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Tuesday, February 11, 2025

How Trump’s Canadian Oil Tariff Would Hit U.S. Refineries - The New York Times

How Trump’s Canadian Oil Tariff Would Hit America’s Heartland

Steam rising from an oil refinery in the foreground. A metal lattice structure is visible behind the steam.
BP’s refinery in Whiting, Ind., is among the U.S. refineries that are most dependent on Canadian oil.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

"The largest refinery in the Midwest will have an unpalatable choice if President Trump imposes tariffs on Canadian oil: Pay more for the crude that it transforms into gasoline and diesel, or slash production.

Both options threaten to increase prices at the pump, albeit modestly if Mr. Trump sticks with the 10 percent rate he announced this month.

It is not clear whether the tariff will take effect after Mr. Trump decided to hold it in abeyance until at least early March.

Yet this refinery, built around 1889 on the south shore of Lake Michigan, near Chicago, is a reminder of just how difficult it can be to undo trade ties that go back decades.

Mr. Trump, like many American leaders before him, appears to be yearning for a kind of energy independence that experts say is impractical and would not benefit individuals or the oil industry.

“We don’t need their oil and gas,” Mr. Trump said last month, referring to Canada. “We have more than anybody.”

It boils down to this: No matter how much oil the United States pumps — and it already is the top producer in the world by far — its refineries were designed to run on a blend of different types of oil. Many can’t function well without the darker, denser, cheaper crude that is hard to find domestically.

Canada is flush with that oil, known as heavy crude. And facilities like this one, BP’s refinery in Whiting, Ind., were built around that supply.

Companies have little reason to spend billions of dollars reconfiguring their systems for trade policy that may be fleeting. Not to mention there is uncertainty about the trajectory of global demand for gasoline and diesel, which some experts think could peak in the next decade as more people buy electric cars as well as trucks that run on natural gas and other fuels.

“You can’t turn the Titanic on a dime, and the industry is kind of the same way,” said Rick Weyen, a retired refining executive who worked at the Whiting refinery for several years in the 1980s and ’90s.

Whiting, a facility of tanks, towers and more than 800 miles of pipelines, is among the most dependent in the country on Canadian oil. On any given day, between 65 percent and three-quarters of the crude flowing through it is of the dark, viscous variety found in the oil sands of Alberta. The rest is lighter, and much of it can come from Texas, New Mexico and other U.S. states.

Two glass bottles of oil, one containing heavy oil and one light oil.
Many U.S. refineries can’t function well without the darker, denser crude that is hard to find domestically.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

BP can tweak its recipe — but only so much. Too little of the viscous stuff and the company would need to cut back its production of the fuels that power cars, trucks and airplanes. The refinery normally makes enough gasoline in a day to fuel more than seven million cars, or about 3 percent of the gas-powered vehicles on American roads.

The oil and gas industry, which was one of Mr. Trump’s biggest supporters in last year’s election, has urged him to exempt energy from the tariffs on Canada, saying the taxes could cause prices at the pump to rise. (During the campaign, Mr. Trump pledged to slash people’s energy bills by more than half.)

“It’s not as simple as switching things out,” said Chet Thompson, chief executive of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, a trade association.

In a sign that Mr. Trump heard the industry, which gave more than $75 million to his campaign, he lowered the planned tariff on Canadian energy imports to 10 percent, from 25 percent.

At that level, some consumers may see gasoline prices rise a few cents, but analysts said much of the added cost would be absorbed by Canadian oil producers and U.S. refiners that are effectively locked into doing business with each other. The effects could be more severe if Canada were to retaliate against Mr. Trump’s trade policies by making its oil more expensive, such as by imposing an export tax.

President Trump “was supposed to be bringing the prices down,” said Kelsi Thomas, a special education classroom assistant in Illinois.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

A concurrent tariff on Mexican oil, even at 25 percent, is widely expected to be less disruptive on this side of the border because the United States imports less Mexican oil and the Gulf Coast refineries that use it have access to more alternatives than the refineries in the Midwest.

