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ACC PM 04/07/18
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Scott Pruitt Denies Telling Trump to Fire His 'Friend' Jeff Sessions So He Could Become Attorney General
Jul 4, 2018 | Newsweek
By Harriet Sinclair
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has denied a report that he asked President Donald Trump to get rid of Attorney General Jeff Sessions so he could take over his job. -
In Tariff Fight With Trump, China Pulls Plan to Strike First
Jul 4, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal
By Lingling Wei
As the U.S. and China gear up to slap each other with tariffs, an unexpected question is confounding the Chinese leadership: Who gets to strike first? -
UK Must Follow EU FCM Legislation After Brexit, Says Trade Group
Jul 4, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
EU regulations on food contact materials must be enshrined into UK law, to ensure the British public has the same level of protection after Brexit, according to trade group, the Foodservice Packaging Association. -
Justice Kennedy's Replacement Could Help Gut Or Narrow Carbon Rules
Jul 4, 2018 | Forbes
By Ken Silverstein
The United States is celebrating its 241st birthday today.
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Jul 4, 2018 | Newsweek
By Harriet Sinclair
http://www.newsweek.com/scott-pruitt-denies-telling-trump-fire-his-friend-jeff-sessions-so-he-could-1007953
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In Tariff Fight With Trump, China Pulls Plan to Strike First
Jul 4, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal
By Lingling Wei
As the U.S. and China gear up to slap each other with tariffs, an unexpected question is confounding the Chinese leadership: Who gets to strike first?
In response to the Trump administration’s plan to impose tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese products starting at 12:01 a.m. Friday in Washington, China pledged to retaliate with levies of the same value at the same time. Because Beijing is 12 time zones ahead of the U.S. East Coast, China planned to put its tariffs into effect 12 hours before the U.S.’s hit, 12:01 a.m. in Beijing on Friday and noon Thursday in Washington, according to people familiar with the matter.
The arrangement, a Chinese official said Wednesday, reflected Beijing’s determination to start its tariffs on July 6, the same date set by the U.S. for its tariffs. “It’s the U.S. that started all this,” the official said. “China is fully prepared.”
Later Wednesday Beijing’s plan shifted. Wary of being seen as provoking the battle, the State Council, China’s cabinet, issued a statement saying “China absolutely won’t fire the first shot” and won’t impose tariffs before the U.S. does.
That means Beijing would actually implement its tariffs from midday Friday in China—an unusual practice for Chinese customs, which generally assess levies on a full-day basis, Chinese officials said.
Moving ahead of Washington to impose tariffs would have entailed risks for Beijing, analysts said, making it harder for both sides to resume negotiations stalemated for the past month. A first strike would go against the Chinese leadership’s public position that China doesn’t want a trade war with the U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to levy duties on an additional $400 billion in Chinese products if Beijing retaliates for his first batch of tariffs.
A Chinese head start “would not be moving hearts and minds on both sides toward the positive direction of de-escalation,” said Timothy P. Stratford, a Beijing-based lawyer at Covington & Burling LLP.
Hardest hit in the early rounds of the trade fight are likely to be, on the U.S. side, makers of sport-utility vehicles and farmers of soybeans and other cash crops, and, on the Chinese side, exports of auto parts and medical instruments.
The looming trade battle between the world’s two largest economies has rattled global markets, businesses and investors. China’s tightly controlled yuan has fallen sharply since the start of last month, fueling fears that Beijing potentially will resort to currency devaluation to fight back at Washington. China’s top central banker Yi Gang, early this week pledged to keep the yuan stable.
Both sides called a brief truce in May after several rounds of talks. President Trump then stepped up the trade offensive to reduce a trade imbalance that was $375 billion in China’s favor last year and to punish Beijing for what the U.S. says are pressure tactics on American firms to transfer technology to Chinese companies. So far, no high-level trade negotiations have been planned by both governments, officials on both sides said.
The Trump administration plans to roll out tariffs of 25% on $50 billion of Chinese products in two steps. The first round, on $34 billion of goods representing sectors including aerospace and information technology as well as auto parts and medical instruments, is scheduled to take effect on July 6. Another round, on $16 billion of Chinese goods such as machinery and plastics, will get industry comment at a public hearing on July 24, with tariffs to be imposed some time after that.
Beijing is retaliating by targeting high-value American exports, including farm products, cars and crude oil, and is imposing its tariffs the same way as Washington is doing. On Friday, China will levy duties on $34 billion of U.S. products ranging from soybeans, beef, pork, chicken and seafood to sport-utility vehicles and electric vehicles.
