U.S. Chamber's Donohue Shrugs Off Defections

Faced with dissent over the Chamber of Commerce's energy stance, its chief talks about pushing back on the Obama agenda

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been under fire in recent weeks, as five companies—the most prominent among them tech maven Apple (AAPL)—have resigned or reduced their roles at the organization to protest its staunch opposition to current legislative and regulatory proposals aimed at reining in global warming. But Thomas J. Donohue, the Chamber's combative, long-time president and CEO isn't backing down. He says the resignations are insignificant and argues that the majority of the Chamber's members back its hard-line stance on climate solutions.

BusinessWeek Washington Bureau Chief Jane Sasseen spoke with Donohue about the controversy, the Chamber's growing opposition to key parts of the Democratic agenda, and the risks to the Chamber's broader role as the voice of business in Washington. Here is an edited version of their conversation.

BW: You have vehemently fought the legislation now in Congress that would set up a "cap-and-trade" system to cut back greenhouse-gas emissions. Just to be clear: You say you want legislation, but not this particular legislation. Are you opposed to cap-and-trade, per se?

Donohue: Not per se—there are cap-and-trade systems that would work and I would be happy to listen to them. I am very concerned about this legislation, in terms of three or four parts of it. We'd like to see a bill that's more workable, more immediate, and more beneficial to our economy at a time that we're in a very serious recession.

For the longest period of time, we have supported every proposal for legislation and regulation which would make it more feasible and more possible and more economic to do all the alternate fuels businesses. We've been there, we've supported it. Now, we have a problem—there are at least a hundred alternate fuels projects, not to mention all the nuclear power things we ought to be doing—that others are holding up. But whether it's environmentalists, whether it's labor unions, we are ready to do them.

But do you object to the basic principle of putting a price on carbon and controlling emissions by making them more expensive, whether that is done through a cap-and-trade program or other methods?

Or even a carbon tax might be worth looking into if the money were put into building America's infrastructure. But I don't think we could get that done.

And not I'm saying that's what we should do; it's what some people are suggesting. But I'm not opposed to dealing with the matter. I am opposed to the current bill.

[Editor's note: The Chamber has also been criticized for challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's plans to regulate carbon; the agency contends that it has the authority to do so under the Clean Air Act because such emissions endanger the public's health. The Chamber has called for public hearings to examine the EPA's plans and its right to regulate in this area.]

Let me explain why we did that. The first reason is the endangerment business was never put together to deal with a finding on C02. It was put together to deal with specific pollutants—asbestos and other things—for which an endangerment finding would be more narrow and more easily corrected.

If you were to have an endangerment finding on C02—in our opinion, and we could be wrong—we believe the EPA would then be in a position to regulate, control, limit, and constrict every construction and reconstruction project of any size throughout this country, and with a bureaucracy the size of the national military. So we're saying if this is something that is being threatened, as a way to push towards a federal bill, then we ought to sit down and have a conversation and say "What data and what arguments would [the EPA] bring to make that finding?" And could we see the numbers so that perhaps we could participate in that discussion? And I don't expect they are going to let us do that.

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