Green protectionist folly

Under environmental disguises, industry and labor unions are running parallel campaigns with environmentalists seeking to roll back free trade.  For years, ''green'' groups have been pushing for environmental trade restrictions in developed countries such as the United States.  Carbon tariffs, forestry import bans and certification requirements on the origin of products have become regular fixtures of environmentalists' demands.

Now their cause is being adopted increasingly by labor unions, which have found environmentalism a back door for protecting their members' jobs from competition, and by industry, which has found them a way to cut import competition to help make a buck.

A regular player is the Blue Green Alliance:  a collusion of labor unions -- from steelworkers to service-sector employees -- and green groups such as the Sierra Club.  They're pushing for government support to create ''green'' jobs by stopping forestry imports.  They're also becoming particularly activist.  This week, Blue Green launched a 17-state tour from California, arguing ''The Job's Not Done'' to push for the greater adoption of renewable-products and climate-change legislation.  But the snag is that the groups also want carbon tariffs introduced.

Regardless of progress with government, green groups are pushing their agenda down the business supply chain.  They pushed the office-supply retailer Staples to introduce a ''sustainable paper'' procurement policy that highlights the campaigns of the World Wildlife Fund and the Rainforest Alliance and sets tight restrictions on where paper products can be sourced and on certification requirements.  Office Max has signed on as a member of green groups such as Greenpeace and the Rainforest Alliance and also requires certification of its paper products.

Not that industry's hands are clean.

Despite protests on the impact of imports from China on its industry, the paper giant Kimberly-Clark ''has announced that they will expand their manufacturing facilities in China,'' according to a briefing paper from the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute, ''No Paper Tiger''.  Yet in Australia, Kimberly-Clark's subsidiary KCA has taken the Australian government to court to force the introduction of green-trade restrictions on imports from Indonesia and China.

They're trying to have it both ways.

There is a reason to believe the greens, labor unions and industry converted to the green cause are starting to get the ears of lawmakers.  In 2008, campaigns to amend the Lacey Act, requiring obligations on importers to identify the source of wood products, succeeded.  Since then, the Obama administration has shown sympathy for going further.

Now the Australian equivalents are working in tandem to replicate U.S. groups' Lacey Act success through the Labor government.  Before the last federal election, the forestry union donated $25,000 to the Labor Party around the same time the party committed to ''greater policing and enforcement of an effective national ban on the sale of illegally logged timber imports.''

The Labor government is seeking re-election, and the minister for forestry, Tony Burke, announced this week that he would implement trade bans and heavy regulation on timber imports if re-elected.  Following his announcement, industry, unions and green groups all rushed in with applause and called for the minority Liberal Party to announce the same commitment.

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Free trade infected by ''green protectionism''

Unions and industry that want to roll back the progress of free trade increasingly are using environmental causes as a disguise.

For years Australian green groups have claimed mass deforestation and illegal logging is occurring in Asia.  In response, Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund have advocated for burdensome regulation and trade bans, including on toilet paper.

Seeing a market opportunity, the toilet paper industry and unions have started voicing similar concerns and solutions.  And there's no surprise why.  An Australian Customs Service report calculated that the potential downward pressure of imports could be as high as 42 percent of the price.

But the evidence supporting the need for trade restrictions is weak.  A recent report commissioned by the Australian government identified the insignificance of the problem, with imports from Asia incorporating 0.32 percent of illegally logged material.

Despite that fact, industry and unions now are running campaigns of their own.  The forestry union was a significant financial contributor to the ''Wake Up Woolworths'' campaign to pressure the major Australian supermarket chain Woolworths to stop using imported toilet tissue.

But digging deeper reveals that they actually were pushing for consumers to buy ''Australian-made paper products ... [so] thousands of Australian workers [are] paid properly ... [and] more of your money stays in Australia.''

Both unions and industry have a history of working with green groups at the expense of consumers.  Major toilet-tissue product manufacturers KCA and SCA are members of the World Wildlife Fund's Global Forest and Trade Network.  And SCA has reportedly paid £10 million to WWF to use its logo on their products.

Similarly, the Forestry Union previously has worked with the World Wildlife Fund on climate-change policies.

Sadly these campaigns appear to be part of a spreading green protectionist disease, where industry, unions and green groups work together.  In the United States the disease was brought to life by the Lacey Act, which imposes extra regulation on imported wood and wood products to certify their origin and make them less competitive.

Hopefully the green protectionist disease won't spread further.

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