Tracking the data is important, not only to gauge the economy for your business and home purposes but to understand consumer demand.
The June jobs numbers required some digesting. Remember, bad news for jobs is bad for the economy and bad for consumers who need paychecks to buy meat. On the other hand, bad news for jobs means we’re closer to the Fed easing up on interest rates. The latter will not happen soon but at least the Fed will feel justified in leaving things alone for now.
With dodgy government numbers, no one seems to know if the government processes are that bad or if there is some other reason they have substantially revised key numbers nearly every month for two years.
The Labor Department revised the previous jobs numbers downward 211,000 for a combined April (165,000 to 108,000) and May (272,000 to 218,000) period. Unemployment rose to 4.1% but long-term unemployment rose 166,000 to 1.5 million, 40% more than last year.
Supposedly, the economy generated 206,000 new jobs in June. But 70,000 were government jobs and 82,000 were health care and social assistance jobs, which economist John Carney pointed out are largely taxpayer-supported jobs. So nearly three-quarters of the new jobs were government or government-related jobs. In addition, many new jobs were part-time jobs.
Several seminal Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) decisions came down to the end of the term, affecting basic issues for citizens and particularly for agriculture. WLJ’s Charles Wallace covered the facts of the overturning of the 1984 Chevron decision, the case that ushered in the trend of federal agency overreaching powers in major issues. As the agencies got more bold and were successful in regulating further afield from statutory authority, as governments bureaucracies will do, they piled on more regulations, more fees and angled for ever larger agency budgets.
We asked NCBA how this new opportunity to jerk their chains, so to speak, will play out in practice. Unfortunately, there is no wholesale process or easy procedure for using this decision. Affected industries and companies will have to go through cases one by one, initially ones that cited the Chevron case as justification for agency rulings, to challenge them in court to attempt overturning them.
But this term has the environmental activists licking their wounds, as Chevron’s overturning is just one decision and more challenges are looming next term.
Younger generations do not fathom environmental quality progress since the Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969—for the 13th time. Smog was routine over major cities. But big government regulators never know when to quit.
SCOTUS ruled against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in an Ohio case involving smog pollution crossing state lines.
In the next term, another major case could materially affect the National Environmental Policy Act. The court could set new limits on how federal agencies consider the climate and environmental risks of major projects like highways and pipelines. One case involves shipping oil by rail in Utah, which had been approved by federal agencies.
The D.C. appellate court held that an agency must consider the environmental effects of increased oil drilling and refining producing the oil in the rail cars, even though it lacks authority to regulate oil drilling and refining. The case could result in faster review of fossil fuel projects.
There are requests for certiorari from SCOTUS by multiple parties challenging the EPA’s granting of exemptions allowing California to set its own rules for tailpipe emissions, exceeding federal restrictions. Associations, companies and one request by 17 state attorneys general protest California being granted special treatment, forcing automakers to meet multiple standards. The Trump administration revoked the exemption, but Biden officials reinstated it.
There are also multiple cases involving states trying to hold the oil industry financially responsible for climate change, one of which could end up at SCOTUS.
Another decision will improve business conditions. The court ruled against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), holding that some enforcement actions are entitled to a jury trial in court, rather than automatically being relegated to the SEC’s in-house system. In that system, SEC administrative law judges act as prosecutor, judge and jury, almost always deciding against the citizen. The ruling could affect similar administrative law systems like the National Labor Relations Board, which has issued rulings helping labor unions organize companies, to the detriment of franchised restaurants chains and targeting Walmart.
One SCOTUS case was good news for property rights. A Lake Tahoe homeowner nailed with a $20,000 fee for his building permit as a “traffic impact” fee won his case. — Steve Dittmer, WLJ columnist
(Steve Dittmer is the author of the Agribusiness Freedom Foundation newsletter. Views in the column do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of WLJ or its editorial staff.)
