Category: Uncategorized

Redefining the Military’s Role in Wildfire Suppression

Posted on by Max Sherrill

Executive Summary

Wildfires are becoming more widespread, frequent, and destructive due to climate change and historical malpractices in forest management. As civil agencies become overwhelmed, U.S. firefighting efforts have become more dependent on military resources. Between 2017 and 2021, the National Guard’s man-hours spent fighting wildfires grew more than tenfold; wildfire costs ballooned to almost $82 billion over the same period.

The armed forces field unique capabilities that can benefit firefighting efforts, particularly the ability to rapidly deploy large forces to remote locations. However, overrelying on the military to combat wildfires could impair its capacity to ensure U.S. national security. If the current model of double-tasking military units persists, the country would be unable to mount an adequate response if faced with both a high-intensity conflict and a severe wildfire season. Therefore, given the armed forces’ increasing commitments abroad and the expanding threat of wildfires to the homeland, other government agencies and private contractors should shoulder the growing burden of fire suppression and implement more efficient fire practices so that military units can remain dedicated to their core missions.

Read the full report.

Lewis for Jacksonville Journal Courier: Federal boondoggles threaten our privacy

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Lindsay Mark Lewis

With cyberattacks on the rise, our data privacy has never been in greater peril.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s work helping keep that information safe has been welcome, including his recent call for Meta to step up efforts to thwart hackers. Unfortunately, even with the best intentions, protections can go too far. And now we need his leadership to set things straight.

Keep reading in the Jacksonville Journal Courier.

Manno for Philanthropy Daily: Apprenticeships: A Donor’s Guide to Creating New Pathways to Opportunity

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Bruno Manno

As schools and universities grapple with preparing young Americans for the world of work, American employers struggle to find enough workers to fill jobs they have available. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in May 2024 the U.S. labor market had 8.5 million job openings and 6.5 million unemployed people, which is about 1.3 jobs for every unemployed person.

A great deal of ink has been spilled and dollars spent trying to bridge this disconnect between worker supply and demand. Much of that effort assumes that the traditional pipeline from high school to a two- or four-year college to the workforce or some variation on this approach is the only, or best, way forward. But many Americans, including employers and young people, are questioning whether a college degree is the best pathway to a good job and adult success.

They want other education and training pathways that prepare individuals for employment and adult success. These new avenues include apprenticeships, which typically integrate paid, on-the-job training with formal classroom instruction. These “learn and earn” pathways offer an alternative to the traditional college campus experience by creating a school and workplace campus experience.

These new apprenticeship pathways are just beginning to take shape. Early returns are very promising. This means it is an area ripe for philanthropic impact. Individual donors and foundations wanting to create more pathways to opportunity for individuals in their communities should consider funding apprenticeship programs. In doing so, they foster opportunity pluralism.

Keep reading in Philanthropy Daily.

Trade Fact of the Week: ILO: $236 billion in worldwide profits from forced labor, three-quarters of it from forced sex work.

Posted on by Max Sherrill

FACT: ILO: $236 billion in worldwide profits from forced labor, three-quarters of it from forced sex work.

THE NUMBERS: ILO estimates of forced labor worldwide, 2021 – 
Total: 27.6 million
Sex work 6.3 million
“Industry”* 6.3 million
Services 5.5 million
Governments: 3.9 million
Agriculture 2.1 million
Domestic service 1.4 million
Other: 1.9 million

* Includes construction, manufacturing, mining and quarrying, and utilities.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

From the International Labour Organization, two reports describe the shadow-world economy of forced labor:

The first Global Estimates of Modern Slavery Forced Labour and Forced Marriage, released in 2022, develops a human picture by estimating the scale of forced labor in the world, describing the various forms it can take, and providing details by industry, age, gender, and other characteristics. The core number: in 2021, 27.6 million of the world’s 3.4 billion workers — 0.8%, just under one in a hundred — were in various forms of “forced labour,” defined as “work that is both involuntary and under penalty or menace of a penalty (coercion)”.  The most common form, representing 36% of the 27.6 million workers — 9.9 million people — involves workers trapped in jobs by withholding pay.  Others include debt bondage, threat of violence by criminal gangs (often in sex work), and in 1% of cases chattel slavery.

