OpenMarket: July 2018

Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, delivered the keynote address at the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Annual Dinner and Reception on June 28^th, 2018. Watch his full speech in the video below or read the selected highlights.

Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA), the outgoing chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, this week released a legislative discussion draft of a new infrastructure bill, attempting to build consensus on modernizing federal programs related to surface transportation, water resources, and project permitting and environmental review. In this post, I’ll focus on the surface transportation components.

CEI has released my third annual report on state barriers to vehicle platooning, Authorizing Automated Vehicle Platooning: A Guide for State Legislators, 2018 Edition. (Read the 2017 edition here and the 2016 edition here). Automated vehicle platooning refers to an application of driving automation system technology that allows vehicles via wireless connection to coordinate speeds in order to safely reduce the gap between leading and following vehicles.

As we’ve been saying ever since this issue heated up, tariffs hurt the economy. There’s no way around it. Seeing this harm, President Trump today proposed $12 billion in emergency aid to farmers hurt by his trade policies. This is a bad idea. This round of aid tries to fix one mistake with another mistake. That $12 billion of aid comes from other people, reducing their purchasing power and hurting other industries. Aid recipients will only benefit at others’ expense, meaning the best possible economic impact is zero.

Big news out of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals—the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is unconstitutionally structured. The FHFA was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and tasked with overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two giant government-sponsored enterprises that were put into conservatorship after imploding during the mortgage meltdown. The agency has been a topic of controversy since its inception, with a novel structure that heavily insulates it from presidential control.

Eight years ago this month, the Democrat-controlled House and Senate passed and President Barack Obama signed into law the so-called Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Every year since then, my CEI colleagues and I have reflected on how so many folks who had nothing to do with the financial crisis—including Main Street consumers, entrepreneurs, community banks, credit unions and other financial institutions far away from Wall Street—have been harmed by the Dodd-Frank monstrosity.

The European Union fined Google a record $5 billion for antitrust violations, and the president raised foreign policy kerfuffles with Britain and Russia on his European trip. Getting less coverage were more than 60 new final regulations ranging from gasoline vapors to payphones.

Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) plans to introduce a bill to tax carbon dioxide emissions next week and will speak at a press conference at 9 AM on Monday, July 23^rd, at the National Press Club. Registration information and the link to watch it online are available here. The event is being hosted by the Niskanen Center (an environmental pressure group) and Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

U.S. District Judge John F. Keenan on July 19 dismissed New York City’s climate change lawsuit against British Petroleum, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, and Royal Dutch Shell. Keenan’s reasoning is similar to that of U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who last month dismissed Oakland and San Francisco’s climate litigation against the same oil companies.

The House of Representative voted on July 19^th for a resolution “expressing the sense of Congress that a carbon tax would be detrimental to American families and businesses and is not in the best interest of the United States.” The final vote on H. Con. Res. 119 was 229 to 180. Seven Democrats joined 222 Republicans in favor, while six Republicans joined 174 Democrats against.