President Trump has officially pulled the U.S. from the TPP and announced plans to renegotiate NAFTA, angering farmers. ICYMI, check out these top stories from Law Street below!

Trump Officially Pulls the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership

President Donald Trump made good on one of his campaign promises on last week, signing an executive order to pull the U.S. from negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. The deal, a 12-nation free trade agreement molded by President Obama but never introduced to Congress, was a lightning rod for anti-trade rhetoric throughout the campaign.

What is the REINS Act?

Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act. The bill, which passed with a vote largely along party lines by 237-187, would require certain executive regulations to be approved by a joint session in Congress. Republicans see the bill as a necessary check on the executive branch, while Democrats dismiss it as a way to gut much-needed regulations.

Will Trump’s Opposition to NAFTA Lose Him the Support of Farmers?

President Donald Trump began his first week in office by announcing plans to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico. The announcement itself is unsurprising. Trump railed against NAFTA throughout his campaign claiming it and other free trade agreements threatened American firms and workers. However, in fulfilling his campaign promise Trump runs the risk of alienating a support base that was particularly reliable during the election: farmers.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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President Donald Trump began his first week in office by announcing plans to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico. The announcement itself is unsurprising. Trump railed against NAFTA throughout his campaign claiming it and other free trade agreements threatened American firms and workers. However, in fulfilling his campaign promise Trump runs the risk of alienating a support base that was particularly reliable during the election: farmers.

Farmers overwhelmingly favored Trump to Clinton in the run-up to the election. An October poll by AgriPulse revealed 55.4 percent of farmers supported Donald Trump while only 17.8 percent favored Clinton; the rest were either split between third party candidates, undecided, or chose not to answer. Respondents from battleground states reflected national numbers. Farmer and farm towns were undoubtedly key in ensuring Trump’s victory in the Electoral College. Post-election maps show Trump won in part because he was able to win rural counties in states like Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan that had supported Barack Obama in 2012, while also maintaining support in rural counties that voted for Mitt Romney. Now that Trump is in office, farmers will be waiting to see what his vow to renegotiate NAFTA will mean for them.

Over the past several decades, domestic agricultural policies have encouraged farmers to scale up or risk bankruptcy. The emphasis on production has plagued the U.S. market with surplus produce. To compensate for this, the U.S. heavily subsidizes farmers. Nonetheless, prices are so low that profits are only really attainable for large-scale corporate farms. Smaller operations have been squeezed out.

Though NAFTA has undeniably contributed to the corporatization of the agricultural industry, it has allowed farmers to avoid depressed prices in U.S. markets and seek fortune by exporting surplus goods north and south of the border tariff free. Famously, NAFTA created the conditions in which American farmers are able to dump their surplus, heavily subsidized produce in Mexico. U.S. producers sell corn and other staples at prices well below the cost of production, which cannot be matched by Mexican producers. This dynamic decimated many sectors of the Mexican agricultural industry and forced a Mexican reliance on cheap U.S. imports. However, the state of the Mexican industry is likely of little concern to the president who promised to put “America first.” Therefore, before negotiating with his North American counterparts, Trump may want to consider the fact that NAFTA has created a release valve for surplus U.S. goods on which American farmers rely.

Both Canada and Mexico are leading buyers of U.S. agricultural exports. Unable to rely on profiting from the U.S. market, smaller farmers would most certainly be hurt most were Canada and Mexico to place tariffs on U.S. goods. Notwithstanding the uncertain fate of NAFTA, the future of the agricultural industry has long been in question. As with many other industries, agriculture is increasingly mechanized. This means there will likely be fewer future job opportunities on both small and large farms in the future. Corporations are able to purchase, implement, and often create new technologies. However, small-scale farmers with limited capital who are already struggling to compete with corporate prices face an uncertain future.

