[afransen]

Another blow for the environment. Paper straws work fine... and decompose far more quickly than plastic.

President Donald Trump said Friday that he would sign an executive order “ending the ridiculous Biden push for paper straws, which don’t work.”

“BACK TO PLASTIC!” he posted on his social media platform Truth Social.

Trump says he’s bringing back plastic straws in new executive order

The Biden administration had moved to remove harmful single-use plastics from federal operations

www.independent.co.uk

I think it's fine to question what is just performative single use plastic reduction. I see lots of paper straws being jammed into plastic cups with plastic lids. I think a paper cup and a plastic straw would be less plastic and less inconvenient.

 

[PinkLucy]

Shhhh. He'll ban paper cups next.

 

[evandyk]

I think it's fine to question what is just performative single use plastic reduction. I see lots of paper straws being jammed into plastic cups with plastic lids. I think a paper cup and a plastic straw would be less plastic and less inconvenient.

When Starbucks redesigned their cups to have a sippy lid instead of a plastic lid with a hole for a plastic straw, the new lid used more plastic than the old lid plus the straw.

 

[lenaitch]

Straws and performing arts (which, I suspect, he has only frequented if it was happening on his lap); sure glad the Leader of the Free World is zeroing in on the important stuff.

 

[Coolibop]

When Starbucks redesigned their cups to have a sippy lid instead of a plastic lid with a hole for a plastic straw, the new lid used more plastic than the old lid plus the straw.

But is the lid recyclable? I think the point is that straws are not...

 

[Johnny Au]

And now for something different...

Trump says he’s firing Kennedy Center board of trustees members and naming himself chairman​

What’s next? Trump banning historically accurate performances of Shakespeare plays, especially Twelfth Night and As You Like It? After all, during Shakespeare’s time, all female roles were played by male actors, making every single authentic performance of Shakespeare plays a drag show by modern standards!

 

[Richard White]

Who knows..

We may get a full length real world version of Springtime for Hitler out of this.

 

[Monarch Butterfly]

Trump says he will announce 25% steel and aluminum tariffs Monday, and more import duties are coming​

From https://www.thestar.com/business/trump-says-he-will-announce-25-steel-and-aluminum-tariffs-monday-and-more-import-duties/article_e59256cb-5897-565c-81c8-4de952308a7d.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said he will announce on Monday that the United States will impose 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, including from Canada and Mexico, as well as other import duties later in the week.

President Donald Trump said he will announce on Monday that the United States will impose 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, including from Canada and Mexico, as well as other import duties later in the week.

“Any steel coming into the United States is going to have a 25% tariff,” he told reporters Sunday on Air Force One as he flew from Florida to New Orleans to attend the Super Bowl. When asked about aluminum, he responded, “aluminum, too” will be subject to the trade penalties.

Trump also reaffirmed that he would announce “reciprocal tariffs” —“probably Tuesday or Wednesday” — meaning that the U.S. would impose import duties on products in cases where another country has levied duties on U.S. goods.

“If they are charging us 130% and we’re charging them nothing, it’s not going to stay that way,” he told reporters.

 

[Towered]

Half of Canada would grab their second passport to flee to wherever they or their parents came from. That reminds me, my UK passport expired 20 years ago, time to renew

I have a second passport (EU). It's been a dream of mine ever since I was a kid to permanently move to Austria (both my parents emigrated from there in the 60's). That's where my heart has always been, despite being born and raised in Canada. Maybe a US takeover here would would finally push me to take the leap!

 

[PinkLucy]

I have friends who have been contemplating a move to Italy -- they own property there. This is likely to convince them to do it.

 

[Irishmonk]

Who knows..

We may get a full length real world version of Springtime for Hitler out of this.

Lots of candidates to play Hitler, but one stands out from the rest.

 

[Monarch Butterfly]

Thought this thread was about Donald Trump, not Doug Ford?

Monday’s Headlines: Old Florida Man Shakes His Fist Edition​

The so-called Leader of the Free World said he hated bike lanes. Plus other news in today's headlines.

The weekend respite was blown apart by a New York Post exclusive interview with President Trump in which the so-called Leader of the Free World said he hated bike lanes.

He also said he still hopes to get rid of congestion pricing — which he has said before — but his attack on bike lanes came out of nowhere (though certainly of a piece).

Never mind their documented safety improvements, the former New Yorker doesn't like them. "They should get rid of the bike lanes and the sidewalks in the middle of the street,” he told the tabloid, referring, perhaps, to pedestrian safety islands (who can tell?). “They’re so bad. They’re dangerous. These bikes go at 20 miles an hour. They’re whacking people.” (The Times also covered the president's spew.)

It's difficult to get outraged at this point by anything uninformed people say about congestion pricing or bike lanes; after all, virtually everyone who has ever been in a car believes that bike lanes "cause" traffic and that congestion pricing is "unfair" (looking at you, Wrobleski). No drivers ever want to acknowledge that they are traffic — or that there have been hundreds of thousands of additional cars registered in the city since the pandemic causing the traffic. No driver ever acknowledges the costs of their driving that are externalized to the rest of us, the non-driving majority. (One of those externalities? Drivers who park at fire hydrants ... causing people die in fires, as the Post reported.)

They're so entitled, yet only issue grievances. Perhaps that's what the president relates to. Former Times columnist Paul Krugman took him — and drivers — to task on his blog, writing, "But maybe the biggest reason for Trump’s desire to kill the congestion charge is ... the rage some Americans obviously feel at any suggestion that people should change their behavior for the common good. What we’re seeing with regard to the congestion charge is that some Americans feel that rage even when they themselves aren’t being asked to make changes. Petty rage is, alas, a powerful political force. Let’s hope that it doesn’t kill one of the best policy changes we’ve seen in recent years."