Hours before the tariffs were set to take effect, Mr. Trump put them on hold for at least 30 days in exchange for stepped-up border security measures from Canada and Mexico.

A White House spokesman, Kush Desai, said in a statement that the deals demonstrated the president’s “commitment to using every lever of executive power to put Americans and America First.”

Amid the uncertainty, Kelsi Thomas, a 23-year-old special-education classroom assistant, was trying to figure out what a North American trade war might mean for her. Gas prices — $3.10 a gallon last week at her local Love’s outside Chicago — were top of mind.

“He was supposed to be bringing the prices down,” she said of Mr. Trump.

Refining companies, many of which reported year-end earnings in recent weeks, have sought to reassure investors that they are prepared come what may.

“Studying tariffs has been at the top of the list of things that we’ve been doing,” Maryann Mannen, chief executive of the fuel-making giant Marathon Petroleum, told Wall Street analysts last week.

“It’s likely,” Ms. Mannen added, “that we would see cost increases. We believe that the majority of that will ultimately be borne by the producer and then, frankly, to a lesser extent, the consumer.”

The day after Mr. Trump said he was putting the levies on hold, Marathon Petroleum’s stock price climbed nearly 7 percent.

“Whatever’s got to be done to make the country better is fine with me,” said Connie Salas, a Republican who owns a flower shop in Whiting.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

BP invited a reporter and a photographer to tour the Whiting refinery last week but canceled a planned interview with the refinery’s top executive.

In a statement, the executive, Chris DellaFranco, said, “We plan for every scenario.”

As with so much else these days, people’s feelings about the prospect of tariffs often track how they see the president himself.

Connie Salas, a Republican who owns a flower shop in Whiting, brushed off the risk that she may soon have to pay more for plants like azaleas and cyclamen, or to fill up her delivery truck.

“The fact that the prices have been ranging around the $3 mark, if it goes up to $3.50, no big deal,” Ms. Salas, 77, said of gasoline. “Whatever’s got to be done to make the country better is fine with me.”

Humberto Martinez, a retired Whiting refinery worker, expressed more concern about Mr. Trump’s trade policy. He voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris.

“My pension from BP doesn’t go up,” Mr. Martinez, 75, said. “What I’m scared of is I’m not going to be able to afford the same lifestyle.”

How Trump’s Canadian Oil Tariff Would Hit U.S. Refineries - The New York Times

Monday, February 10, 2025

Outrage after JD Vance claims judges are not allowed to check executive power | Trump administration | The Guardian

Outrage after JD Vance claims judges are not allowed to check executive power

Vice-President JD Vance
Vice-President JD Vance speaks in the press briefing room at the White House, on 30 January. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP

(JD Vance is incredibly dishonest and ignorant.)


JD Vance, the US vice-president, has been accused of threatening the US constitution after telling judges who have issued rulings temporarily blocking some of Donald Trump’s most contentious executive orders that they “aren’t allowed” to control the president’s “legitimate power”.

Vance’s intervention came after Judge Paul Engelmayer, a US district court judge, issued an injunction stopping Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) unit from accessing the treasury department’s central payment system in search of supposed corruption and waste.

Engelmayer’s ruling triggered an angry riposte from Vance, a graduate of Yale law school, who claimed judges had no legal right to restrain the president’s agenda and compared it to telling a military commander how to act on the battlefield.

“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,” he wrote.

“If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

In fact, article III of the US constitution confers a power known as judicial review, which gives federal judges the authority to rule on cases involving the president, as well as other branches of government.

Vance’s comments drew widespread criticism.

Daniel Goldman, a Democrat representative from New York, responded on X: “It’s called the ‘rule of law. Our constitution created three co-equal branches of government to provide checks and balances on each other (‘separation of powers’).

“The judiciary makes sure that the executive follows the law. If you do, then you won’t have problems.”

