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Column: What FDR could advise Biden about reforming the Supreme Court — tread lightly

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Column: What FDR could advise Biden about reforming the Supreme Court — tread lightly

If it’s true that as Mark Twain supposedly said, history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes, then we are about to embark on a poetry slam for the ages, with the Supreme Court as its theme.

President Biden on Monday unveiled a package of proposals to rein in a court that has seen public confidence reach a low ebb not recorded by the Gallup Organization in readings dating back to 1973.

Most significantly, he is calling for 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices and the imposition by Congress of binding conduct and ethics rules requiring the justices to “disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.”

Term limits would… make timing for Court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary; and reduce the chance that any single Presidency imposes undue influence for generations to come.

— President Biden on his Supreme Court reform plan

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He is also proposing a constitutional amendment to neutralize a court decision appearing to give former presidents immunity for crimes committed while in office.

The template for these proposals is Franklin Roosevelt’s 1937 plan to “pack” the court by allowing presidents to appoint a new justice when any sitting justice failed to resign or retire within six months of turning 70, up to a maximum of six new justices.

The manifest goal was to dilute the influence of a cadre or conservative justices who had overruled almost every New Deal law or regulation that had come before them, as well as several other measures.

If FDR could counsel Biden today, he might warn him to move carefully; FDR’s court-packing scheme went down in flames amid congressional opposition, cut deeply into the popularity that had brought him a landslide reelection victory in the 1936 election, and brought the New Deal to a screeching halt. It also represented a moment in which FDR lost his unique ability to gauge the popular mood and act upon it.

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The politics of Supreme Court reform today resemble those of 1937 in many ways, though as Twain’s supposed quip suggests, there are significant differences. Let’s look at the differences first.

Roosevelt was then at the outset of his second term, riding high on an electoral victory that may have given him a greater sense of his political omnipotence than he actually possessed. Biden, of course, is less than six months away from the end of his presidency. Roosevelt could look ahead at four more years of policymaking; Biden may be more focused on cementing his legacy of progressive achievements by bequeathing the nation a reformed Supreme Court.

Both presidents may have felt they had nothing to lose by taking on what seemed to be the most revered of the three branches of government, albeit for different reasons — Roosevelt because nothing could chip away at his popularity, Biden because his own term in office can’t be affected by the fate of his reform proposals.

Roosevelt was faulted for springing his scheme on an unsuspecting public and Congress. Notwithstanding public discontent with the court, its reform hadn’t been an issue in the presidential campaign recently ended. FDR had not spoken publicly about the court after a series of anti-New Deal rulings in 1935 and 1936 except after one ruling in which he accused the court of relegating the country to “the horse-and-buggy definition of interstate commerce.”

Instead, he blindsided the nation by announcing his plan in a speech on Feb. 5. To his surprise, voters and legislators — including reliable New Deal supporters on Capitol Hill — reacted with fury.

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It was not merely the secrecy in which the scheme had been plotted that its critics found dismaying. FDR’s stated rationale, which was that the aging justices were overworked and needed help to manage their docket, was transparently deceptive.

That rationale might have looked superficially reasonable at first, since the oldest member of the court’s so-called Four Conservative Horsemen, Willis Van Devanter, had been born during the administration of James Buchanan, which supposedly rendered him utterly out of step with the politics of the 1930s.

However, the oldest justice on the court, Louis Brandeis, was even older — at 80, he had been born during the administration of Franklin Pierce, Buchanan’s predecessor, but nevertheless was the court’s liberal lion and not an impediment to the New Deal.

Biden seems to have absorbed the lessons of FDR’s failed effort. He has been telegraphing for weeks that he is contemplating Supreme Court reforms. His proposals are not as radical as expanding the court outright, but they address some of the most evident issues driving the court’s public standing into the sub-basement: a conservative majority that has shown no respect for values and rights long cherished by most Americans, and a record of financial grifting and overt partisanship, chiefly by conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

As in 1937, there is a sense that the court has taken aim at progressive principles and laws, running roughshod over individual rights.

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The court’s direction has been led by a conservative majority including three judges appointed by Donald Trump — among them Neil M. Gorsuch, who slid into a seat kept open by Senate Republicans’ refusal to even consider Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the late Antonin Scalia’s seat; and Amy Coney Barrett, rushed to confirmation by Senate Republicans in October 2020 only 38 days before the election that would unseat Trump and bring Biden to the White House.

