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Trade Talks Spin Wheels

TPP negotiators report little progress during talks in Singapore. Kyodo News International: "Countries involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade negotiations remained apart over thorny issues, including tariff removal and intellectual property rights, despite efforts to overcome differences at a ministerial gathering on Monday, with the prospects for striking a deal by the end of the current session in Singapore not looking good."

No agreement expected before April. Bernama: "The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) member countries will only be able to conclude the free trade agreement by end April, says Dr Deborah Elms, Head, Temasek Foundation Centre for Trade & Negotiations (TFCTN). 'But even if they concluded by April, no one will see the text of the agreement. I don't think until the end of this year or in early 2015 as it takes a long time for the lawyers to do what's called 'legal scrubbing.'"

Obama's trade agenda undermined by his choice for USTR, argues TNR's Noam Scheiber: "...it’s hard to see the advantage of putting trade policy in the hands of a pro-business technocrat. It’s not the business community that needs reassuring, after all. It’s skeptical elites, to say nothing of a growing majority of voters ... Contrast [Michael] Froman with, say, Ron Bloom, a former investment banker who spent years working for the United Steelworkers union, where he helped revive dozens of steel mills facing liquidation ... Had Obama appointed Bloom rather than Froman as his second trade representative, the administration would have had instant credibility on the left and within the manufacturing community."

Trade deals not even about trade, argues Robert Kuttner: "Smaller Asian nations like the idea of the U.S. as a counterweight to China, but don't want to liberalize their markets. We do need a trade deal to open Asian markets to American exports in exchange for the openness of the U.S. consumer market, but the TPP isn't it ... these deals are mostly not about trade at all. They are about dismantling the mixed economy ... The agenda of global finance, carried out via 'trade' deals, has diverted attention from the real economic issues -- rising inequality and insecurity for ordinary people, the use of globalization as a battering ram to empower capital and weaken labor, and to prevent government interventions from averting financial speculation and collapse."

Obama Reg Drive Hits Supreme Court Today

Obama steps up his regulatory agenda. The Hill: "Just a year into the president’s second term, experts and former administration officials say it is do-or-die time for scores of regulatory initiatives across the federal government that could shape his legacy. So Obama is spurring agencies on ... the biggest obstacle facing Obama’s regulatory agenda isn’t the Republican House, or the opposition of business groups, it’s the calendar. A single federal rule can take years to develop and put in place, consuming significant resources and political capital along the way. Regulators involved in the painstaking process try to use language strong enough to both accomplish the administration’s goals and withstand future legal challenges."

Supreme Court to hear arguments today in case regarding EPA's authority to regulate ability to regulate carbon emissions. AP: "...a court ruling against the EPA almost undoubtedly would be used to challenge every step of the agency’s effort to deal with climate change ... The administration has proposed first-time national standards for new power plants and expects to propose regulations for existing plants this summer ... In the meantime, the only way EPA can compel companies to address global warming pollution is through a permitting program that requires them to analyze the best available technologies to reduce carbon dioxide ... The utility industry, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and 13 states led by Texas are asking the court to rule that the EPA overstepped its authority by trying to regulate greenhouse gas emissions through the permitting program."

Case does not challenge EPA's fundamental authority. National Journal: "On its face the case is pretty narrow. It's not about EPA's underlying authority to regulate heat-trapping emissions, and it's not about upcoming carbon dioxide standards for power plants."

Republican and former EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman defends legality of EPA program, in Politico: "The Clean Air Act is concerned primarily with the federal government’s ability to address a cross-state, complex, nationwide problem — air pollution. Far from constraining the EPA’s authority or requiring it to return to Congress whenever it needs to address a new problem, the law provides the agency with sweeping authority to address new air pollution challenges as they emerge, including the serious threat posed by greenhouse gas emissions."

Breakfast Sides

Dems unfazed by CBO report on minimum wage. The Hill: "'This report is not a major obstacle,' one House Democratic leadership aide said. 'Really the polling is so strong in favor of the minimum wage,' another House Democratic aide said. 'Do centrist Republicans really want to go back to their districts and say they opposed this over some abstract report that lots of economists have criticized? There is just not enough there, there.' ... Senate Democrats say they are going forward with a likely March or early April vote on raising the wage. In the House, Democrats are moving forward as soon as next week with the rollout of a discharge petition that would seek to force a vote in the lower chamber."

Pressure on Obama to curtail deportations. Bloomberg: "Advocates for undocumented immigrants in the U.S. are insisting that President Barack Obama halt most deportations, saying he is expelling people his fellow Democrats would let stay in the country. The change in tactics comes as some Republicans now support a path to legal status -- not citizenship -- for many of the nation’s 12 million undocumented immigrants ... Churches and labor groups, including the AFL-CIO, are using the appearance of common ground to force Obama to change policies that lead to about 1,000 deportations a day..."

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