Tag: rebuke

Senate sends bipartisan rebuke of solar tariff policy to Biden’s desk

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The resolution would use the Congressional Review Act to rescind Biden’s moratorium on new tariffs for solar cells and modules from Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. The rule was issued as the Commerce Department investigates whether companies are circumventing existing U.S. tariffs on China by funneling products through those four countries.
Commerce issued preliminary findings in December that said Chinese companies were indeed circumventing the tariffs, and its final determination is due later this year. But given the two-year pause, no new tariffs resulting from the probe can be levied until mid-2024.
The resolution resurfaced long-running tensions on the Commerce probe. Solar industry officials who oppose the resolution warn it carries a threat of retroactive duties that will cost jobs, shut down planned solar projects and undercut the Biden administration’s climate goals.
“It’s going to send a devastating message to the solar industry and particularly to our independent, small businesses,” Nevada Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen said in an interview.
Rosen led an open letter Wednesday with eight Democratic senators that argued Biden’s two-year pause on additional tariffs is necessary as the United States works to bolster its domestic manufacturing capabilities.
But supporters of the resolution — including several Senate Democrats — argue it’s necessary to enforce U.S. trade law and support domestic industry, while ensuring the U.S. clean energy transition is not built using Chinese products.
“If you vote no, that means you support slave labor,” said Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who sponsored the Senate resolution. “You don’t want more American jobs and you don’t believe our trade policies mean anything.”
The comment is a reference to the use of forced labor within China’s Xinjiang region — an area of bipartisan concern. The solar industry has vocally opposed the use of forced labor in its supply chain, and the resolution approved Wednesday does not directly mention the topic.

Rosen rejected Scott’s contention on Wednesday.
“We’re always going to be against forced labor. We’re always going to be for holding the Chinese Communist Party’s feet to the fire in everything we do,” she said.
The measure gathered support from nine Senate Democrats on Wednesday: Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Bob Casey and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Jon Tester of Montana and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the lone GOP senator to vote against the measure.
Sen. Brown, whose state is home to one of the largest U.S. solar manufacturing companies, said in a floor speech Tuesday he was defending U.S. manufacturing.
“You can’t say you want American manufacturing to lead the world and then allow Chinese companies, subsidized always by their government, to skirt the rules and dump solar panels into the U.S.,” he said.
Manchin, the chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, was the only Democrat to attach his name as a co-sponsor of the joint resolution of disapproval. He argued the U.S. cannot continue to let China “get away” with laundering solar energy components through other nations with “absolutely no consequences.”
“Let me be clear: America will never be energy secure or independent if we can’t provide the resources we need, and it would be foolish of us in Congress to allow these waivers to continue any longer,” Manchin said in a statement.
On the other hand, eight House Republicans voted against the resolution last week, with some arguing it would cost solar jobs in their districts.
George Hershman, CEO of utility solar company SOLV Energy, recently called Republican support for the resolution “disappointing,” given how many solar projects are cropping up in red congressional districts.
“The largest solar districts in the country are Republican. That’s where the job impacts are going to be,” he told POLITICO last month. “I mean, I’m as disappointed with Democrats that might sign on to [the resolution] as House Republicans that understand the job creation of solar in their districts.”
Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, called on Biden to “quickly and decisively” veto the resolution.
“Energy workers across the country are looking to President Biden to protect their livelihoods,” she said in a statement.
The vote Wednesday is part of a wider trend of resolutions brought under the Congressional Review Act, which requires only a simple majority to pass the Senate, to undo parts of the Biden administration’s regulatory agenda.
The Senate also voted 50-48 on Wednesday to pass a resolution that would overturn the Biden administration’s protections under the Endangered Species Act for the lesser prairie-chicken, a wild bird found in five states. The White House said Wednesday that Biden will veto that resolution, as well.
Alex Guillén contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

May 4, 2023
Indian ministers rebuke Der Spiegel for ‘racist’ cartoon mocking population size

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A cartoon in the German magazine Der Spiegel poking fun at India as it becomes more populous than China has been castigated as “racist” by Indian ministers.
The cartoon shows a rickety old Indian train packed with people and swarms of passengers atop it. On a parallel track, a sleek Chinese bullet train is seen with just two drivers, looking surprised at the sight of the Indian train.
According to United Nations projections published on Monday, India has a population of 1,425,775,850, surpassing China for the first time.
Kanchan Gupta, senior adviser to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, tweeted: “Hi Germany, this is outrageously racist. Der Spiegel caricaturing India in this manner has no resemblance to reality. Purpose is to show India down and suck up to China.”
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the minister for electronics and information technology, also reacted angrily, tweeting: “Dear Cartoonist at @derspiegel… Notwithstanding your attempt at mocking India … it’s not smart to bet against India under PM @narendramodi ji…. In a few years India’s economy will be bigger than Germany’s.”
Some Indians pointed out that it was true that during busy festivals when millions of Indians rush to go home, some trains do look like the one in the cartoon.
Western criticism has always rankled Indian governments but under Narendra Modi, the resentment is much sharper.
Any negative coverage, such as the recent BBC documentary, India: The Modi Question, which examined the prime minister’s role in the 2002 anti-Muslim riots, is routinely dismissed as a malicious conspiracy to defame Modi and, by association, India.