China too has plans for a second batch of tariffs on an additional $16 billion of U.S. goods, though the start date for levies on those products, including chemicals, coal, crude oil and medical devices, hasn’t been announced.
The farm goods were chosen to hit U.S. states that supported Mr. Trump, according to people with knowledge of Beijing’s plan. Such tactics have upset U.S. officials, who said targeting American farmers was an ill-willed attempt by the Chinese government.
Economists at UBS Group AG said the first round of tariffs likely will have a limited impact on China’s $11 trillion economy. If the conflict escalates to include $200 billion of Chinese exports and global trade slows, they estimate that would shave 0.5 percentage point from China’s GDP growth, which last year was 6.9%.
“The risk of further escalation has increased,” said Wang Tao, UBS’s chief China economist.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-pulls-plan-to-impose-tariffs-on-u-s-goods-first-1530712586?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1
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UK Must Follow EU FCM Legislation After Brexit, Says Trade Group
Jul 4, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
EU regulations on food contact materials must be enshrined into UK law, to ensure the British public has the same level of protection after Brexit, according to trade group, the Foodservice Packaging Association.
The FPA has lobbied the Food Standards Agency to ensure that UK laws continue to align with EU regulations in future.
Regulatory consistency is "critical" as many of the association’s members sell their products in the EU, FPA executive director Martin Kersh told Chemical Watch.
His comments come amid debate over the regulation of non-harmonised FCMs after the UK leaves the EU next year.
The overarching piece of FCM legislation is the 2004 EU framework Regulation, but only a few types of FCMs are harmonised, such as plastic and ceramics. This will become part of UK law via the EU Withdrawal Bill, which will transpose directly applicable pieces of EU legislation.
But most FCMs such as printing inks, adhesives, rubbers, paper and cardboard, silicones, varnishes and coatings, are non-harmonised, meaning member states can introduce national measures alongside EU rules. ‘Legal vacuum’
In an article for the Global Business Briefing, Jones Day associate, Ales Bartl wrote that after Brexit the UK will become "a legal vacuum for non-harmonised FCMs", which will cease to be covered by the non-recognition principle.
This principle means that FCMs consisting of non-harmonised materials can move freely in the EU if they comply with the national laws of the member state where they were first placed on the market.
As this principle will no longer apply, Mr Bartl suggests the UK could "adopt new legislation going beyond the EU minimum requirements and that might seek to improve the protection of health and the environment (or domestic producers), or boost innovation."
But FPA’s Mr Kersh, said the association would be "concerned" if the UK were to introduce regulations that go beyond the EU "for the sake of flexing some independence without evidence that such actions are required and in the public interest."
It has "full trust" in the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa) and would be "opposed to any changes made on the basis of political gain rather than scientific evidence", he said.UK ‘not proactive’
Michael Warhurst of the UK NGO CHEM Trust told Chemical Watch it was unlikely the UK would seek stricter regulation of non-harmonised FCMs because its "track record is not proactive".
Other members states have already brought in regulations on them, such as Germany on paper and Belgiumand the Netherlands on coatings, but the UK has not taken action, he said.
It was likely that the EU would "move first" to harmonise FCM regulation, Mr Warhurst said.
The European Commission has been under pressure from industry groups and NGOs to do this. Last year, it carried out a consultation on its roadmap for evaluating FCM legislation.
"FCM is a mess at the European level. I don’t have much confidence that the UK would do anything more," Mr Warhurst said.
An FSA spokesperson said there are not any plans to amend the legislation.
"We would apply a rigorous risk assessment to any potential change in the rules, with our absolute priority being to protect public health and consumers’ other interests in relation to food," they said.
https://chemicalwatch.com/68227/uk-must-follow-eu-fcm-legislation-after-brexit-says-trade-group
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Justice Kennedy's Replacement Could Help Gut Or Narrow Carbon Rules
Jul 4, 2018 | Forbes
By Ken Silverstein
The United States is celebrating its 241st birthday today. But it may be honoring its 114th U.S. Supreme Court justice in a few months.
Donald Trump will present on Monday someone to fill the seat of retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, who had often been the deciding vote in environmental cases brought before the court. Given the president’s philosophical leanings, however, his nominee will probably side more with industry's positions.
Federal regulations that are challenged in court make their way to the U.S. Supreme Court by way of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which has progressive tendencies and which often rules in favor of environmental concerns. The High Court has over the last decade or so preserved those decisions.
But key cases are now up for grabs that include the 2007 ruling to allow CO2 to be considered a pollutant regulated under the Clean Air Act — one that was narrowly upheld twice by the U.S. Supreme Court. And then there’s the CO2-cutting Clean Power Plan that a bare majority of the justices sent back to the D.C. Court of Appeals for it to reconsider.