By industry, the ILO estimates 3.9 million people in state-driven forced labor programs, and 6.3 million in forced sex work, including 4.9 million women and girls and 1.4 million men and boys (or, alternatively, 4.6 million adults and 1.7 million children).  Another 6.3 million are in private-sector “industrial” work; 5.5 million in services; 2.1 million in agriculture; 1.4 million in domestic service such as maid and nanny work; and 1.9 million in other fields. By region, 55% of the total — 15.1 million people — were in Asia/Pacific countries, a figure slightly below Asia’s 59% share of the world workforce; the highest forced labor rate, proportional to workforce, was in the Middle East, and the lowest in sub-Saharan Africa. ILO also finds cross-border migrant workers at especially high risk, making make up 15% of the 27.6 million — 4.1 million people — but only 5% of the total world workforce. The report does not speculate on how much-forced labor goods production enters international trade flows. It notes, though, that forced labor rates appear “highest in severity and scale” in “informal micro- and small enterprises operating at the lower links of supply chains in high-risk sectors and locations,” and that with respect to trade destined for wealthier countries, forced labor is likely most common in “raw materials production in the lower tiers of supply chains of consumer goods.”

The second report, “Profits and Poverty: The Economics of Forced Labour,” came out this past March and adds financial numbers.  Two large ones stand out:

1. A quarter trillion dollars in profits: According to this report, forced labor enterprises generated $236 billion in profits worldwide.  To put this in perspective, the IMF estimates the world’s 2021 GDP at $97 trillion, and McKinsey consultants have guessed that corporate profits in general have been about 8% to 10% of world GDP over the last decade.  With the caution that GDP estimates in general are blurry and estimates of the size of criminal enterprises especially so, these figures suggest that forced-labor profits amount to about 2% of about $10 trillion in total business profits, and about 0.2% of world GDP. Looked at from a different angle, in 2021 the world’s most profitable company (Saudi Aramco), reported $110 billion in profit.

2. Three-quarters of forced-labor profit comes from forced sex work: The ILO believes about $173 billion of this $236 billion in profit — essentially three-quarters of the total — comes from forced sex work.  (Again, the 6.3 million people in forced sex work are about a quarter of the world’s forced labor victims.) The remaining $64 billion includes $35 billion from industry, $20.9 billion from services, $5 billion from agriculture, and $2 billion from domestic service. The report also provides a ‘profit per victim’ range, illustrating the especially high profits drawn from victims of forced sex work: $27,252 for forced sex work, $4,944 in industry, $3,407 in services, $2,113 in agriculture, and $1,570 from domestic service. ILO suggests that the very high extraction of profits from forced sex work reflects the fact that “in most cases people in forced commercial sexual exploitation are paid very little or nothing at all,” are particularly likely to be held in debt bondage, and typically have “limited or no access to justice.”

FURTHER READING

The ILO’s 2022 look at the human world of forced labor (as of 2021), with totals by region, industry, and explanations of different varieties of abuse.

And follows up this March with an investigation of profits.

Policy:

The ILO reports illustrate a world.  How might governments and observers respond?  With many different varieties of forced labor, responses vary but include a mix of police work and courts, media and public exposure, diplomacy, Customs enforcement, and other options. Two contemporary cases — the eradication of government-sponsored forced labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry over the 2010s, and the Biden administration’s more recent work to eliminate forced labor from Malaysian rubber-glove production, offer some insights on successful approaches.

Uzbek cotton:

Put briefly, Uzbekistan’s cotton industry is a large part of the national economy, accounting for about 20% of Uzbekistan’s export earnings.  For the first 25 years of its post-Soviet history, the Uzbek government required residents of cotton-growing districts to participate in autumn cotton harvesting. As such, it was a state-led forced labor program rather than a collection of small-scale private enterprises the ILO report suggests account for most world forced labor. Over the 2010s, a combination of international pressure and internal reform led the Uzbek government to abolish this system and convert cotton harvesting to paid work. Core factors in this reform include:

(a) A fifteen-year international activist effort through the “Cotton Campaign” involving businesses, labor unions, and human rights groups, to bring attention to forced labor in the cotton industry and discourage purchases of Uzbekistan cotton.

(b) International government pressures, in the U.S. case including regular human rights reports published by the State and Labor Departments, and a “review,” entailing possible cancellation, of the tariff waivers Uzbekistan received through the Generalized System of Preferences.

(c) Contingent factors, in particular, the death in office of post-Soviet leader Islam Karimov and his replacement by a new leader, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, whose government hoped to repair the reputational damage associated with forced labor and put sustained effort, with ILO advice and monitoring, into reshaping the cotton industry.

A March 2022 ILO report announcing an end to “systemic forced labour and child labour” in Uzbek cotton harvesting.

The Cotton Campaign lifts its boycott of Uzbek cotton, March 2022.

And via the Uzbekistan Embassy in D.C., remarks from Tanila Narbaeva (Chair of National Commission on Combatting Human Trafficking and Forced Labor) on the abolition of forced labor and next steps in labor reform.