Quinta Jurecic, a fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank, told the New York Times: “What Vance’s wording suggests is that the executive could potentially respond to a court order by saying to the court, ‘You’re unconstitutionally intruding on my authority and I’m not going to do what you say.’

“At that point, the constitution falls apart.”

Trump has previously been happy to embrace rulings on his actions by judges if they ruled in his favor. He has frequently applauded Aileen Cannon, a Florida judge he appointed in his first presidency, for her orders restricting the investigation into him carried out by the former special counsel, Jack Smith.

The injunction against Doge for seizing treasury information was granted after 19 attorneys generals in Democratic states filed a lawsuit. It complained that Musk’s entry into the treasury system – which holds the bank accounts and social security numbers of millions of Americans – was unlawful. A hearing has been set for 14 February.

The payments system processes trillions of dollars of government spending and handles multiple functions, including tax refunds, social security payments and benefits for Medicare and Medicaid.

The ruling also provoked an outburst from Musk, the multi-billionaire entrepreneur whose attempt to seize control of public spending has been denounced as a coup by Democrats.

“A corrupt judge protecting corruption. He needs to be impeached NOW!” posted Musk.

Trump joined the criticism, telling journalists onboard Air Force One en route to the Super Bowl in New Orleans on Sunday that “we’re very disappointed with the judges that would make such a ruling, but we have a long way to go”.

He indicated his administration was prepared to fight negative rulings. “No judge should frankly be allowed to make that kind of a decision. It’s a disgrace.”

Engelmayer’s ruling is one of nine court orders issued against the administration in response to around 40 separate cases filed as the federal courts have emerged as the main bulwark against Trump’s headlong rush to remake the US government federal bureaucracy and assert his vision of an imperial presidency.

Court orders have temporarily stayed Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants, as well as his bid to transfer transgender female inmates to male-only prisons. Judges have also delayed White House attempts to freeze up to $3tn in federal spending and uncover the identities of FBI agents who worked on the investigation into the January 6 insurrection, as well as Doge’s efforts to cajole federal workers into submitting deferred resignations.

Last Friday, a Washington district court paused the attempt to put 2,200 staff from USAid, the foreign assistance agency, on administrative leave and recall its overseas workers within 30 days. The judge, Carl Nichols, also ordered the temporary reinstatement of 500 staff previously put on leave."

Outrage after JD Vance claims judges are not allowed to check executive power | Trump administration | The Guardian

Trump says he’ll impose 25% tariffs on all steel, aluminum imports - The Washington Post

Trump says he will impose 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports

"The president, who has threatened and delayed other tariffs, said he will announce the measures Monday. Canada and Mexico are among the top U.S. steel suppliers.

Trucks carrying vehicles and steel drive into the United States from Mexico in San Diego on Feb. 1. (Apu Gomes/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump said he will announce a 25 percent tariff on all steel and aluminum imports Monday, and that he plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on U.S. trading partners later this week.

“Any steel coming into the United States is going to have a 25 percent tariff,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday. “Aluminum, too.”

Last year, Canada was the top steel supplier to the United States, followed by Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Vietnam, according to data from the American Iron and Steel Institute.

The United States also gets about two-thirds of its primary aluminum from Canada,according to the Aluminum Association. Primary aluminum is produced directly from mined ore.

Separately, Trump said he will announce reciprocal tariffs, probably on Tuesday or Wednesday, affecting all U.S. trading partners. “Very simply, if they charge us, we charge them,” Trump said, adding that they will go into effect “almost immediately.”

Trump has made several confrontational trade-related threats since he took office.

Last month, he announced tariffs on goods from Colombia but backed off after the country agreed to continue accepting deportation flights. His tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico were deferred for 30 days after the countries agreed to intensify efforts to block the flow of illicit drugs and migrants.

Last week, Trump’s 10 percentage point increase in tariffs on Chinese goods came into effect, prompting the announcement of retaliatory measures from Beijing.

“Canadian steel and aluminum support key industries in the U.S. from defence, shipbuilding and auto,” Canadian Innovation, Science and Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said on X.