Barrett took the seat vacated by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the most liberal justices ever to sit on the court.

The three Trump judges were in the majority that in 2022 overturned Roe vs. Wade, the decision that had protected women’s reproductive health rights since 1973.

It may be useful to compare the court’s behavior in recent years with what provoked FDR into launching his court-packing scheme.

The court’s distaste for elements of the New Deal was assumed as the Roosevelt administration proceeded to remake the U.S. economy. But it didn’t become palpable until it issued three decisions on May 27, 1935, a date that would become known to progressives as “Black Monday.”

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In the first decision, the court overturned Roosevelt’s ouster of a reactionary member of the Federal Trade Commission, placing a limit on a president’s authority over executive officers. The court then invalidated a farm mortgage law because it applied to existing mortgages, not just new ones. Then came the court’s invalidation of the National Recovery Administration, through which the government had tried to regiment competition throughout the economy to help dig the country out of the Depression.

All three decisions were unanimous, but they still signaled that a conservative cadre was poised to undermine New Deal initiatives due to come before the justices. In 1936, the court narrowed the authority of the Securities and Exchange Commission and invalidated a relief program for coal companies. Most significantly, it overturned a New York minimum wage law in a decision known as Tipaldo, after its detestable protagonist, the owner of a laundry who had been cheating his laundresses of their legal wages.

Condemnation of the Tipaldo decision came from across the entire political spectrum. “If this decision does not outrage the moral sense of the country, then nothing will,” FDR’s Interior secretary, Harold Ickes, wrote in his diary. Conservatives were dismayed that the decision undercut their argument that labor rights should remain in the hands of the states — how could that be, if the Supreme Court had overturned a state minimum wage law?

Roosevelt and his fellow progressives foresaw that the court would invalidate the entire New Deal. For a time, FDR seemed content to let that happen, reasoning that it would help him get a constitutional amendment enacted that would allow Congress to save any law the court deemed unconstitutional by reenacting it. If the court kept overturning the New Deal, he reasoned, there would be “marching farmers and marching miners and marching workingmen throughout the land.”

In the end, he chose to go with the court-packing scheme, recognizing that it fit within the constitutional provision giving Congress the unquestioned right to dictate the size of the court.

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For many Americans today, the court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe vs. Wade has supplanted its 1857 Dred Scott decision as the worst in its history. By relegating abortion to a state-level decision, Dobbs has spawned a patchwork of punitive state laws that have life-threatening ramifications for pregnant women (among many other shortcomings).

Public distaste for Dobbs, as was the case with Tipaldo, has been manifest. Since it was handed down in June 2022, every single state initiative to protect women’s reproductive rights has prevailed at the ballot box. The chief weapons in the antiabortion camp’s quiver have been efforts to stymie referendum and initiative votes by changing the ballot box rules, as has been tried in Florida and Ohio.

Biden’s proposal to establish staggered 18-year terms for justices has several virtues. One is that it would rebalance a court on which GOP appointees are arguably overrepresented. From 1960 through this year, Republicans held the White House for 32 years and Democrats for 31, almost an even split. But in that period, Republicans have appointed 15 justices and Democrats only ten. Under Biden’s proposal, every president would have the opportunity to appoint two justices during each four-year term.

“Term limits would … make timing for Court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary; and reduce the chance that any single Presidency imposes undue influence for generations to come,” the Biden White House says.

The one flaw in the proposal is that it could require a constitutional amendment. The Constitution states that federal justices may serve “during good behavior,” but expert opinion is divided over whether that bars Congress from imposing any other conditions on their service.

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It’s worth noting that the Supreme Court was so unnerved by the groundswell of criticism it faced after Tipaldo that Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes engineered an about-face, orchestrating a 5-4 opinion upholding a Washington state minimum wage law that was almost identical to the New York law it had overturned, also by 5 to 4. That helped to take the wind out of FDR’s scheme. The change would forever be known as “the switch in time that saved nine.” The court never overturned another New Deal initiative.

But few such opportunities for an about-face are on the horizon. The damage this court has done to individual rights and the rule of law is manifest. Biden’s sense is that the time is ripe for reform, and that this time the public may go along.

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Apple is back in Trump's crosshairs over where iPhones are made

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Apple is back in Trump's crosshairs over where iPhones are made

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook can’t seem to catch a break.

Last month, Apple appeared to secure a major win when the Trump administration agreed to remove tariffs on certain electronics imported from China following concerns that the prices of smartphones and computers could rise.