Rubber gloves:

A more recent Biden administration program — the  investigation of rubber gloves produced by six Malaysian companies from 2019 through 2021, and remediation afterward — addresses a situation closer to those the ILO reports are most common. The line workers in these glove factories are mostly migrants from other countries; U.S. Customs and Border Protection investigators in 2021 found credible evidence of unfree recruitment, debt bondage, confiscation of passports, and other abuses.  CBP accordingly prohibited imports from these companies and their subsidiaries through a “Withhold Release Order”. Following this, a program of consultation and reform, including through the Malaysian government, the ILO, and the companies, enabled CBP to find that many of the companies had remediated the conditions and reopen trade. A chronology:

The Department of Labor reviews Customs and Border Protection’s initial Withhold Release Order, July 2020 through September 2021.

CBP’s “Withhold Release Order” banning imports, November 2021.

ILO’s report on Malaysian rubber glove manufacturing and options.

… and an ILO progress report from 2023.

CBP reopens trade, April 2023.

And lists current “Withhold Release Orders”.

And two more general perspectives on U.S. policy:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection explains forced labor-product interdiction.

The Department of Labor’s International Labor Affairs Bureau on its child labor and forced labor programs.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

Read the full email and sign up for the Trade Fact of the Week.

Mandel for The International Economy: America’s Productivity Disappointment: The next president should adopt a two-pronged strategy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

By Michael Mandel

On an aggregate level, American labor productivity gains are stagnating at only 1.6 percent annually since 2019, though the United States is still significantly outperforming Europe and Japan. But U.S. policies to boost productivity and living standard gains must clearly differentiate between leading-edge sectors such as information and retail trade—which have consistently high productivity growth—and lagging sectors such as agriculture, construction, utilities, and manufacturing—which have very slow or negative productivity growth.

In particular, policymakers should adopt a two-pronged approach to productivity. Sectors such as agriculture (0.5 percent productivity growth since 2019), construction (-1.3 percent productivity growth), utilities (0.4 percent productivity growth), and manufacturing (-0.1 percent productivity growth ) have persistently pulled down overall productivity gains. These are also the sectors at the heart of the recent inflationary surge, with sharply rising prices for goods such as food, housing, and automobiles undercutting living standards. The weakness in domestic productivity growth in these sectors, especially manufacturing and agriculture, has also left the United States vulnerable to future supply chain shocks and further worsened the housing shortage.

Read more in The International Economy.

Credit card rewards points are a ‘lifeline’ to working families

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

At a time when working families are struggling with higher prices, a recent study from the Electronic Payments Coalition (EPC) highlights how credit card rewards can serve as a “lifeline” to working families. The report notes that earned rewards are equivalent to a 17-cents-a-gallon discount at the gas pump, and that cardholders with an annual income of less than $60,000 redeem rewards at rates consistent with upper-income cardholders.

Given EPC’s opposition to legislative efforts to effectively cap credit card fees, there is some potential inherent bias in the analysis. But at the same time, the results are noteworthy and suggest that policymakers should take a much closer look at whether or not extending price caps to credit card interchange fees would leave working families better or worse off.

You can out more about the EPC findings here.

Listen to a December 2023 episode on the New Liberal Podcast, “Are your points in danger?” featuring Brian Kelly, The Points Guy.

Ainsley for The Liberal Patriot: UK Labour’s Approach to the World

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

By Claire Ainsley

A resurgent UK Labour Party is looking like it may be heading back into government in Britain after voters go to the polls on July 4th. What would a change of governing party in Britain for the first time in fourteen years mean for foreign relations? And is Labour—and the center-left more generally—prepared to secure their nation’s interests in a new age of global instability?

If Labour leaders do form a government this year, they will do so in a dramatically changed world compared to when they last left office, in the end days of Gordon Brown’s premiership in 2010. The global financial crisis preceded a period of low economic growth, the rise of right-wing populism and authoritarian rulers, and a breakdown in the rules-based order that liberal democracy was founded on. Britain itself withdrew from the European Union, a construct that had seemed such a stable feature of increasing integration.

Today, we live in a more dangerous world than many Labour politicians will have known in their adult lifetimes.

Keep reading in The Liberal Patriot.