The Canadian Steel Producers Association said the tariffs would devastate the sector and its workers. In a statement, it urged the government to fight back. “While the target of Canadian steel and aluminum is completely baseless and unwarranted, we must retaliate immediately,” it said.

In 2018, during his first term, Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum, which resulted in retaliation from U.S. allies, including Canada and the European Union.

The previous 25 percent tariff on steel and 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports from Canada and Mexico were lifted in 2019 after a deal. They were welcomed by some U.S. companies that produce the metals and benefited from protections but were harmful for other companies, which had to buy metals at higher prices.

Trump’s latest plan for reciprocal tariffs, by unilaterally overhauling the existing U.S. tariff structure, could run afoul of its commitments to the World Trade Organization and would upend global trade patterns.

WTO members are required to offer the same tariff rates to all other members, with a few exceptions such as in cases of national security. Adopting a reciprocal system would result in varying tariff rates for different trading partners.

One former U.S. trade negotiator said the president’s plan would represent the most significant trade policy change since the late 1940s.

“Moving away from what is known as ‘unconditional MFN’ where each WTO member pledges to give to every other member the lowest rate they offer to any country is the biggest change in global trade since” 1947, John Veroneau, a partner at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., told The Washington Post last week.

Matt Viser contributed to this report."

Trump says he’ll impose 25% tariffs on all steel, aluminum imports - The Washington Post

Trump Killed a Major Report on Nature. They’re Trying to Publish It Anyway. - The New York Times

Trump Killed a Major Report on Nature. They’re Trying to Publish It Anyway.

"The first full draft of the assessment, on the state of America’s land, water and wildlife, was weeks from completion. The project leader called the study “too important to die.”

A bee on an orange flower.
Each of the 12 chapters in the assessment was written by a team of a dozen or so specialists. Karsten Moran for The New York Times

The draft was almost ready for submission, due in less than a month. More than 150 scientists and other experts had collectively spent thousands of hours working on the report, a first-of-its-kind assessment of nature across the United States.

But President Trump ended the effort, started under the Biden administration, by executive order. So, on Jan. 30, the project’s director, an environmental scientist named Phil Levin, sent an email telling members of his team that their work had been discontinued.

But it wasn’t the only email he sent that day.

“This work is too important to die,” Dr. Levin wrote in a separate email to the reports’ authors, this one from his personal account. “The country needs what we are producing.”

Now key experts who worked on the report, called the National Nature Assessment, are figuring out how to finish and publish it outside the government, according to interviews with nine of the leading authors.

“There’s an amazingly unanimous broad consensus that we ought to carry on with the work,” said Howard Frumkin, a professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Washington School of Public Health who was leading a chapter on nature’s effects on human health and well-being.

The study was intended to measure how the nation’s lands, water and wildlife are faring, how they are expected to change, and what that means for people.

Most of the 12 chapters were written by teams of a dozen or so specialists. While some were federal employees, a vast majority of the authors came from outside government — academia, nonprofit groups and the private sector — and they were already volunteering their time. Most or all the teams were expecting to continue their work, the authors said.

The first completed draft had been due Feb. 11. When the researchers were told the project had been canceled, some had almost finished their chapters and were simply polishing. Others had been racing against the deadline.

Rajat Panwar, a professor of responsible and sustainable business at Oregon State University who was leading the chapter on nature and the economy, was preparing slides to present his section when he got the news. He said the team he recruited saw, and still sees, the work as a calling to help solve one of its generation’s most pressing problems, the loss of nature and biodiversity.

“The dependence of the economy on nature,” a theme explored in his group’s 6,000-word chapter, “is understated and understudied and underappreciated,” Dr. Panwar said. 

But the effort to publish outside the government raised major questions that are under discussion. What is the best way to publish? How will the authors ensure rigor and peer-review? Who is their target audience? Since federal employees will not be able to continue, who will pay for certain critical coordinating roles? Who will provide the oversight that came from a federal steering committee?