 

[UtakataNoAnnex]

...it feels like everything he says here is ludicrous, but somehow we'll be very sorry if we don't take it seriously. And to put that mildly. /bleh

 

[just east of the creek]

Re Carbon Tariffs on imports from the USA

From the Globe and Mail…..delivery in the a.m. if you still enjoy the feel of a newspaper with your morning cappuccino, and worth a read I would say. And I always thought that the movie “The Three Musketeers” with Oliver Reed, Micheal York, and Raquel Welch (who was outstanding, but it was 1973 and I was at a very impressionable age) was as good as the novel.

The best trade retaliation? Hit the U.S. with a carbon-tax tariff


HUGO CORDEAU
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published 4 hours ago
Updated 1 hour ago
 FOR SUBSCRIBERS 



The Longview Power Plant, a coal-fired plant, on Aug. 21, 2018 in Maidsville, West Virginia.
SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES



Hugo Cordeau is a doctoral candidate in economics at the University of Toronto

.
Barely a week after the United States paused tariffs against Canada, President Donald Trump is already talking about new duties on steel and aluminum. There is every likelihood that Canada is in for a bitter, drawn-out trade war. For that reason Canada must focus on honing our retaliatory measures.
Faced with the blanket 25-per-cent tariff threat from the United States last week, Ottawa announced retaliatory taxes on goods imported from the U.S., British Columbia and Ontario threatened to ban U.S. alcohol, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford planned to terminate a $100-million deal with internet provider Starlink, owned by Trump efficiency czar Elon Musk.
Many of these measures, such as the Starlink example, are somewhat targeted to exert maximum pressure on the White House. The federal retaliatory tariffs tried to focus on goods produced in Republican states.


But we can be even more surgical and deliberate in our approach.
What we should do is strike where it hurts the most: Mr. Trump’s electoral base. If they feel the pain, he will listen. But we should also consider measures that hurt us the least and benefit us the most, that would do the most good for the world and that which would strike a raw nerve with Mr. Trump himself.


Analysis: Sheinbaum’s way out of the Mexican standoff
An innovative approach is to apply a carbon border adjustment to the U.S. – a trade measure in which countries with carbon taxes impose tariffs on those without.
The traditional rationale for such a measure is that domestic companies, by paying carbon taxes, have higher production costs than foreign ones that don’t. Domestic products are thus more expensive than imports. A carbon border adjustment raises the price of imports to reflect the carbon tax foreign companies won’t otherwise pay. This levels the playing field.
Canada, which has a carbon tax, does not have carbon border adjustments. But it has expressed interest, and the idea was brought up recently by Liberal leadership candidate Mark Carney.


Mr. Carney has mostly talked about a carbon border adjustment as a worthwhile measure on its own. That might be debatable. But when we’re facing a trade war, a carbon border adjustment is a retaliatory tactic that has no equal. Canada should pursue it with renewed focus.
Concretely, we should be applying a state-level carbon border adjustment based on grid carbon intensity – i.e. how clean or dirty a state’s electricity is. The U.S. has a relatively polluting grid at 368 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour (gCO2/kwh) – twice that of Canada and six times that of France. Red states such as Wyoming, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri and Utah have even more carbon-intensive grids, with emissions ranging from 700 to 900 gCO2/kwh, largely owing to their reliance on coal.
In other words, under a carbon border adjustment, the same goods produced in a highly polluting red state grid would be taxed significantly more than those coming from greener grids, which are typically found in blue states.
In levelling the playing field for domestic companies that pay carbon taxes, a carbon border adjustment has a twofold effect: First, while it is inflationary, like all tariffs, the resulting price increase for Canadians can be mitigated by sourcing from greener states. Second, it would be focused on the red states even more than the tariffs that Ottawa has announced, which, despite being targeted, still involve broad product categories.




Opinion: If Canada isn’t careful, retaliatory tariffs will do more harm than good
On a broader level, a carbon border adjustment is essentially a partial carbon tax on American companies. To avoid the tax, U.S. companies that want to export to Canada are incentivized to invest in low-carbon production methods or to produce goods in jurisdictions with stronger climate policies – or states with cleaner electricity. This is good for the planet.
And such a measure would be the perfect countermove against a “drill, baby, drill” President who wants to encourage more oil production and withdraw the United States from international climate co-operation. Mr. Trump would sit up and pay attention if Canada uses a carbon border adjustment as retaliation to tariffs. The irony of the situation would not be lost on the world that is watching.
This might aggravate Mr. Trump, but that also means a promise for U.S. exemptions can be a good bargaining chip. The measure aligns with what many observers say: Canada can’t win outright in a trade war, but it can cause enough pain that Mr. Trump decides the fight is not worth his while.
The even greater thing is that such a measure can go even further: a G7 collaboration.
The EU has already implemented a carbon border adjustment, and Britain is following suit; Canada has also expressed its desire to collaborate. As well, Canada is hosting the G7 this year and most G7 states either have a carbon border adjustment or are considering one. One for all, all for one, as the Three Musketeers would say.

 

[DSCToronto]

This in Guardian offers useful info re trade with US and which countries are in 'deficit or surplus'

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...which-countries-will-be-hit-hardest-in-charts. This is one, of many, charts