Federal Regulators Get Serious About Regional Transmission Planning With New FERC Orders

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recently finalized two rules for the country’s electricity grids that represent the most significant paradigm shift towards expansion in over a decade. Marking a renewed focus on long-neglected transmission policy, the rules fundamentally alter and begin to standardize the thicket of existing approaches to regional transmission planning by codifying principles of longevity, transparency, and engagement. FERC, the independent agency responsible for regulating interstate energy transmission and wholesale electricity markets, issued Orders 1920 and 1977 at a time of growing policymaker and consumer concern over the state of U.S. electricity infrastructure, which is managing a complex transition through the rise of more frequent extreme weather events, a shifting generation mix, and growing demand from end-use electrification, new manufacturing facilities, and data centers. Although more will be needed on the legislative front — particularly on permitting reform, something PPI has adamantly pushed for — FERC has made commendable progress on the planning side of transmission with these new rules.

The orders underscore the need for increased transmission capacity in our nation’s grid. As demand for electricity balloons, there is growing concern that the country’s transmission networks are hard-pressed to meet household and industry needs, and woefully underdeveloped to reach Biden’s electrification and clean generation goals in the next decade. Growing investment in clean energy generation across the United States faces a bottlenecked grid system caused in no small part by a convoluted set of planning processes. More broadly, the regulatory regime governing the electricity sector comprises an antiquated patchwork of utilities, commissions, and state and federal agencies, ill-suited to accommodate the rapid integration of new technologies or a coordinated, long-term approach to transmission planning.

The rules attempt to address these concerns by providing frameworks for a more collaborative and transparent regional approach to planning that encourages forward thinking and clears unnecessary siting holdups. Order 1920, which was approved 2-1 on a partisan basis with Democrat-appointed commissioners in the majority, contains a number of planning requirements, notably for transmission operators to produce scenario-based regional transmission plans with outlooks of at least 20 years, and to conduct this planning every five years using the best available data. The order also requires that operators determine how projects might achieve seven outlined economic and reliability benefits in the evaluation and selection of long-term regional transmission facilities, further ensuring that long-term transmission needs are considered and addressed cost-effectively. To encourage innovative approaches to transmission planning, Order 1920 obliges operators to consider grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) such as dynamic line ratings and advanced conductors, though without directly mandating their use — likely to avoid overreach, constitutional challenge, and to ensure these technologies are only deployed where doing so has explicit operational and financial advantages.

Another significant new policy included in the order is a requirement to identify opportunities for in-kind replacements of existing facilities to be “right-sized” and thus increase their capacity in a cost-effective manner. Incumbent utilities will be offered federal rights of first refusal (ROFRs) to develop these “right-sized” facilities to avoid the construction of redundant transmission projects. The cost allocation provisions of Order 1920 mandate six-month engagement periods with predefined Relevant State Entities along with plans for a default cost allocation method for selected long-term transmission facilities. They also encourage loosely defined state agreements between providers and Relevant State Entities for selected participants to determine how project costs will be shared among stakeholders. These provisions, in tandem with a mandated process inviting states and consumers to fund some or all of facilities that would otherwise not meet operators’ selection criteria, enable consumers to only pay for projects that benefit them and highlight a renewed emphasis on transparency and state involvement in transmission planning.

Order 1977, which was approved with unanimous consent, complements the new planning framework by adding a backstop measure to prevent proposed projects from fading into obscurity when states fail to act. Specifically, it establishes a process for FERC to exercise its limited authority over siting transmission lines in accordance with amendments to Sec. 216 of the Federal Power Act enacted via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The amendments clarified FERC’s authority to issue permits when state commissions have (i) not made siting determinations by one year following application submission or National Corridor designation, (ii) conditioned approval such that projects are no longer feasible or inadequately reduce capacity constraints, or (iii) denied an application. While affirming states’ primary role in the siting of transmission lines, the rule promotes timely review of siting applications and leaves room for FERC to preclude individual states from inhibiting projects that would be beneficial at the regional or national level.

The rule also introduces a Landowner Bill of Rights which ensures that landowners are notified of potential transmission line projects and permitted to intervene in open Commission proceedings, and codifies an Applicant Code of Conduct to facilitate good-faith engagement between applicants and landowners during the permitting process. To drive home the engagement imperative, transmission line applicants are further required to conduct outreach to environmental justice and Tribal communities. Mandated Environmental Justice Public Engagement Plans will be used to create Environmental Justice Resource Reports to identify impacted communities and detail the effects of projects, and similarly, Tribal Engagement Plans will feed into Tribal Engagement Resource Reports for the same purpose. These stakeholder engagement requirements will hopefully break the cycle of inadequate notification and litigation by residents and quicken project approval through a more proactive and transparent input process. But they must take into account a project’s broader dispersed benefits and avoid granting landowners and local communities an undue veto when entire regions stand to gain.