In 2021, Modi himself made the same claim during an election rally in Assam, complaining that Indian tea and yoga were being maligned by foreigners.
“These days there are conspiracies against the nation. They are trying to malign the image of Indian tea worldwide. Some documents have revealed that such conspiracy is being hatched by forces sitting in a foreign land,” he said.
Last week, Baijayant Panda, an MP and spokesperson for the ruling Bharatiya Janata party, wrote a column in the Hindustan Times accusing the western media of outright prejudice against India.
Panda accused the media of ignoring India’s progress and, without naming it, singled out the New York Times for what he called its bias and routine India-bashing. He added: “What is peculiar is the abandonment of objectivity in the single-minded pursuit of a predetermined narrative.”
In 2014, the New York Times published a cartoon mocking India’s feat in putting a robotic probe into orbit around Mars. It showed an Indian farmer with a cow knocking at the door of a room marked Elite Space Club. After protests, the newspaper published an apology.

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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

April 25, 2023
House Republicans pass marquee energy bill in rebuke of Biden

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“We just found that a majority of [Democrats] are so extreme that they would rather stand with China and Russia than with the American energy worker,” McCarthy told reporters after the vote. “I am not sure what’s controversial in the bill. I am not sure what’s controversial that you can speed the process up so you can make things in America.”
Democrats Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, who hail from oil and gas producing Texas, voted for the bill, along with Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington and Jared Golden of Maine, while Republican Brian Fitzpatrick voted against it.
Biden has vowed to veto the bill, known as the Lower Energy Costs Act. But elements of the bill, aimed at streamlining permitting rules for energy projects, could serve as the starting point for negotiations on that narrower issue with the Senate, where centrist West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin last year pushed his own plan to ease those regulations.
Republicans designed the bill to do two things at once.
First, they sought to deliver a blow against Biden by repealing provisions of Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, such as the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to boost clean energy and a fee imposed on oil and gas methane emissions.
Republicans contend that the president is recklessly pushing a quick transition away from coal, oil and natural gas toward green-energy sources that China dominates, which would increase dependence on Beijing and other adversaries. The energy bill seeks to address some core Republican energy priorities from the past decade, from disapproving of Biden’s block on the Keystone XL pipeline to mandating more oil and gas lease sales and making it harder for states to block the construction of interstate pipelines that cross their borders.
But the House GOP also sought for the bill to represent an opening bid on the wonky issue of energy permitting — a rare policy area that both parties believe could lead to a bipartisan deal later on with the Senate.
“By showing our strong support, we give some of our Senate Democratic friends an idea of okay, we have a place to work the permitting space particularly,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “Even if it’s not the whole package, these are smart policies whether you are trying to hook up offshore wind or trying to get a gas pipeline from North Dakota to Illinois.”

The GOP bill would overhaul rules for reviews conducted under the bedrock 1970 National Environmental Policy Act for energy infrastructure, ranging from pipelines to clean energy projects and mines, by setting a two-year deadline for major reviews and making it more difficult for environmentalists to sue to stop projects.
But most Democrats and the White House dismissed the Republican bill as doubling down on fossil fuel-centric policies that would benefit global rivals by keeping the U.S. out of the race to compete in industries of the future like electric vehicle manufacturing and clean energy development.
“None of it [the GOP energy agenda] makes sense in this moment,” said Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee. “They ignore the fact it was the high fossil fuel prices that was the primary driver of inflation. What I hear from folks back home is they don’t want to be at the mercy of these gas and oil price spikes. They are looking towards the clean energy economy — greater independence and more money in their pocket.”
In its statement of administration policy opposing the bill, the White House noted that both domestic oil and gas production are set to reach record highs this year as companies have responded to last year’s high prices to bring more supply to the market. Gasoline prices have come down from record highs since the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year but they could be set to rise again this summer during peak driving season.
Republicans, though, counter that their agenda makes more sense in the current moment since Russia’s military aggression underscored the importance of maintaining ample supplies of oil and gas even as the world transitions off fossil fuels.
“It comes down to affordability, it comes down to cleanliness, and it comes down to security,” said Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), who wrote many of the major permitting parts of the bill. “This administration has caused so many problems with their energy strategy, our solution fixes a lot of the problems.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 30, 2023