And perhaps the trickiest question: How can the report maintain the stature and the influence of a government assessment now that it won’t be released by the government?

“We just want to make sure that whatever product is produced really has the potential to move the needle on the conversations, all the way from the dinner table in individual families to the halls of Congress,” said Chris Field, director of the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University, who was leading the chapter on nature and climate change.

Legal issues related to ownership of the work should not be a problem, said Peter Lee, a professor of law at the University of California, Davis, who specializes in intellectual property law and was not involved in the effort.

“As a general rule, government works are not subject to copyright,” Mr. Lee said.

The draft was developed under the auspices of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the same federal group that oversees national climate assessments. But while those reports are mandated by Congress, the nature assessment received authority through an executive order issued by President Biden.

That left the project more vulnerable. It became one of a slew of Biden-era environmental orders that Mr. Trump revoked on his first day in office. Mr. Trump has also frozen climate spending, begun withdrawing the United States from the main global pact to tackle climate change and launched an assault on wind energy while seeking to expand fossil fuels.

By the end of January, the federal web page for the National Nature Assessment had been taken down.

“Nature supports our economy, our health and well-being, national security and safety from fire and floods,” said Dr. Levin, the former director of the report. “The loss of the National Nature Assessment means that we’re losing important information that we need to ensure that nature and people thrive.”

Dr. Levin declined to comment on the report’s future.

The Trump administration did not address questions about why it canceled the effort. But Anna Kelly, a spokeswoman for the White House, said Mr. Trump would “unleash America’s energy potential” and “simultaneously ensure that our nation’s land and water can be enjoyed for generations to come.”

Christopher Schell, an assistant professor of ecology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the lead author of a chapter called “Nature and Equity in the U.S.,” said he believed that a focus on environmental justice made the assessment more of a target for the Trump administration, which has attacked diversity, equity and inclusion programs and placed workers from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Justice on leave.

Biodiversity, the variety of life on Earth, is declining faster than at any time in human history, according to a landmark global scientific assessment. The National Nature Assessment was intended to provide a much more robust picture of the state of play for the United States, the authors said.

Danielle Ignace, an associate professor in the department of forest resources at the University of Minnesota and the lead author of a chapter on the drivers of change in nature, said her team felt the importance of the work more strongly than ever.

“It’s a calling to this cause to see this through,” Dr. Ignace said. “We’re not going to stop.”

Trump Killed a Major Report on Nature. They’re Trying to Publish It Anyway. - The New York Times

Sunday, February 09, 2025

'Constitutional crisis': Sen. Booker reacts to possibility that Elon Mus...

Holding Musk Accountable: Rep. Ro Khanna on Stopping DOGE’s “Unconstitutional” Power Grab | Democracy Now!



Holding Musk Accountable: Rep. Ro Khanna on Stopping DOGE’s “Unconstitutional” Power Grab | Democracy Now!

Relief for immigrants as legal services restored after Trump-induced chaos | US immigration | The Guardian

Relief for immigrants as legal services restored after Trump-induced chaos

"Asylum seekers and others have better access to their legal rights after a court temporarily lifts a stop-work order

people cross a bridge
Pedestrians at the entrance to the Paso del Norte International Bridge in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on 1 February 2025. Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty Images

Immigrants and asylum seekers caught up in Donald Trump’s mass enforcement crackdown will at least have a better chance at knowing their legal rights – for now – after a court intervened to restore some vital advice services.

Last month, the federal government issued a stop-work order targeting programs that provide information and guidance to people facing deportation, via services such as independent legal help desks.

But the administration was promptly sued and a temporary court order was issued that restarted four programs that had been abruptly halted by the Department of Justice.

Even though short-lived, that unexpected break in legal services took its toll, after a chaotic week and a half of furloughs, cancelled detention visits and general confusion created a domino effect of inefficiencies within the US’s overloaded immigration court system.

The temporary court order restoring business as usual may be just that – temporary – as the Trump administration and its allies continue to fixate on attacking the few federal programs that secure some semblance of due process for immigrants.

