U.S. Congress

If the president succeeds, he will be free to slap tariffs on any country or any product at any time for whatever reason he dreams up.

International trade isn’t the problem—it’s Republican trade policies that have empowered corporations while leaving American workers behind.

A version of this blog was originally published at The Hill website. Guest blogger Daniel Scheitrum, assistant professor, Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics, University of Arizona, contributed as co-author to this blog in collaboration with CFR David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment Amy Myers Jaffe.    Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill requiring the Trump administration to find a way to remain in the global Paris climate accords. The bill is not expected to find approval in the U.S. Senate.  However, it does reflect a subtle shift in U.S. elective politics. Even among Republican politicians, recognizing the popularity of renewable energy and other climate friendly goals is becoming politically expedient. Members of the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Department of Defense, and corporate leaders are calling for a stronger legislative response to climate change with increased regularity. There is also growing concern on both sides of the aisle that the United States needs to be more proactive in countering China’s embrace of advanced clean tech and artificial intelligence assisted energy and transport systems as a major plank of Beijing’s aggressive China 2025 industrial policy.  Energy innovation is a vital U.S. national interest. It is a pivotal factor to ensuring the U.S. military and space program maintain a critical technological edge over geopolitical rivals. Moreover, energy innovation supports U.S. global competitiveness by spurring new industries and successful technology companies and by boosting manufacturing productivity. Sadly, as U.S. federal spending on energy research and development has shrunk, many American innovation companies have turned to China as a source of more patient capital instead of tapping limited U.S. venture capital markets. The Trump administration would like to address this exodus of jobs and technology in its trade war with China but misses the boat by ignoring the link between U.S. energy innovation and the vast future market for goods and services related to climate change mitigation and adaptation that will come to dominate global export trade in the coming years.  By dropping out of the Paris agreement, the United States runs the risk that China or the European Union could use the U.S. absence from official global climate working groups to set energy standards and other carbon-related rules that could harm U.S. exports and the U.S. economy. It might seem counter intuitive, but progress made in global climate talks at Katowice, Poland, laid the groundwork for the U.S. to stick with the Paris accord framework. That’s because countries attending the talks, including the United States, which cannot formally withdraw from the accord until 2020, agreed upon uniform rules for measuring and tracking their own performance in cutting emissions. Climate negotiators also agreed to continue intensive discussions this year in Chile on how to connect emissions reductions efforts across regions, countries and sub-national entities so that regions can exchange credits for emissions reductions. The finalization of such rules offers an opportunity for the U.S. to rethink its posture on the Paris Accords and to take better advantage of economic opportunities to participate in international carbon credit markets where they exist. The U.S. economy can generate roughly 65 percent of the emissions reductions required to meet the 2015 U.S. Paris pledge from existing regulations and market trends. To make up the remainder, Congress should authorize the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to issue a national call for states and localities to volunteer projects that will cut the emissions of heat-trapping gases. Such a federalist voluntary national tender would create a coalition of the willing while avoiding a legal fight with the few remaining states that oppose participating in clean energy programs. The most successful voluntary programs could prove out policies that might someday be passed as more broadly mandated regulations.  The Paris Agreement requires nationally verified processes, and the proposed national voluntary tender system would accomplish that. It would also facilitate exchange of credits already taking place on the sub-national level. A federal system for promoting and tracking voluntary contributions would allow the United States to use local initiatives that have proved popular around many parts of the country to bring the country back into the Paris accord. This proposed tender program could be administered by the EPA, which has the authority to regulate carbon pollution. A national tender would let states and localities decide whether they want to volunteer contributions to the Paris Agreement. The United States would in turn get the general national benefits of remaining in the Paris Agreement without burdening voters in states and cities that do not wish to take part. Aggressive climate policies such as renewable portfolio standards are popular in many sections of the country, including states that initially opposed the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) and the Paris Agreement: for example, Texas is home to some of the country’s largest wind farms and ranks third in the nation for new solar capacity. Other states