise to bet on a permanent U.S. “carbon advantage.” After all, Trump administration policy aims at U.S. hydrocarbon energy dominance, while EU policy aims at net zero, and China is outpacing the U.S. in building non-emitting nuclear power.

Second, quibbling over carbon metrics is not what’s required to counter anti-U.S. climate-themed protectionism. President Trump takes a more muscular approach.

Consider Trump’s response to the International Maritime Organization’s Net-Zero Framework. The NZF functionally resembles a CBAM. Ships must reduce their annual greenhouse gas fuel intensity (GFI). If a ship emits above its GFI target, it must pay a “contribution” (i.e., a tax) into the IMO “Net-Zero Fund.” Under a PROVE IT Act-style approach, the Trump administration would have implemented a “well-to-wake” database to check the IMO’s fuel intensity estimates for U.S. and foreign vessels.

Instead, the administration rallied a coalition of countries against the NZF. Secretary of State Rubio, Energy Secretary Wright, and Transportation Secretary Duffy warned foreign ministries that ships from countries supporting the tax could be hit with additional fees or commercial penalties, or even denied U.S. port access. Feeling the heat, the IMO put NZF implementation on hold for one year. Secretary Rubio vowed to be back with a bigger coalition if the IMO does not relent.

That is MAGA. You don’t waste time debating the IMO’s carbon tax math, you reject the legitimacy of a global maritime carbon tax and take action to upend it.   

Which brings us to the third and most important reason a policy like the PROVE IT Act is not MAGA. It would inject the EU’s carbon footprints fixation into U.S. economic and trade policy. Making carbon intensity a touchstone of trade dispute resolution would shape domestic capital investments and corporate governance. It would divert productive resources into carbon accounting, reporting, and compliance. It would pump new life into the climate industrial policy agenda from which Trump and the GOP-led Congress are emancipating America.

The glorious rollbacks include: Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and UN Framework Convention, Trump and Congress’s repeal of the Biden EPA waivers authorizing California’s gas-car ban, EPA’s repeal of the 2009 Endangerment Finding (the mother of all Clean Air Act climate policy regulations), Trump and Congress’s repeal of the Biden EPA rule implementing the IRA methane tax, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s repeal or reduction of numerous IRA green subsidies, the Interior Department’s acceleration of oil and gas lease sales, and the Security and Exchange Commission’s abandonment of its 2024 rule to decapitalize U.S. fossil-intensive industries.

Read the full article at Real Clear Energy.