“Often the people providers meet with are fleeing violence. They are just trying to protect their families and stay with their communities. They’re just trying to attend church, they’re just trying to attend school. So I don’t know in what world this makes sense,” said Kel White, associate director of learning and development at the Acacia Center for Justice, which administers the four programs targeted by the justice department’s stop-work order.

Across the US, about two-thirds of people fighting in the courts against being forced to repatriate are unrepresented. Some are behind bars in remote, isolated facilities with restricted access to the internet. And they have no right to appointed counsel, like in the criminal court system, which makes hiring an attorney a costly and often untenable prospect.

So when contracted legal service providers received the justice department’s order to pause three federally funded legal orientation programs and one legal representation program on 22 January, some of the country’s most vulnerable people lost access to their first or only touchpoints with credible legal advice.

“What we’re really concerned about is that this is perhaps more intentional and part of a broader effort to ensure that people don’t have access to information, and don’t have access to counsel,” said Laura St John, legal director for the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project.

On the ground, fallout was swift: posters with details about where to receive legal help were pulled down at detention centers. Organizations serving immigrants were denied permission to do group presentations for detainees, even on their own dime.

Vulnerable children traveling alone were no longer being assigned lawyers. And even as affected legal service providers sued for reinstatement of the programs – in a separate lawsuit from one that ultimately restored operations – some were also being forced to consider layoffs.

“Why create these inefficiencies? Why impact our communities in this way?” White asked. “These are very basic, simple programs that provide essential information about due process.”

When, for example, the Florence project gives group legal orientations to detainees in Arizona, presenters start with the fundamentals: why people are detained, what they should expect in the courtroom, and what the judge’s and government attorney’s roles are. They also describe non-citizens’ rights during hearings. Then they explain eligibility requirements for a vast array of immigration pathways – all the way up to US citizenship.

“It’s making sure people understand what’s available to them, but also when there is nothing available, which does happen with some regularity, that people don’t waste their time, effort and energy fighting for a case that doesn’t exist,” St John said.

Similarly, in Chicago, the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) runs a court help desk – one of many nationwide – where people in immigration proceedings arrive knowing very little. So help desk staff do information sessions, file mandatory forms before deadlines and keep immigrants from being wrongly deported through appeals. Overwhelmed judges and court personnel often refer confused families their way.

“Taking away the immigration court help desk, the legal orientation programs, all of this is really engineered to create the kind of chaos that will lead to unlawful deportations,” said Azadeh Erfani, policy director at the NIJC.

One of the documents the NIJC’s staffers often help to file updates someone’s outdated or erroneous court location, so that, for instance, a mother with a five-year-old child doesn’t have to drop everything and travel from Chicago to Denver for court – or worse, miss her court date and be ordered to leave the country as a no-show.

Without programs like the NIJC’s, untold numbers of immigrants and asylum seekers would probably be deported without ever seeing a judge, all because of an unfiled form.

“I think what’s lost sometimes is that people have risked their lives to get to this point,” said Adela Mason, director for two of the targeted orientation programs at Acacia. “They’ve traveled across multiple countries, often in life-threatening circumstances. People aren’t trying to evade their court date. They’ve fought for sometimes years to get before a judge and present their claim.

“And so for them to lose that opportunity … because they didn’t know that they had to fill out X form as part of asking to change their case to X city, it’s just so unjust.”

During the programs’ freeze, legal service providers got very little information from the justice department. Even now, some detention centers have delayed rescheduling visits. Legal providers are having to renegotiate to get their informational posters back on the walls, and they are still waiting for rosters to know who is new to the facilities where they are contracted for orientations.

Meanwhile, some organizations are bringing back whiplashed staff members who were just furloughed, and judges will need to reschedule court dates after missed consultations.

“We’re celebrating that we are back providing services to our immigrant community who needs those services, and to our courts who need that efficiency,” White said. “But we are living in a world of uncertainty now.”

Relief for immigrants as legal services restored after Trump-induced chaos | US immigration | The Guardian