Taken together, the new rules lay down a much-needed groundwork for the future of transmission in the United States. They provide for a set of processes that bring together state, federal, and private entities to assess and develop long-term transmission projects to meet the needs of Americans in a more holistic and cost-sensitive way. Yet to a certain extent, these changes seem so obvious that many Americans might be surprised that such planning practices were not already in place. In reality, they represent only a fraction of the reforms needed to boost transmission development to the pace needed in order to restore reliability, meet growing demand, and enable the clean energy transition. These new planning mechanisms for enhanced project longevity and regional engagement are crucial in their own right, but as FERC Commissioner Allison Clements notes, more is needed than just the “raw ingredients” for states and transmission providers to build out the grid at a scale consistent with demand.

To keep this momentum, Congress needs to step in. There have been promising attempts at using legislation to speed up the environmental review and permitting process, but outside of the small changes included in the Fiscal Responsibility Act, Congress has not yet been able to hammer out an agreement on comprehensive permitting reform. With existing proposals such as the 2022 Manchin-Schumer deal and a range of transmission-specific bills including the SITE Act, FASTER Act, and SPEED and Reliability Act, there is ample opportunity to do so. And despite recent disagreements over a comprehensive permitting deal, the issue itself remains a bipartisan concern.

Without comprehensive permitting reform and steps to improve interregional planning on top of these regional transmission changes, these new FERC rules alone will not solve the transmission gridlock. Facilities connecting transmission regions are the most difficult type to plan, pay for, and permit under the current regime, despite their crucial role in limiting the impact of local extreme weather events and serving as the most important type of transmission line for connecting remote wind and solar resources to large cities and manufacturing hubs. Further executive and legislative action will be necessary to expedite energy projects like these, and while FERC has undoubtedly taken important steps toward optimizing the U.S. transmission infrastructure, building out a sufficient network will take leaps and bounds.

Bruno Manno Joins PPI to Lead the Newly Established What Works Lab

Posted on by Max Sherrill

Washington, D.C. — The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is pleased to announce the appointment of Bruno Manno as Senior Advisor. Manno will lead the newly established What Works Lab, a pioneering initiative dedicated to exploring and implementing innovative education pathways that promote economic and social mobility.

The What Works Lab will highlight and document evidence-based approaches to prepare individuals for a lifetime of opportunities. The Lab’s initial focus will encompass five key project topics: addressing challenges in education and workforce development, promoting opportunity pluralism, organizing pathways programs, bridging ideological divides through a governing agenda, and fostering responsible citizenship to nourish civil society.

“Through the years, Bruno Manno has been a friend, a mentor, and an invaluable partner for PPI’s work on modernizing America’s K-12 public schools and creating alternative career pathways for the majority of young Americans who do not have college degrees,” said Will Marshall, President of PPI. “That’s why we’re delighted to announce he’s joining PPI to head an exciting new project — the What Works Lab. The Lab’s mission is to identify and validate the most promising initiatives around the country for equipping young people with the skills and opportunities they need to thrive in today’s economy.”

Manno brings a wealth of knowledge to PPI, having served most recently as the Senior Advisor for the Education Program at the Walton Family Foundation. His work has consistently focused on helping children find unique paths to opportunity and purpose, aligning perfectly with the Lab’s mission to create diverse and effective educational pathways.

The What Works Lab will collaborate with other PPI initiatives, including the New Skills for a New Economy Project and the Reinventing America’s Schools Project. This cooperation will harness the collective expertise of PPI staff and senior fellows to address the multifaceted challenges facing the American workforce and education systems.

The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on Twitter.

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Media Contact: Tommy Kaelin – tkaelin@ppionline.org

Fixing Canada’s economic slump? There’s an app for that

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Michael Mandel

“You’ve seen those signs that say, ‘In emergency, break glass.’ Well, it’s time to break the glass,” warned Carolyn Rogers, senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, in a recent speech on Canada’s sluggish economic growth. Inflation, high costs of living, and insufficient growth rates continue to dominate Canada’s political narrative. Since 2019, Canada’s economy has grown by an intolerably slow rate of roughly 1.5 percent a year. That’s faster than European states like the United Kingdom and Germany, but much less than the United States.

Within the overall gloomy picture, Canada’s digital sector has been one of the few bright spots. Since 2019, the output of the information and communications technology sector has grown by 21 percent. Data processing was up by 52 percent, and computer systems design was up by 39 percent.