that opposed the CPP—like Georgia, and Michigan—are now embracing renewable energy, given its popularity among corporations and cities: New Jersey originally joined the group of states suing the EPA to stop the CPP in 2015, but it has now rejoined the U.S. East Coast carbon market. In U.S. midterm elections, several newly elected governors—in Colorado, Connecticut, Nevada, Maine, Oregon, and Wisconsin—pledged to pursue 100 percent renewable energy state mandates, mirroring policies recently passed in California and Hawaii. The Math of Verifiable U.S. Contributions to the Paris Pledge Under the Paris Agreement, the United States pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decade by 26 to 28 percent of 2005 levels. This equates to a reduction of 1,737 million metric tons (MMT) of carbon-dioxide equivalent (CDE). Achieving this reduction target via federal policies was daunting even for the Barack Obama administration, which proposed the Clean Power Plan (CPP) as a pillar of its climate initiatives. That plan would have regulated the U.S. power sector and required each state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions significantly by 2030. The Trump administration is repealing the CPP. In August the administration unveiled its vision for a new rule, Affordable Clean Energy (ACE), that will focus greenhouse gas policies more narrowly in each state’s power sector on individual facility–level emissions rather than more ambitious state-wide comprehensive approaches. Based on official U.S. government statistics, modeling, and methods (as would also be the federal government’s basis), the United States could reduce its total greenhouse gas emissions by 1,150 MMT of CDE by 2025, or roughly 65 percent of what the U.S. Paris pledge requires, based on market trends and current policies. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) projects in its 2018 “high-resource scenario” -- which assumes falling U.S. prices for natural gas and solar energy -- that market forces and existing localized clean energy legislation will generate roughly 805 MMT of CDE reduction in the power sector by 2025. This projection represents a greater reduction than the 670 MMT of CDE that the Obama administration projected in 2015 that the CPP would achieve by 2025, according to the Federal Register. Official EPA calculations for emissions trends by 2025 under the proposed ACE mirror many of the assumptions of the DOE’s high-resource scenario. Market uncertainties and projected modeling differences weigh more heavily beyond 2025, when the politics of U.S. climate policy could be different than today’s. U.S. corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards, mandated by Congress in 2007 and to remain in place at least through 2022, are expected to eliminate roughly 270 MMT of CDE by 2025 as compared with 2005 levels. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that reforestation and other voluntary agricultural programs will save up to 60 MMT of CDE. That leaves a gap of roughly 600 MMT of CDE reductions to be met in other ways.  The Proposal The United States can generate the remaining emissions savings by organizing a nationally verifiable record of voluntary state and local action, by launching a program structured as a national tender. Willing states and localities would volunteer projects to be combined into the official U.S. nationally determined contribution based on their verifiability, scale, and capacity to create jobs. The Paris Agreement requires nationally verified processes, and the tender system would accomplish that. The administration could work with governors, tapping state and local efforts to meet the U.S. Paris pledge in a manner that promotes some of Trump’s other economic and foreign policy goals including ensuring economic competitiveness with China. A federal system for promoting and tracking voluntary contributions would allow the United States to use local initiatives that have proved popular around many parts of the country to bring the country back into the Paris accord. The proposed verification system for voluntary action builds on policies, like the newly proposed ACE, that require the EPA to work with each state on individual compliance plans that include evaluating state actions and targets and verifying emissions reductions. Those federal resources could be reconfigured to oversee a tender for states to contribute the remaining carbon reductions needed to meet the Paris pledge. The cost could be relatively low and similar to the approximately $50 million the EPA requested in fiscal year 2016–2017 to develop tools and work with each of the fifty states on the (now defunct) CPP. As DOE forecasts show, emissions from smaller states that strongly oppose the CPP, like Kentucky and West Virginia, are relatively small (in 2015 West Virginia’s were half of those of New York and one-sixth of Texas’s) and unlikely to increase on a scale that would counter reductions elsewhere. Many large carbon-intensive industries have substantial capital assets that would make it highly expensive to relocate just to avoid regulation, but the EPA would need to evaluate any distortions from emissions shuffling in calculating the national pledge. Roughly 70 percent of Americans say the United States should lead on climate change solutions. Many states have already acted, alone or in regional coalitions to reduce emissions, including by carrying out their original CPP plans. Additional urban policies such as car-free pedestrian regions, expanded public transit, and energy-efficiency programs for buildings, trucking, and businesses could be substantive enough to achieve the remaining reductions needed to meet the U.S. Paris pledge commitment. To name a few examples, California, which has already cut carbon emissions by over 60 MMT since 2005 even as the state’s economy grew 41 percent, is accelerating its push for renewable energy, which is expected to reach 50 percent by 2020, ten years ahead of schedule. New York City is working on a plan to reduce emissions by 10 MMT by 2030; the plan includes a 20 percent drop in energy use for buildings and increased use of battery storage. The popularity of 100 percent renewable energy state mandates is growing.  