But Trump threw Apple another curveball this week when he expressed frustration about the tech giant producing the iPhone in other parts of Asia.

“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else. If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.,” Trump said in a post Friday on the social network Truth Social.

Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment about Trump’s remarks.

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The public spat underscores the fine line businesses are trying to walk as they try to navigate Trump’s tariffs. Tech companies in particular have to work with the new administration, while also trying to find ways to offset the costs of potential tariffs.

Trump has pushed for companies to build and manufacture products in the United States as part of an effort to strengthen national and economic security.

But shifting production to the United States would take years and result in price hikes for consumers who are already watching their spending, economists and analysts have said.

“We believe the concept of Apple producing iPhones in the U.S. is a fairy tale that is not feasible,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said in a note Friday about Trump’s remarks.

However, Trump told reporters later Friday that he believes Apple can build an iPhone in the United States.

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The tariffs are expected to start in June and would also impact Samsung and other smartphone makers “otherwise it wouldn’t be fair,” he added.

“I had an understanding with Tim that he wouldn’t be doing this. He said he’s going to India to build plants. I said, ‘That’s OK to go to India, but you’re not going to sell into here without tariffs.’ And that’s the way it is,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Apple makes most of its iPhones in China, but in recent years has expanded production in India, Vietnam and other countries.

In the June quarter, Apple expects to source the majority of iPhones sold in the United States from India, Cook said in Apple’s quarterly earnings call in May.

And Foxconn, a Taiwanese electronics contract manufacturer that assembles Apple’s products, is planning to build a $1.5-billion plant in India, the Financial Times reported, citing two anonymous government officials. A representative of Foxconn could not be reached for comment.

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Ives said it would take at least five years for Apple to shift production to the U.S. and the prices of iPhones could reach $3,500 if the smartphone was made in America. Depending on the model, the current cost of an iPhone can start from $599 but go over $1,000.

Tariffs would also make it more expensive to repair an iPhone because the smartphone includes parts that come from suppliers in other countries including China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan, according to iFixit, an ecommerce website focused on repairs. For example, the display for the iPhone 16 Pro comes from South Korea; the battery comes from China.

In total, the iPhone 16 Pro is made up of roughly 2,700 parts sourced from 187 suppliers in 28 countries, according to an April report from TechInsights.

Apple isn’t alone in navigating the potential impact of tariffs. Other U.S. companies including Walmart have said they would raise prices as they face political pressure to eat the costs of tariffs.

Apple is in a tricky spot because if the Cupertino, Calif.-based company raises the prices of iPhones, consumers could just delay buying new electronics, which would also cut into the company’s profits at a time when it is facing heavy competition from rivals in the burgeoning market for AI.

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On top of that, Trump has also criticized companies such as El Segundo toy maker Mattel, which is considering raising prices, and Amazon, which considered showing the cost of tariffs next to some of its products, but didn’t approve the idea.

Cook has previously said that while there’s a popular conception that companies go to China for low labor costs, the reason Apple depends on China is for the skill of its workforce.

“In the U.S., you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields. It’s that vocational expertise that is very deep,” Cook said at the Fortune Global Forum in 2017.

For a time, it seemed that Apple was in Trump’s good graces. The company has garnered praise from Trump when the smartphone maker announced in February that it planned to invest $500 billion in the United States, hire 20,000 people and open a new manufacturing factory in Texas over the next four years.

Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs have meant that businesses such as Apple are also facing economic uncertainty.

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Last week, the U.S. struck a deal with Chinese officials to roll back most tariffs for 90 days. The U.S. agreed to drop the 145% tax Trump imposed on Chinese goods to 30%.

Apple has been monitoring the potential impact of tariffs. In May, Apple estimated that tariffs could add $900 million to the company’s costs, but that assumed new tariffs weren’t added.

On Friday, Apple’s stock dropped roughly 2% to $195.98 per share after Trump’s announcement.

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How South Korea’s next president wants to deal with Trump and his tariffs

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How South Korea’s next president wants to deal with Trump and his tariffs

The winner of South Korea’s upcoming presidential election will be faced with the task of uniting a country riven by political acrimony since the impeachment of former President Yoon Suk Yeol, who sparked national outrage after declaring martial law in December.

But first, they will have to contend with President Trump’s tariffs.