The promise to bring blue-collar employment back to the United States grounds Trump’s trade stance. While renegotiating or terminating NAFTA could arguably help him achieve this goal, it is by no means the only facet of his emerging trade policy. Tariffs are likely to be imposed on U.S. exports assuming Trump follows through with his campaign promise of establishing more protectionist agreements with Canada and Mexico. If small-scale farmers are no longer able to sell their goods in Canadian and Mexican markets tariff-free, already slender profit margins might shrink further. Without making major changes to the U.S. agricultural market, Trump’s renegotiation of NAFTA could have adverse effects on a major line of agricultural income and alienate one of his most important bases of support. To do make these changes and protect small-scale farmers, Trump would have to address corporate dominance of the industry. However, though claiming to be for the worker, his business dealings and cabinet appointees suggest he sees little issue with corporatization.

Callum Cleary

Callum is an editorial intern at Law Street. He is from Portland OR by way of the United Kingdom. He is a senior at American University double majoring in International Studies and Philosophy with a focus on social justice in Latin America. Contact Callum at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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A particularly tasty fight is cooking in Wisconsin–there’s a lawsuit currently making its way through the court system over a law in the state that bans people from selling homemade baked goods.

The lawsuit was filed by three farmers, who are represented by the Institute for Justice. The Institute for Justice is a nonprofit that “fights against unreasonable government restrictions on individuals’ economic liberty.” Selling homemade baked goods, such as cookies, breads, and muffins, is punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 or six months in prison. This means that bakers aren’t allowed to sell their goods at places like fairs or farmer markets.

The law refers particularly to baked goods made in home kitchens–bakers could rent out commercial kitchens, but that’s an incredibly pricey option and there aren’t necessarily a lot of commercial kitchens in parts of rural Wisconsin.

The Institute for Justice explained on its website the motivation to take on the case, stating:

Wisconsin’s home-baked-good ban has nothing to do with safety. The state bans home bakers from selling even food the government deems to be ‘not potentially hazardous’ such as cookies, muffins and breads. The state also allows the sale of homemade foods like raw apple cider, maple syrup and popcorn, as well as canned goods such as jams and pickles. In addition, the state allows nonprofit organizations to sell any type of homemade food goods at events up to 12 days a year.

The ban is purely political. Commercial food producers like the Wisconsin Bakers Association are lobbying against a ‘Cookie Bill’—which would allow the limited sale of home baked goods—in order to protect themselves from competition. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who owns his own commercial food business, even refused to allow the Assembly to vote on a Cookie Bill last session, despite bipartisan support.

This fight isn’t just playing out in the courts–it’s also making its way through the legislature. There’s a “Cookie Bill” that would loosen the law and allow people to sell up to $7,500 in baked goods each year, as long as the name and address of the baker are clearly labeled. The lawsuit, however, is hoping to strike down the ban altogether. Whether the bill passes or the ban gets overturned, bakers in Wisconsin may soon have something to cheer about.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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My house rumbles and shakes as the cargo trains thunder down the rail that is less that 500 yards away. Although the necessity of turning up the volume on my TV is not much more than a nuisance, the fact that I sleep within the blast zone of a highly combustible material being transported in an inept and accident-prone manner is highly unnerving. Despite the speed of aircraft or the capacity of cargo ships, railroads remain the most efficient medium for transporting goods. That does not mean, though, that they are a flawless medium. In fact, when dealing with the transportation of crude oil, they and the system on which they operate are horrifically flawed.

Fracking in North Dakota yields a crude oil that is shipped in trains across the country and down the Hudson River. In the New York portion, the rail runs literally right along the river’s edge. The particular form of crude coming from these fields can turn into an explosive fire should the trains derail, giving this transportation system the name “bomb trains”. The American Petroleum Institute disputes this claim, though. The issue is compounded by the fact that it is being transported in outdated cars, called DOT-111s, which have thin hulls and are prone to puncture. In the last several years, oil train derailments have spilled millions of gallons and resulted in deaths, notably in Quebec last year.