In particular, within Canada’s digital sector, mobile application development and support has turned out to be a vibrant source of growth. Apps are no longer just about playing games or scrolling through social networks. Instead, people are using apps to connect with their health-care providers, interact with their cars, and for banking and shopping. At the same time, mobile apps have become increasingly important to all sorts of businesses—apps to track trucks, to monitor energy systems and forestry operations. The Progressive Policy Institute has estimated there are 385,000 “App Economy” jobs in  Canada as of April 2024, up 47 percent since 2018.

Keep reading in The Hub.

How Early Notice Can Promote Smarter Regulation

Posted on by Max Sherrill

New PPI regulatory reform proposal inspires bipartisan legislation on Capitol Hill

 

Washington, D.C. — To promote transparency and accountability in federal rulemaking, U.S. agencies should be required to give the public and Congress early notice of their intent to create new regulations, so concludes Stronger Regulation from the Get-Go, a new report released today by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI).

“By providing early notice, regulatory agencies can benefit from public input and congressional oversight, which will lead to more defensible regulation,” says Keith B. Belton, the report’s author. Its core proposal has become the basis for H.R.8204, the Regulatory Early Notice and Engagement Act (RENEA), recently introduced in Congress by U.S. Representatives Don Davis (D-N.C.), Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.), and Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.).

“This legislation is about ensuring that federal agencies operate with full transparency and engage the public in the regulatory process from the outset,” said Congressman Don Davis. “By providing early notice of proposed regulations and inviting public input, we can make the regulatory process more inclusive and effective. I’m proud to introduce this bipartisan legislation which promotes good governance, strengthens public trust, and ensures that regulatory decisions are made in the best interest of the American people.”

Belton’s report suggests requiring federal agencies to explain the rationale for every newly initiated rulemaking activity and make this information available to Congress and the public through a regulatory early notice. This early notice would identify the problem to be addressed and invite public recommendations on achieving the rule’s objectives at the lowest cost. The bill puts Congress in an oversight role and codifies requirements from a 1993 Executive Order, issued by President Bill Clinton and affirmed by every president since, which outlines the philosophy behind federal regulation.

The early notice proposal builds on PPI’s previous work on regulatory accumulation and reform. In 2013, PPI called for the creation of a Regulatory Improvement Commission — a base-closing-style body that would compile a list of existing regulations that have outlived their usefulness and recommend their modification or rescission. Now, as Congress is considering new reforms for regulatory oversight and transparency, PPI is again proposing a bipartisan solution to streamline and improve the rulemaking process.

Read and download the report here.

The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on Twitter.

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Media Contact: Tommy Kaelin – tkaelin@ppionline.org

Jacoby for Liberal Europe Podcast: The Future of Ukraine

Posted on by Max Sherrill

In this episode of the Liberal Europe Podcast, Ricardo Silvestre (Movimento Liberal Social) welcomes Tamar Jacoby, from the Progressive Policy Institute, former journalist and author, now living in Ukraine where she reports on the war and the work done by the government and civil society to modernize and make Ukraine a more liberal democratic country.

European Liberal Forum · Ep189 The future of Ukraine with Tamar Jacoby

Stronger Regulation from the Get-Go

Posted on by Max Sherrill

INTRODUCTION

For federal regulators, the stakes have never been higher. On the one hand, the Biden Administration sees regulation as an important mechanism to advance its ambitious
policy priorities — and is employing a whole-of-government approach unprecedented in terms of both its breadth and depth — for example, to address climate change, to advance its pro-labor agenda, and to regulate artificial intelligence.

On the other hand, the Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, is taking aim at regulatory overreach. In its last two terms, SCOTUS has shown a growing interest in
curtailing the so-called administrative state, narrowing the ability of regulators to interpret broadly their statutory authority — for example, by vacating Biden regulations to forgive student loan debt and narrowing the scope of federal jurisdiction over waters subject to pollution control. The current SCOTUS term — which began in October — offers more of the same. Among the cases to be decided are those challenging long-standing tenets of administrative law, such as the major questions doctrine, the non-delegation doctrine, and Chevron deference.

The stakes are high because, once in place, regulation has staying power. The Code of Federal Regulation (CFR), a compendium of all federal rules — has grown from just two volumes in 1938 to approaching 250 volumes and more than 185,000 pages — four times larger than the U.S. Code of Laws, a compendium of statutes enacted by Congress. Containing more than one million restrictions (and counting) and touching every aspect of American life, the CFR has expanded by 3% year after year (see Figure 1), reflecting the roughly 3,500 new rules issued annually by more than 70 regulatory agencies employing hundreds of thousands of regulators.