On Wednesday, U.S. and South Korean trade officials kicked off a new round of negotiations aimed at reaching a deal by July 8, when Trump’s 90-day reprieve for his “liberation day” tariffs expires. South Korea faces a 25% reciprocal tariff rate as well as product-specific duties of 25% for steel, aluminum and automobiles — all of which are major exports.

With the election scheduled for June 3, carrying these talks to the finish line will be the first and most pressing agenda item for South Korea’s next president.

For now, officials from the two countries have agreed to expand the talks beyond tariffs rates to include broader topics such as currency exchange rates and economic security — a reflection of Trump’s desire for a sweeping realignment of the U.S.–South Korea relationship that he has described as “one-stop shopping.”

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But there are likely to be further complications.

Trump, who has long griped that South Korea does not pay enough for the upkeep of the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in the country, has expressed a desire to fold defense cost-sharing into the current talks. Writing on his social media site last month, he said that he had discussed “payment for the big time Military Protection we provide to South Korea” with then-acting President Han Duck-soo.

But with Trump having once claimed he would get Seoul to pay $10 billion a year, the topic has been highly sensitive in South Korea, fueling calls for the country’s nuclear self-armament on grounds that the U.S. can no longer be relied upon for military support. There are also concerns in the country that a “package deal” favored by Trump may not work out to Seoul’s advantage.

Here’s what to know about what South Korea’s three leading presidential candidates have said about tariffs and the U.S.-South Korea relationship under Trump.

Lee Jae-myung, a candidate of the ruling Democratic Party, holds a news conference in January.

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(Chung Sung-Jun / Associated Press)

Lee Jae-myung

The former leader of South Korea’s liberal Democratic Party, Lee, 61, is the front-runner in the race, having led by as many as 20 percentage points.

During Trump’s first term, Lee, then the mayor of Seongnam, cautioned against what he called “overly submissive attitudes” in the face of demands that South Korea should pay more for the presence of the U.S. military.

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“Giving up whatever is demanded of us will only lead to us losing everything,” he said. “We need to boldly assert our position.”

Lee echoed those sentiments in a presidential debate Sunday, criticizing Han, the former acting president, for reportedly signaling his willingness to renegotiate the latest defense cost-sharing deal between Seoul and Washington.

Under what is known as the Special Measures Agreement, the U.S. has covered 40% to 50% of the total costs of keeping troops in South Korea, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service.

Under the latest version, which was signed under the outgoing Biden administration and will last from 2026 to 2030, Seoul’s annual contribution in the first year will be $1.19 billion, an 8.3% increase from 2025.

People in military fatigues are seen standing between two blue buildings

A U.S. soldier walks at the Panmunjom border village in Paju, South Korea. President Trump has long complained that South Korea does not pay enough for the upkeep of the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in the country.

(Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)

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Lee, who is running on a platform of pragmatic diplomacy, has also stressed the need to balance South Korea’s relationship with the U.S. against those with regional neighbors such as Russia or China.

“The U.S.-South Korea alliance is important, and we need to expand and develop that in the future — from a security alliance into an economic alliance and a comprehensive alliance,” he said Sunday. “But that does not mean we can rely exclusively on the U.S.-South Korea alliance.”

While describing Trump’s tariffs as the “campaign of a madman,” Lee has also indicated a willingness to discuss a package deal that spans Trump’s Alaska natural gas pipeline project, the defense cost issue and cooperation in shipbuilding.

Lee’s camp has said that if elected, he will begin his term by seeking an extension of Trump’s 90-day grace period for the tariffs.

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“If we win the election we will need time to closely examine the issues at the center of the trade relationship with the U.S. as well as any progress made on the tariff negotiations and come up with alternatives,” an official from Lee’s camp told the South Korean newspaper Donga Ilbo last week.

Kim Moon-soo shakes hands with a woman in a crowd.

South Korea’s People Power Party’s presidential candidate Kim Moon-soo campaigns Tuesday in Seoul.

(Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)

Kim Moon-soo

A distant second in the polls, Kim, 73, served as labor minister under the impeached Yoon and is the conservative People Power Party’s nominee.

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Staying true to the South Korean right’s self-identification as the staunchly pro-U.S. political camp, Kim has accused Lee of seeking to curry favor with China at the expense of the U.S.-South Korea relationship.

“Your comments in the past would be considered appalling from the perspective of the U.S.,” he told Lee at the debate Sunday.

A person in a crowd wears an alien mask.

Participants march to the headquarters of the People Power Party in Seoul during a December 2024 rally to demand South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment.

(Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)

Unlike Lee, who has warned against rushing into a trade deal in favor of a slower and more strategic approach, Kim has said that he would immediately set up a U.S.-South Korea summit to ink a deal before July 8, if he is elected president.

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“I will make sure that tariffs against South Korea are either removed or the lowest out of any country in the world,” he said at a recent rally.

To this end, Kim has cast himself as the candidate with the greatest chance of winning over Trump.

During his party’s primary debates in April, when asked by the moderator whether he would wear a MAGA hat if Trump requested it during any tariff negotiations, Kim responded: “I would do even more, I would even wear a jumper if he asked.”

“The most important thing in negotiating with President Trump is trust,” he said Sunday. “Only when both sides can trust each other can the U.S.-South Korea alliance be strengthened, and I am the one who has the most favorable and trusting relationship with President Trump.”

Asia markets index of Japan, South Korea and Australia is seen on a screen

A currency trader works at the foreign exchange dealing room of KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul last month.

(Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)

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On defense cost-sharing, Kim has struck a noticeably more acquiescent tone than Lee: At a meeting Monday of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea, he said that he would be willing to accept a hike in Seoul’s contribution.

“The global order and trade environment is rapidly changing. In order to overcome these crises, it is critical that we strengthen positive cooperation and the U.S.-South Korea alliance,” he said. “I will establish common ground between the two countries through comprehensive negotiations and find a win-win solution for both.”

Lee Jun-seok jogs in the street flanked by several men.

Lee Jun-seok, the presidential candidate of the New Reform Party, center, runs to attend a campaign event Saturday in Seoul.

(Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)

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Lee Jun-seok

Polling around 10%, the 40-year old candidate from the conservative Reform Party faces long odds for the presidency.

Still, he has emphatically rejected repeated calls to form a unity ticket, presenting himself as the younger, shrewder and less doctrine-driven alternative to what he has criticized as the old-hat conservatism of those such as Kim.

At the debate Sunday, Lee Jun-seok called for “careful calculation” in navigating the U.S.-South Korea relationship under Trump, while emphasizing the need to demonstrate that South Korea is not just a trading partner but also an important strategic ally to Washington.

Yet when it comes to tariffs, he has also openly called Trump’s bluff.

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“I think we have to bet on the fact that Trump will eventually find that it’s difficult to maintain this situation,” he said on a YouTube political talk show last month, citing the economic pressures that tariffs against China will create for Trump’s heartland supporters.

“What Trump is advancing isn’t sustainable…. My view is that, it’s likely that Trump will admit defeat as soon as within the next six months.”

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CalRecycle drafts revised plastic recycling rules that are more friendly to industry

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CalRecycle drafts revised plastic recycling rules that are more friendly to industry

State waste officials have taken another stab at rules implementing a landmark plastic waste law, more than two months after Gov. Gavin Newsom torpedoed their initial proposal.

CalRecycle, the state agency that oversees waste management, recently proposed a new set of draft regulations to implement SB 54, the 2022 law designed to reduce California’s single-use plastic waste. The law was designed to shift the financial onus of waste reduction from the state’s people, towns and cities to the companies and corporations that make the polluting products. It was also intended to reduce the amount of single-use plastics that end up in California’s waste stream.

The draft regulations proposed last week largely mirror the ones introduced earlier this year, which set the rules, guidelines and parameters of the program — but with some minor and major tweaks.

The new ones clarify producer obligations and reporting timelines, said organizations representing packaging and plastics companies, such as the Circular Action Alliance and the California Chamber of Commerce.

But they also include a broad set of exemptions for a wide variety of single-use plastics — including any product that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have jurisdiction over, which includes all packaging related to produce, meat, dairy products, dog food, toothpaste, condoms, shampoo and cereal boxes, among other products.

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The rules also leave open the possibility of using chemical or alternative recycling as a method for dealing with plastics that can’t be recycled via mechanical means, said people representing environmental, recycling and waste hauling companies and organizations.

California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, filed a suit against ExxonMobil last year that, in part, accuses the oil giant of deceptive claims regarding chemical recycling, which the company disputes.

Critics say the introduction of these exemptions and the opening for polluting recycling technologies will undermine and kneecap a law that just three years ago Newsom’s office described as “nation-leading” and “the most significant overhaul of the state’s plastic and packaging policy in history.”

