The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update

Issues in the News

1. LEGAL

The U.S. Supreme Court rules against the EPA’s decision not to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from new vehicles.

CEI Experts Available to Comment: Director of Energy & Global Warming Policy Myron Ebell on the impact of the ruling:

“The Court’s decision empowers EPA to take control of America’s global warming policy. This should certainly be a surprise to Congress, which has been vigorously debating the issue for years. For an agency as unaccountable as EPA to be deputized in this way is bad news for the future of our country.”

2. TECHNOLOGY

European regulators investigate Apple’s iTunes service for allegedly anti-competitive business practices.

CEI Experts Available to Comment: Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews on the heavy hand of European regulation:

“If Brussels believes the technology marketplace cannot discipline itself and that micromanagement and penalties—even possible corporate breakup—qualify as sensible public policy, then no intervention is off limits for any competitor. Last year Apple received the ‘Microsoft’ treatment in France, where legislation sought to mandate that music acquired from the iTunes store play on devices other than the iPod.”

3. TRADE

House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel releases a new plan for trade policy.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Bastiat Scholar Doug Bandow on the role organized labor will play in the new plan: 

“[Rangel’s] approach seeks to empower a UN body, the International Labor Organization (ILO)—which promulgates rules on everything from child labor to union organizing—more than the U.S. government. This is what organized labor desires; American unions began taking labor controversies to the ILO years ago.”