Washington state is the latest U.S. state to announce a more comprehensive clean energy program. Moreover, a recent scientific paper also postulates that as much as 21% of annual U.S. carbon emissions could be offset via comprehensive natural climate solutions such as reforestation and restoration of grasslands, wetlands and seagrass, as well as other methods, such as use of biochar, improved management of plantations, cover crops, and manure management. Policies like these being considered around the country could approach the 600 MMT needed to stay in Paris, if the political signal of a national program were to create momentum. Revisiting Federal Energy and Environmental Policies That Benefit U.S. Competitiveness The Congress could choose to supplement the tender plan with other policies that would reduce emissions without undermining U.S. competitiveness and jobs. For example, Congress should revisit the Trump administration’s rollbacks of regulations on fugitive oil and gas methane emissions. While some oil-sector representatives argue that methane leakage regulations harm the industry, the opposite is true: implementation of these standards in California, Colorado, and Wyoming have spurred new technologies, jobs, and exportable U.S. products and services. Many large U.S. oil and gas producers have already pledged to address methane leakage from their operations. Using new monitoring and capture technologies to reduce methane leakage is vital to ensure that U.S. energy exports meet the future requirements of global investors and customers in Asia and Europe, who are increasingly focused on the relative carbon content of their fuels, as well as carbon pricing and other carbon-related regulations. Other countries would also purchase these new technologies to reduce methane leakage in their own industries. Revisiting U.S. rules for fugitive emissions could contribute up to 100 MMT of CDE of additional reductions of methane and other volatile organic compound emissions toward the Paris pledge. Congress should press the Trump administration to reconsider its approach to California’s stricter vehicle emissions standards by passing its own new bill to promote the manufacturing of advanced clean vehicles in the United States to meet competition from China. California’s policy to implement additional greenhouse gas emissions standards for automobiles from 2023 to 2025 is in limbo after the EPA proposed reversing an Obama-era executive order to align federal rules with these specific California vehicle carbon emissions restrictions. The proposed reversal would not affect greenhouse gas reductions that will come from congressionally mandated federal corporate average automobile efficiency standards that remain in effect. Still, a Trump administration decision to sue California to block these 2023–2025 greenhouse gas emissions vehicle standards, if implemented, would decrease the likelihood that the United States will set global standards for the next generation of vehicles. The aggressive California policy was a lever to press American carmakers to produce more electric and advanced vehicles. The U.S. Congress should revisit this topic. China has said it may ban sales of traditional internal combustion engine cars by 2040; France and the United Kingdom have already announced similar bans. Higher standards push U.S. carmakers to produce non-gasoline vehicles as fast as possible. U.S. cars need to remain competitive, which means retaining or strengthening current automobile standards, not weakening them. Capping the growth of U.S. domestic motor fuel use by improving automobile standards is a key lever that allows the United States to become a larger net energy exporter, thereby reducing the U.S. trade deficit. Congress should also consider improving fuel economy for U.S. trucks. Such a policy would enhance U.S. supply-chain competitiveness. Conclusion The national tender approach would allow the United States to remain in the Paris Agreement and continue a leadership role in climate negotiations that was allowing the United States to promote its global economic dominance in energy and automotive technologies. The United States needs to have a voice in the process to protect exports from border tariffs or taxes on greenhouse gas emissions embedded in U.S. goods and services. Under the Paris terms, the United States has until 2020 before a final decision can be implemented. Remaining in the agreement through a national tender would be a win-win scenario: it would allow unified verification for those states and municipalities that adopt climate-friendly policies, while those that do not choose to act on climate change would still gain all the trade and economic benefits of staying within the Paris accord, for the good of the United States as a whole. Remaining in the agreement is particularly important in light of a recent scientific report that suggests that the speed and scale of the direct consequences of global warming are more dire than previously thought.