When crafted well, regulation saves lives and improves the quality of life. Our food is safer, air is cleaner, consumers are better informed, and household savings are better protected — in no small part because of regulation that sets a high bar on performance that Americans have come to expect. But when crafted poorly, regulation can extinguish opportunity: builders who must wait more than a decade for a federal permit, food processing facilities that must adhere to thousand-page rulebooks from two different federal agencies, innovators who must navigate an increasingly lengthy and costly government approval process that, in some cases, was never applied to competing products that had been in commerce for decades.

Whether a regulation provides a net plus or minus depends critically on the process used to create it. A flawed process leads to flawed outcomes, and vice versa.

With so much riding on regulation, now is an opportune time to identify and fix flaws in the process. The purpose of this report is to propose a new reform, developed by the author in collaboration with the Progressive Policy Institute, that would promote transparency and rigor in federal rulemaking. It has recently been introduced in Congress as H.R.8204, the “Regulatory Early Notice and Engagement Act (RENEA) by Representatives Don Davis (D-N.C.), Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), and Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.).

Read the full report.

Trade Fact of the Week: Estimated Cost to Families of Trump Tariff Proposal: $1,500 – $1,700

Posted on by Max Sherrill

FACT: Estimated Cost to Families of Trump Tariff Proposal: $1,500 – $1,700

THE NUMBERS:
Median U.S. household budget for goods, 2022:* $19,154
Extra U.S. household costs from a 10% tariff:** $1,500 – $1,700


*  Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey. The total includes BLS’ 2022 figures for mean household spending on food at home, alcohol, natural gas, fuel oil, housekeeping supplies excluding postage stamps, household furnishings, apparel and services, new vehicle purchases, gasoline, medicines, toys, and personal care products.

** $1,500 estimate from Center for American Progress; $1,700 from Peterson Institute for International Economics

WHAT THEY MEAN:

This fall’s core choice is more basic than policy: Can a person who has attempted to overthrow a settled election, and called for the “termination” of unspecified parts of the Constitution, keep an oath to “faithfully execute the office of President of the United States” and “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution”? But though secondary concerns this time, policies still have human consequences. Three notes therefore on tariffs and prices, with an introduction and a coda:

Intro: As we noted in March, the Trump campaign’s proposal of a 10% worldwide tariff, plus 60% on Chinese-made goods, would be the highest U.S. tariff rate since the late 1930s. Meanwhile, Dr. Peter Navarro — a former trade personality as Trump-era “Director of the Office of Manufacturing and Trade Policy,” a minor player in the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, and current resident of the Federal Correctional Institution in Miami — skirted federal prison policy last week by connecting with news website Semafor for an email interview.  He uses the opportunity to hold forth on a hypothetical second Trump term (mass deportations, immediate purge of the Federal Reserve), air grievances with former colleagues, and insist that tariffs do not affect prices: “In a general equilibrium world, tariffs over time boost growth and real wages; they are not inflationary.”

What do definitions and evidence say?

Definition: As the Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration, explains to hopeful U.S. exporting businesses, a tariff “is a tax levied by governments on the value including freight and insurance of imported products,” which “increase[s] the cost of your product to the foreign buyer and may affect your competitiveness.” In the case of consumer goods, retailers pay tariffs at the border, and shoppers ultimately pay. For industrial inputs, the tariff payers are farmers, manufacturers, construction firms, and other goods-using industries, and tariffs raise their production costs. This in turn raises the prices they charge customers, and/or erodes their competitiveness against imports or exports. Either way, tariffs are meant to raise prices and generally succeed.

Recent Experience: Moving from on-paper definition to recent experience, the 2018/19 tariffs on metals and Chinese-made products raised the U.S.’ overall tariff rate from 1.8% to 2.8%. Most of the impact seems to have fallen on manufacturers and other goods-users — logically, since while the permanent U.S. tariff system mainly taxes clothes and other consumer goods, Trump-era tariffs are more on industrial supplies. The Government Accountability Office’s examination of the process for making “exclusions” to the China tariffs illustrates this: GAO found 52,810 relief appeals, over half of which — 27,646 — came from buyers of capital goods and industrial inputs worried they couldn’t find affordable alternatives. Another 12,633 came from buyers of auto parts. Assessments of the resulting price increase — e.g. by the Peterson Institute for International Economics and San Francisco Fed staff economists — range from 0.3% to 1.3%.

