Eli Hartman/Odessa American via AP
First100-041621
Oil rigs on an early morning in Odessa, Texas.
It’s April 16, 2021 and welcome to First 100. You can sign up to have First 100 delivered to your email by clicking here.
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The Chief
From an uncertain start at the beginning of his campaign, Joe Biden has earned a small measure of trust among climate activists. Many appointments were well-received, particularly Deb Haaland at Interior and people like Ali Zaidi inside the White House’s climate offices. Biden accomplished some early executive actions like restoring national monuments, rejoining the Paris agreement, and recalculating the social cost of carbon. And in general the administration has been responsive to the urgency of climate action.
We saw more of that this week. One of the more interesting executive actions Biden plans to take in the coming days involves putting in place a government-wide strategy for climate-related risks. This has been a particular blind spot for federal regulators prior to the Biden administration. Not only could natural disasters harm physical financial assets like homes and business offices and their associated mortgages and insurance policies, but shifting away from fossil fuels could strand carbon-sensitive assets, causing fire sales and broken balance sheets. This is essentially what happened in the subprime mortgage crisis, only instead of banks realizing too late that crappy housing loans were worthless, it would be oil and gas rigs and coal-fired power plants.
It was bad news when media reports that the Treasury Department would establish a climate hub, allegedly to be helmed by former Fed governor Sarah Bloom Raskin, turned out to be completely untrue. But the executive order includes data-sharing through the Financial Stability Oversight Council on climate-related risk. It’s a step that signals top-level support to manage the process, in a way that Treasury probably cannot ignore.
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The U.S. trade representative’s office can also be a climate leader; trade policy can be tied to climate standards. I cannot recall a single U.S.-led trade agreement even using the words “climate change.” But at a Center for American Progress event yesterday, USTR Katherine Tai laid out her vision to build climate into U.S. trade policy. She said that leaving climate out of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement was a mistake. And she said that polluting industries should not be outsourced to poorer countries, which could be enforced through bilateral investment treaties and other carrots. This could really change things.
There are hitches, however. Next week, as part of Earth Day, the U.S. is convening a climate summit. The invitation was put out to 40 world leaders, including Chinese president Xi Jinping, whose agreement to help mitigate the climate crisis would be the most crucial. Xi hasn’t yet accepted. John Kerry, the U.S. climate envoy, visited Beijing this week. And even before he got there, the official word from a house organ newspaper in the country was “The U.S. has neither the moral standing nor the real power to issue orders to China over climate issues.” In an AP interview, a top Chinese diplomat called the U.S. “too negative” and said it’s “not very realistic” to expect China to deliver more than what it’s already promised (with emissions peaking in 2030 and going carbon-neutral by 2060) on climate.
China and the U.S. have been antagonistic on a host of issues, including human rights in Tibet and Hong Kong, threats to the sovereignty of Taiwan, and claims of technology theft by U.S. multinationals. There’s a strain of U.S. thought that says we must relent on this to get Chinese buy-in on climate. This is ridiculous. China’s survival depends on a livable planet, and they’re well aware of that. Competition on things like supply chains could have a virtuous effect on greening manufacturing. You don’t need full cooperation to have a mutual relationship that recognizes the planet takes precedence over internecine rivalries.
Mostly the goal is to have China recognize its own interests. This is the trickiest piece of the climate push. And Biden’s team must get other pieces, like oil and gas drilling on public lands, right. But the summit might provide another sliver of optimism on some actual global coordination.
Frightened on Immigration
I don’t know how much more insistent Joe Biden could have been. “Not another foot” of border wall would be built under his presidency. And on his first day in office, in the first flurry of executive actions, he suspended border wall construction. That left 300 miles planned for but unconstructed. Advocates want the 400 miles of wall Donald Trump managed to put up to be knocked down, but at least the promise of no new construction was being kept.
Or maybe not. A disturbing Politico report states that the administration continues to use eminent domain to seize land around the southern border with Mexico. Six acres in Hidalgo County were seized just this week. In addition to vowing not to build another foot, Biden had promised to withdraw all lawsuits and not confiscate any more land. And in various court cases that are still active, the Justice Department left open the possibility of more building.
Two things here. One is that this continues a disturbing trend of executive actions that mandate reviews or reports by a date certain and then don’t get done. A review of the border wall situation was due March 20 and has yet to be completed. The Trump administration was notorious for this; I did a long series at The Intercept about it. The lack of transparency enables this behavior; DOJ’s excuse for continuing the cases is that the review isn’t completed.
The second point is that the Biden team has been absolutely spooked by a couple weeks of fearmongering around the border. It’s the reason the refugee cap hasn’t been lifted (even though the two situations are wholly different); it’s the reason the Title 42 order summarily expelling nearly all migrants from the country for bogus health reasons is still in place; and it’s the reason border wall activities continue as normal. A shell-shocked political team is running an inhumane immigration policy with way too much resemblance to Trump’s.
What Day of Biden’s Presidency Is It?
Day 87.
Today I Learned
- Pfizer CEO says everyone will need a booster shot of the COVID vaccine within a year and then annual shots after. (CNBC)
- Out of 66 million vaccinations studied, there have only been 5,800 “breakthrough” cases of people getting COVID. That’s 0.008 percent. (Wall Street Journal)
- Biden is maintaining an export ban that affects vaccine raw materials, this is almost worse than maintaining the IP protections. (Axios)
- Senate Republicans are having a hard time even coming up with a counteroffer to the Biden infrastructure package. (NBC News)
- Of all the things House Democrats could take their stand on, repealing the SALT cap could be the absolute worst. (Spectrum News)
- The effects of the American Rescue Plan are starting to hit the economy. (Wall Street Journal)
- Biden Justice Department asks the Supreme Court not to rule on the constitutionality of the all-male military draft. (Washington Post)