 It’s time to hold Egypt accountable for the U.S. citizens it has unjustly victimized.

 It’s time to hold Egypt accountable for the U.S. citizens it has unjustly victimized.

This is a guest post by Benjamin Silliman, research associate for Energy Security and Climate Change at the Council on Foreign Relations.  Amid controversy whether the Green New Deal manifesto is too broad, Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) spoke out in an interview published yesterday to elaborate on direct Congressional actions that might come about in alignment with the resolution’s chief environmental focus. Distinguishing the resolution’s aims from his past efforts to pass cap-and-trade market pricing carbon emissions credits, Markey noted, “We could wind up putting a price on carbon, but we have to protect the most vulnerable simultaneously.” Markey’s suggestions in the interview may give a hint at what Democrats think is possible to pass right now: “Practically speaking, we could pass a tax-extender bill for tax breaks for wind, solar, batteries, electric vehicles. We could pass an infrastructure bill that would be a green infrastructure bill. We can take the appropriations process, and in each individual area insert funding for green programs. We can make a down payment on what we need to do now on infrastructure, on taxes, on appropriations. And that is the beginning of a pragmatic way of looking at this existential challenge.”  Markey’s words might resonate with many members of Congress, from both parties, who are frustrated with the executive branch’s inability to respond effectively to the pressing issue of climate change. Congress could exercise its authority over the budget to start funding green infrastructure programs within the U.S. Department of Defense, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and federally funded projects through companies like the Tennessee Valley Authority or the Export-Import Bank of the United States. Current U.S. government support for infrastructure is woefully inadequate. The nation’s energy, rail, water, road, communications, and industrial systems are in need of significant investment. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that there is an infrastructure spending gap in the United States of nearly $1.5 trillion needed by 2025 just to maintain the quality of current infrastructure. These estimates mean there is a tremendous opportunity to authorize appropriations that could be used more wisely to address transportation, energy, water, and defense infrastructure in a manner that is more resilient to climate change and supports the transition to cleaner forms of energy as upgrades are needed. To do this successfully, data-driven metrics clearly evaluating previous infrastructure’s cost, effectiveness, vulnerabilities, and environmental impact are needed, and should be a high priority for congressional research to establish. Developing a procedural and flexible evaluation structure will allow for optimal technologies to be deployed, maximizing environmental gain for cost. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has openly and repeatedly raised concern about the effects of climate change. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, DoD maintains a portfolio of $1.2 trillion of infrastructure across 4,800 sites worldwide as of 2017. During the next round of budget increases, infrastructure spending should be tied to green spending and research. The Trump administration has also made it clear it plans to “rebuild” the military. To do so will require substantial infrastructure investment. Ensuring that infrastructure is resilient to climate risks is vital. Congress should look for low-hanging fruit elsewhere in the budget as well. Disaster relief organizations, like FEMA, that participate in large-scale infrastructure investment for repair after damaging events, would benefit from requirements that consider climate change. In 2017, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimated that natural disasters caused $300 billion in damages. To supplement relief resources, Congress appropriated an additional $34.5 billion in post-disaster funds and forgave $16 billion of debt for the National Flood Insurance Program. In the future, when designating supplemental relief funds, a green infrastructure or increased weatherization requirement would help ensure that damaged infrastructure is replaced with buildings and energy systems that are better prepared for extreme weather events. The damages experienced by Californians after utility PG&E failed to upgrade its equipment against heat and fire is a telling lesson in the liability risks that come when infrastructure cannot meet current environmental conditions. Initial funds allowing for better planning and access to capital to make needed weatherization and energy efficiency upgrades could potentially reduce the extent of future relief needed in the future. Congress also can use its budget influence on federally-funded infrastructure projects to require certain environmental standards as a prerequisite. That could include environmental targets on state-owned entities like the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a government-backed company that built power projects during the original New Deal and recently opted to shutdown coal plants. TVA is already managing liabilities from coal ash spills. Activists looking for bold, comprehensive action won’t be satisfied with the U.S. Congress taking these incremental steps.  However, such steps are immediately implementable and would avoid one of the biggest problems confronting our ability to implement climate solutions, mainly that infrastructure is long-lasting. Once it is built, it is harder to allocate funds to replace it. Forcing greener choices in current appropriations would help pave a path towards broader legislation.

Congress is considering a bill that could punish countries for artificially boosting oil prices. What could that mean for warming ties between Russia and Saudi Arabia?