Next: The campaign proposal is much larger. Two independent nonprofits, studying its probable effect this month, basically agree on what to expect. Mary Lovely and Kimberly Clausing, writing for the Peterson Institute of International Economics earlier this month, estimate an additional $1,700 in additional costs per U.S. household, with the greatest loss of purchasing power in the lowest-income families.  Brendan Duke, a former National Economic Council economist now with the Center for American Progress, finds a similar $1,500 increase in costs per middle-income household, with specific examples including $120 in higher payment for fuels, $90 for medicine, $220 for autos and boats, $80 for consumer electronics, and $90 for food. Overall, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey reports that on average households spent $19,154* on goods in 2022. Against this background, a $1,500 or $1,700 cost increase is something like an 8% or 9% burst of inflation in goods prices, or an equivalently high “tax increase” depending on the angle from which you look at it. Prices are higher either way.

Coda: Again, policy issues are secondary this fall. But Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), Chair of the House’s January 6th  Committee in 2022, reminds us of why Dr. Navarro must do his interviews from the Miami FCI this summer, and that policy can’t be wholly separated from the really basic choice:

“Peter Navarro abandoned his oath to the Constitution and abused the public trust while he worked as a trade adviser to former President Trump when, in the days leading up to January 6th, he worked to keep a defeated incumbent in the White House. He abused it again when he willfully defied a lawful subpoena from the January 6th Select Committee to answer questions about the lead-up to that deadly day. Last summer’s guilty verdict and today’s sentence are the consequence.”

FURTHER READING

Looking back:

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers assesses estimates of potential to roll back price increases through tariff cuts, finds a 1% price reduction credible (2022), with link to Peterson Institute for International Economics research.

Pre-trade war, San Francisco Fed staff economists estimate price inflation.

And the GAO looks back from 2021 on government handling of requests for exclusions from “301” tariffs in 2018 and 2019.

Looking ahead, three views on a 10% across-the-board tariff:

The Peterson Institute’s Mary Lovely & Kimberly Clausing foresee a $1,700 per household cost increase.

Center for American Progress’ Brendan Duke estimates $1,500.

… and the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey puts these numbers in context with data (through 2022) on how much families spend.

And completing the ideological balance (though not quite parallel with the PIIE and CAP studies, as the focus is on macro rather than extra household costs), Erica York of the Tax Foundation sees a GDP contraction and higher prices ahead.

Update from the Federal Corrections Institution/Miami:

Navarro interview on mass deportations, Federal Reserve purge, grudge against Gary Cohn, tariffs, etc.

The Federal Correctional Institution in Miami, with explanations of work requirements (7 ½ hours per day), media policy (press visits allowed, though not “to provide publicity for an inmate or special privileges for the news media, but rather to ensure a better-informed public”), and a non-luxurious but also non-Spartan commissary menu.

And Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) reminds us of why he’s there.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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Jacoby for the Los Angeles Times: Every day is Memorial Day in Ukraine

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Tamar Jacoby

It looks like a video shot with a phone from an apartment window. The camera pans a line of cars stopped on the roadway below, and it takes a minute to understand what we’re looking at.

Then a cortege comes into view: about 50 people walking slowly behind a coffin draped with the Ukrainian flag. When the shot widens, we see that traffic traveling in the other direction on the eight-lane road has come to a halt, and people have gotten out of their cars. A few are standing solemnly as the funeral passes; most are kneeling on the asphalt, heads bowed in respect.

By the time I see the social media post, “The funeral of a fallen defender in Kyiv today,” nearly a thousand viewers have reacted with comments or emojis. Among the most common: Heroyam slava — glory to the heroes.

Memorial Day in the U.S. was set aside to honor those who fell in the Civil War. Now Americans play “Taps” and put flowers on graves of those who died in many wars, all in the past. Here in Ukraine, people can only dream of the day when the flag-draped funerals have ended and battles are distant memories commemorated by a nation at peace.

Keep reading in the Los Angeles Times.

Marshall for The Hill: Could US and UK voters spark a global center-left revival?

Posted on by Max Sherrill

By Will Marshall

In this year of high-stakes elections, none are likely to tell us more about the health of liberal democracy than the marquee contests in the United Kingdom and the United States.

All signs point to a crushing defeat for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his Conservative Party after 14 tumultuous years in power. Poised for victory is a renovated Labour Party, ably led by Keir Starmer and leading the Tories in polls by more than 20 points.

On Wednesday, Sunak surprised the country by announcing a snap election on July 4 rather than wait until the end of the year.

A Labour victory would cap a remarkable turnaround for a party that suffered a devastating rout in 2019. That year, Boris Johnson and the Tories breached Labour’s “Red Wall” across England’s industrial heartland, winning over working class voters with promises to “get Brexit done” and “level up” economic conditions in the less prosperous north.

Labour’s return to power also would be a major morale boost for Europe’s center-left, which hasn’t had much to celebrate lately.

Keep reading in The Hill.