The broader questions now for both the current justices as well as Kennedy’s replacement are whether the court would uphold “established precedent” — referring to those cases that have been thoroughly hashed out by previous courts and whether they will honor the so-called Chevron Doctrine. That gives deference to the expertise to the regulating agencies.
“Without Kennedy on the court, the outcome is more likely to strike the balance in favor of industry rather than protection of the environment,” James Van Nostrand, energy and environmental law professor at West Virginia University told this writer. “Kennedy was pretty strong on the environment and a Trump appointee most certainly will see a weaker role for the federal government with respect to environmental protection.”
The professor agrees that the regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act — Massachusetts versus the Environmental Protection Agency — is ripe for a few appeals, saying that any replacement may have a “narrower interpretation” of the law. Ditto for the Clean Power Plan, he adds, noting that a more restricted understanding of the law does not mean an outright reversal of the precedent.
Flexing Muscles
At the same time, the High Court could generally rule that environmental concerns are best decided by the individual states and not at the federal level. Such federalism is exactly what EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has been pushing for. Critics of such thinking not only say that environmental laws need to be uniform — pollution knows no boundaries — but that the states are controlled economically by the industries domiciled there.
A lot is at stake. Consider the Chevron Doctrine and whether the reading of that would allow the EPA to regulate CO2 as a harmful emission: In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that CO2 is a pollutant that could be regulated under the Clean Air Act. EPA made it official in 2009, saying that CO2 was a danger to public health and welfare. And in 2014, the high court upheld that so-called endangerment finding.
The endangerment finding is also the foundation behind President Obama's Clean Power Plan. That proposed regulation is now in a lower federal court and it would require 32% cuts in CO2 by 2030 from a 2005 baseline. Already, the nation is 18% of the way there because of the coal-to-natural gas transition, says the Energy Information Administration.
How would a U.S. Supreme Court nominee feel about the Chevron Doctrine? And as far as the Clean Power Plan goes, would a court ruling either tossing it or limiting it really be able to repel market powers?
Kenneth Reich, an environmental and energy lawyer in Boston, says that the Chevron Doctrine is vital for statutes that require a precise expertise—knowledge that the judges cannot possibly have. However, “Before the announcement that Justice Kennedy was stepping down, there was already speculation about the potential demise of the Chevron Doctrine, the Supreme Court rule that an agency’s interpretation of its organic statutes is entitled to deference.
"Justices Gorsuch, Thomas, Roberts and Alito are already on record as critical of this rule," he told this reporter. "And in his last opinion on the bench, Justice Kennedy also criticized the rule. Because the Chevron Doctrine is a hot button issue for the Trump Administration and the Republican majority in Congress, the next appointee to the Supreme Court is very likely to have views similar to those of Justice Kennedy on the rule, which would give the Court a majority to overturn the Chevron Doctrine in the right case.”
The answer to the latter question is that carbon emissions in this country have dropped from 6.13 billion metric tons in 2007 to 5.35 billion metric tons in the last year or so because natural gas is replacing coal-fired generation; it is abundant, inexpensive and pollutes a lot less — and the Sierra Club is reporting 250 coal plants have retired or will do so. At the same time, renewable energy prices are falling and it is gaining increasing share of the electricity market as a result.
Indelible Footprint
Industry is leading the way and it has more market powers than do U.S. Supreme Court justices: Alcoa, American Express, Apple, AT&T, Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Best Buy, BioGen, Cargill, CA Technologies and Coca Cola have all signed pledges to reduce their carbon footprints. Meanwhile, cities and states are helping to accelerate the trend by implementing such things as building efficiency codes and renewable portfolio standards.
The lack of federal leadership, however, could allow some heavy polluters to drag their feet or to provide cover for other businesses that don’t think investments in modern pollution controls will have quick payback.
“The courts are meant to level the playing field where a local community group can stand up to a powerful oil company that poisons its waterways, where individuals can defend their right to free speech, where women can battle to protect their access to reproductive health services, and where people can band together against corporate wrongdoing,” Earthjustice President Trip Van Noppen said. “Trump intends to fill this Supreme Court vacancy with someone who will put corporations, the wealthy, and the powerful above the rest of us.”
Justice Kennedy’s replacement will assuredly be a more conservative arbiter than he has been at least as it relates to environmental issues. But that does not mean that either the new judge or the balance of the court would be willing to upend existing laws or ignore the Chevron Doctrine. Choosing that legal path, though, would leave an indelible footprint on environmental law.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2018/07/04/justice-kennedys-replacement-could-help-gut-or-narrow-carbon-rules/#7022485d55dc
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