This was originally published on the Quint and is reposted here with permission. For a speech that US President Donald J Trump told supporters was likely to contain as much as “40 to 50 percent” foreign policy, the actual State of the Union address gave foreign policy short shrift. As Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted, the foreign policy part of the speech comprised around sixteen minutes of the nearly ninety-minute address. But given the large landscape of foreign policy issues Donald Trump could have presented for the American people to assess, it was more than a little surprising to hear the limited scope: leaving the INF Treaty, bringing troops home from Syria and Afghanistan, the next summit with Kim Jong-Un, the trade war with China, and brief sentences about Venezuela, moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, and withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran. These are all important, certainly, but so are many other priorities crucial to US national security—and about which the Trump administration has said much more, in other contexts. True, Trump featured pet campaign themes of the alleged immigration crisis on the southern border (which is not a traditional foreign policy issue), trade negotiations (with China, Canada, and Mexico), and NATO allies treating the United States “very unfairly.” He honoured US World War II veterans, a gracious moment. Trump spoke about Afghanistan and the present effort to see if a negotiated peace with the Taliban could be achieved. This part of the speech could have been more extensive, especially given that the US deployment in Afghanistan is now in its eighteenth year, the United States’ longest war. It remains unclear whether and under what circumstances an agreement with the Taliban might be reached, and whether that agreement will prove acceptable to the sitting Afghan government. A word about regional security might have provided more clarity on why this situation remains fiendishly complex after all these years, and could have provided greater recognition of the trials those US troops face who have served there. It could also have been a moment to recognise the roles of NATO allies and partners serving as well, and important contributors to Afghanistan like India and Japan. The president’s lack of attention to the security challenge China presents—one of the two countries his own National Security Strategy names as geopolitical competitors—was puzzling. To the extent China appeared in the address, which it did, the context revolved entirely around trade. But his own administration has developed a policy framework that takes China’s increasing assertiveness across the larger Indo-Pacific region and indeed across the technology and commercial spaces as security challenges. It’s called the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy. It’s true that the president has not personally served as messenger for the more extensive statements about the Free and Open Indo-Pacific, leaving that to Vice President Mike Pence, or his secretaries of state (Rex Tillerson, and now Mike Pompeo). But the Free and Open Indo-Pacific, to the extent that its details have been unfurled, has largely garnered support from both sides of the aisle and for that reason alone would have been useful to highlight, especially given the president’s desire to present a “unity” address. We heard little, for example, about the important diplomatic work underway to respond to the Belt and Road Initiative around the world. For example, the Trump administration has revived the Quadrilateral consultations among four great democracies—Australia, India, Japan, and the United States. Nor did we hear anything about the recently-passed BUILD Act (Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development), which enjoyed great bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. This new law rescued the functions of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation by creating a new consolidated International Development Finance Corp, and doubling its finance capacity to USD 60 billion. It will help the United States remain competitive in the infrastructure finance space, especially in the Belt and Road era. Most usefully, the new agency gives the US government an important tool to help mobilise private capital by underwriting risk. Finally, in what appeared to be a brief reference to a forthcoming development assistance program, the president offered one sentence about a new initiative focused on economic empowerment of women in developing countries. He then pivoted immediately to “calamitous trade policies” and the trade war with China, an utterly confusing shift. It would have been good to hear more about how the Trump administration plans to help increase economic opportunity for women in developing countries, and indeed where specifically this new initiative will focus. But the president chose not to elaborate on these foreign policy concerns. The foreign policy speech he didn’t deliver could have had some bipartisan wins and a greater sense of unity across these national security priorities. Too bad he didn’t give it. My book about India’s rise on the world stage, Our Time Has Come: How India Is Making Its Place in the World, was published by Oxford University Press in January 2018. Follow me on Twitter: @AyresAlyssa. Or like me on Facebook (fb.me/ayresalyssa) or Instagram (instagr.am/ayresalyssa).

Paving the road to 2020, Congress will need to steer the course and avoid potholes in 2019.

A move to block sanctions relief has been defeated, averting a likely spike in global aluminum prices but also spotlighting the tough road ahead for Congress in shaping policy on Russia.

In the midst of the longest U.S. government shutdown in history, members of Congress have found a rare area of bipartisan cooperation: women's economic empowerment. Last week, President Trump signed into law the Women's Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment (WEEE) Act, a law that strengthens U.S. efforts to promote opportunity for female entrepreneurs worldwide. At a time when bipartisanship is elusive, elected officials on both sides of the aisle agree on one thing: Women's economic participation is a worthwhile investment. Read the full article on CNN Business Perspectives >>

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post, covering December 30 to January 5, was compiled with support from Rebecca Turkington.