OpenMarket

The comment period closed this week on the Environmental Protection Agency’s benefit-cost analysis (BCA) rulemaking. Under the proposal, all economically significant Clean Air Act regulations must include benefit-cost analyses, and all BCAs must conform to “best practices.”

In July, 1.8 million new jobs were created, and the unemployment rate dropped to 10.2 percent. That is a welcome follow-up to the second quarter’s disastrous GDP decline, which was the steepest in American history. But there are threats to the recovery.

President Trump on Thursday announced he will reimpose 10 percent aluminum tariffs against Canada. Originally enacted in 2018 on national security grounds, the tax was an obvious sticking point in USMCA negotiations and was suspended in May 2019. Reimposing tariffs is misguided policy for four reasons.

Activist Carl DeMaio caused a stir this week by holding a press conference in which he declared that hiring tutors could be could result in people getting fines under California’s AB5 law. The author of the law, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, has disputed that claim, but her own office has indicated that there are potential circumstances where it could happen.

Senate Republicans are attempting to ensure that not only are dead people entitled to the next round of COVID-19 relief funds but those deceased individuals can retroactively claim payments from prior rounds of relief that they weren’t eligible for at the time because they were dead.

Alongside helplessness in the face of a looming $27 trillion debt, debating administrative state policy hasn’t been much help in forestalling federal government growth.

We of the market or classical...

Well-connected sportsmen, often Republicans, have been known to side with environmental obstructionists on occasion. When they learn that one of their isolated hunting or fishing spots may become less isolated, they often use their influence to help kill a proposed project. Avid hunter and former Vice President Dick Cheney did so a few times., and now it appears that it is Donald Trump Jr.’s turn.

President Donald Trump’s October 9, 2019 Executive Order 13,891 (E.O. 13,891) and a subsequent White House Office of Management directive to amplify and clarify it required agencies to create “a single, searchable, indexed database that contains or links to all guidance documents in effect” at www.[agencyname].gov/guidance.

What a week. COVID-19 deaths passed 150,000. Second-quarter GDP declined 9.5 percent from a year ago and 7 percent from the previous quarter. In more uplifting news, NASA launched the Perseverance Mars rover. Here on Earth, regulatory agencies issued new regulations ranging from crop marketing campaigns to OSHA officials accessing people’s medical records.

The Trump administration’s recent changes to the National Environmental Policy Act would reduce the years of red tape and litigation that frequently blocks job-creating energy projects such as new oil or natural gas pipelines. They would also give a greater voice to the local communities that are positively impacted by such projects.