The chamber has been under pressure from some of its members to relax its adamant opposition to climate change legislation. But outsiders' reactions to the letter ranged from cautious to hostile. On the Natural Resources Defense Counsel blog Switchboard, the group's Climate Campaign Director,  Pete Altman, said the group "welcome[d] the US Chamber's desire to sound more constructive," but that "reading in between the lines - and reading the lines themselves - raises big questions about how much the Chamber's objectives have really changed - setting aside their obvious need to strike a more conciliatory tone."

And the free-market oriented Competitive Enterprise Institute put out a press release headlined "U.S. Chamber Caves to Special Interests on Energy-Rationing Legislation" which called on "small businesses to drop their Chamber membership and join CEI in fighting this catastrophic legislation."