The “gaping hole that the new exemptions have blown” into the bill make it unworkable, practically unfundable, and antithetical to its original purpose of reducing plastic waste, said Heidi Sanborn, director of the National Stewardship Action Council.

Last March, after nearly three years of negotiations among various corporate, environmental, waste, recycling and health stakeholders, CalRecycle drafted a set of finalized regulations designed to implement the single-use plastic producer responsibility program under SB 54.

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But as the deadline for implementation approached, industries that would be affected by the regulations including plastic producers and packaging companies — represented by the California Chamber of Commerce and the Circular Action Alliance — began lobbying the governor, complaining the regulations were poorly developed and might ultimately increase costs for California taxpayers.

Newsom allowed the regulations to expire and told CalRecycle it needed to start the process over.

Daniel Villaseñor, a spokesman for the governor, said Newsom was concerned about the program’s potential costs for small businesses and families, which a state analysis estimated could run an extra $300 per year per household.

He said the new draft regulations “are a step in the right direction” and they ensure “California’s bold recycling law can achieve its goal of cutting plastic pollution,” said Villaseñor in a statement.

John Myers, a spokesman for the California Chamber of Commerce, whose members include the American Chemistry Council, Western Plastics Assn. and the Flexible Packaging Assn., said the chamber was still reviewing the changes.

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CalRecycle is holding a workshop next Tuesday to discuss the draft regulations. Once CalRecycle decides to finalize the regulations, which experts say could happen at any time, it moves into a 45-day official rule-making period during which the regulations are reviewed by the Office of Administrative Law. If it’s considered legally sound and the governor is happy, it becomes official.

The law, which was authored by state Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) and signed by Newsom in 2022, requires that by 2032, 100% of single-use packaging and plastic foodware produced or sold in the state must be recyclable or compostable, that 65% of it can be recycled, and that the total volume is reduced by 25%.

The law was written to address the mounting issue of plastic pollution in the environment and the growing number of studies showing the ubiquity of microplastic pollution in the human body — such as in the brain, blood, heart tissue, testicles, lungs and various other organs.

According to one state analysis, 2.9 million tons of single-use plastic and 171.4 billion single-use plastic components were sold, offered for sale or distributed during 2023 in California.

Most of these single-use plastic packaging products cannot be recycled, and as they break down in the environment — never fully decomposing — they contribute to the growing burden of microplastics in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the soil that nourishes our crops.

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The law falls into a category of extended producer responsibility laws that now regulate the handling of paint, carpeting, batteries and textiles in California — requiring producers to see their products throughout their entire life cycle, taking financial responsibility for their products’ end of life.

Theoretically such programs, which have been adopted in other states, including Washington, Oregon and Colorado, spur technological innovation and potentially create circular economies — where products are designed to be reused, recycled or composted.

Sanborn said the new exemptions not only potentially turn the law “into a joke,” but will also dry up the program’s funding and instead put the financial burden on the consumer and the few packaging and single-use plastic manufacturers that aren’t included in the exemptions.

“If you want to bring the cost down, you’ve got to have a fair and level playing field where all the businesses are paying in and running the program. The more exemptions you give, the less funding there is, and the less fair it is,” she said.

In addition, because of the way residential and commercial packaging waste is collected, “it’s all going to get thrown away together, so now you have less funding” to deal with the same amount of waste, but for which only a small number of companies will be accountable for sorting out their material and making sure it gets disposed of properly.

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Others were equally miffed, including Allen, the bill’s author, who said in a statement that while there are some improvements in the new regulations, there are “several provisions that appear to conflict with law,” including the widespread exemptions and the allowance of polluting recycling technologies.

“If the purpose of the law is to reduce single-use plastic and plastic pollution,” said Anja Brandon from the Ocean Conservancy, these new regulations aren’t going to do it — they are “inconsistent with the law and fully undermine its purpose and goal.”

Nick Lapis with Californians Against Waste said his organization was “really disappointed to see the administration caving to industry on some core parts of this program,” and also noted his read suggests many of the changes don’t comply with the law.

Next Tuesday, the public will have an opportunity to express concerns at a rulemaking workshop in Sacramento.

However, Sanborn fears there will be little time or appetite from the agency or the governor’s office to make substantial changes to the new regulations.

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“They’re basically already cooked,” said Sanborn, noting CalRecycle had already accepted public comments during previous rounds and iterations.

“California should be the leader at holding the bar up in this space,” she said. “I’m afraid this has dropped the bar very low.”

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