Apparently the Transportation Department has been looking into the DOT-111 situation for several years now, but a surge in oil production in the North Dakota Bakken shale region has resulted in an immediate demand for large scale transport. There are not enough pipelines to accommodate this volume, so it is being sent along in trains, dubbed a “virtual pipeline.” Furthermore, the existing oil trains were not originally intended to move this type of oil at this level of intensity, thus the dangers. While safer designs are in the proposal stage, many of the existing cars are too old to be retrofitted with the new features and would have to be replaced all together. This is problematic, Jad Mouawad of The New York Times points out, because the transition period would mean that there are fewer cars on the rails and the oil demands would be difficult to meet.

Also sorely lacking is an emergency response plan. Should a disaster occur, sufficient measures are not currently in place either to mitigate the consequences of a spill or to effectively address the human welfare. Not only would lives be endangered, but a spill would gravely threaten the drinkability of the water for both locals and the eight million residents of New York City, as well as the wellbeing of the river’s biodiversity. In a flash, a spill could undo everything that the Hudson conservation organization Riverkeeper has spent the last half century trying to accomplish.

A bird struggles amidst an oil spill near Crimea, courtesy of Marine Photobank/Igor Golubenkov via Flickr

The lack of safety precautions is not the fault of emergency workers, but the Transportation Authority and oil industries themselves. The latter needs to be more open as to when trains are running through what areas, and what is the nature of their cargo. Last month, Orange County, New York joined neighbors Rockland and Ulster in calling for a full environmental review of the potential impacts of the increased oil shipments, a ban on DOT-111s, and an exploration of alternative means of transporting the oil. Embodying the philosophies of Riverkeeper, these actions criticize the secretive nature of the oil industry and demand the release of data to the public. By empowering the people with information, appropriate measures can be taken.

One town in North Jersey took things a step further, staging a protest and calling for a moratorium on the oil trains until safety standards are met. As previously mentioned, the trains run through my own hometown and neighboring ones in Bergen County, New Jersey pass through a very built up and densely populated region; a disaster in this area would be catastrophic and unquestionably deadly.

One must be cautious when performing a review of potential environmental impacts, as the method can be manipulated so as to be favorable to one party over another. The mayor of Albany recently accused the Department of Environmental Conservation of segmentation, an illegal action under the Environmental Quality Review Act. This process enables the review of a project in individual groups, not as an overall whole. In so doing, environmental impacts can be overlooked or miscast. This has allowed oil companies to enlarge or change their transportation permits time and again without raising any red flags. Ecosystems are large and complex; an issue in one arena will affect, often in an unforeseen manner, aspects of another. Further, humans are tightly intertwined with their surrounding environments. The issue must be looked at in its entirety in order to properly assess the dynamics of the dangers and their potential consequences.

The interrelatedness of people, policy, and environment with regard to this issue extends widely. The overemphasis on oil shipments is creating a backlog in other industries. Millions of dollars are lost and countless jobs are endangered as North Dakota farmers, the longtime mainstay of the economy there, are unable to ship their grain products across the country. A cascade effect follows; food companies are pressured to put out their products in light of delayed shipments, occasionally resulting in lower supply and higher prices. Exportation economics suffer as well, as these rails send grains to the Pacific Northwest to be shipped to Asia, and down the very same routes in New York State to be sent to Europe. In the long run, grain will be a more reliable product than oil. Companies are too short sighted and capitalize on the spike, with wide ranging and ever worsening consequences.

While the increased production, transportation, and use of oil is frustrating enough for those who would rather see progress in the field of renewable energy, the fact that it is compounded by a massive threat to local ecosystems and human welfare is outrageous and unacceptable. This issue is more than a concern over energy policy; it is making the use of fossil fuels an environmental and human threat in manners that go beyond emissions and pollution. The dangers must be effectively addressed, and soon.

Franklin R. Halprin

Franklin R. Halprin holds an MA in History & Environmental Politics from Rutgers University where he studied human-environmental relationships and settlement patterns in the nineteenth century Southwest. His research focuses on the influences of social and cultural factors on the development of environmental policy. Contact Frank at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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