Shipping this subsidized coal to Asian countries to help them power their factories, which undercut American manufacturers, makes little sense. Yes, this coal will help those countries produce cheap consumer goods for sale in stores across the United States. But it will also promote the continued transfer of industrial work to Asia, especially if the Trans-Pacific Partnership goes through. Is that good for American workers?

The coal is extracted from federal lands so cheaply that taxpayers should be outraged. A 2012 study by the nonprofit Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis concluded that the government’s failure to obtain fair market value for coal mined in the Powder River Basin had deprived taxpayers of almost $1 billion annually over the past 30 years. Last year, the Interior Department’s inspector general similarly reported that the agency was failing to collect sufficient lease payments. And last week, the Government Accountability Office concluded that the coal leasing program run by the Bureau of Land Management operates without sufficient oversight to ensure that fair lease prices are being paid and does not fully account for export sales in evaluating these fees.

“Taxpayers are likely losing out so that coal companies can reap a windfall and export that coal overseas, where it is burned, worsening climate change,” said Senator Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, who requested the study.

When coal companies can strip mine Western coal for less than $10 a ton and sell it in Asia for nearly 10 times as much, lucrative profits can be banked all along the global supply chain. No wonder the Australian coal company Ambre Energy is planning to build two coal terminals on the Columbia River. In all, those terminals and the one proposed for Cherry Point could ship 100 million metric tons of coal to Asia annually.

Asian nations hungry for energy have much looser pollution regulations and will pay dearly for coal, despite its noxious impacts on health and the environment. The health impact of coal emissions has recently become obvious in China, where this pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in 2010, according to the Global Burden of Disease study, published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.