Of course the Obama administration wants us to pay more for our goods during a recession. That makes a whole lot of sense and though this may sound like it would be a boon for our manufacturers, raw material prices would also go up:

To address the serious threat of global warming, Americans should be required to “pay” for the carbon content of goods they consume from countries around the world, a top U.S. official said on Friday.
“It’s important that those who consume the products being made all around the world to the benefit of America — and it’s our own consumption activity that’s causing the emission of greenhouse gases, then quite frankly Americans need to pay for that,” Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.

By corollary, shouldn’t the countries that buy our goods pay for our carbon emissions? Why isn’t Congress adding that to their bill? (Yeah, I don’t see that happening, either 🙂

The bill also contains “carbon tariffs” that would allow the United States to slap duties on imports of carbon-intensive goods such as steel, cement, paper and glass from countries that have not taken steps to reduce their own emissions.
Locke said Chinese officials raised concern about those provisions this week.
“They feel in essence it’s a tax on their carbon activity,” he said.

This could be a very powerful bargaining chip, but I’m not sure our economy is strong enough for making threats especially against the Chinese who hold so much of our debt. I bet for that reason, we won’t be slapping a tariff on their goods. It would be very easy for them to tighten the noose and force us to drop it.
BTW, check out the link because there appears to be some backpedaling already.
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