Trump's trade policy under fire amid scramble for virus supplies

BY NIV ELIS - THE HILL 04/18/20 

The shortage of key medical supplies and equipment in the coronavirus pandemic has shined a light on President Trump's trade policy, which critics say lacks a clear strategy and has exacerbated an already difficult situation.

The shortages of N95 respirator masks, gowns, sanitizer and other protective gear exposed supply chain vulnerabilities that some experts say could have been avoided.

“What we have is chaos. What we need is a plan, and it starts by just figuring out what our domestic supply and demand are,” said David Kendall, senior fellow for health and fiscal policy at Third Way.

The administration has faced criticism from both the left and the right on individual actions it’s taken regarding trade policy and medical supplies, though the lack of a clear plan has been a recurring theme.

"Every government should be considering what are the essential needs in their countries for their residents and how to try to meet them," said Lori Wallach, the director of the left-leaning Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.

"That is why it was disconcerting to learn the Department of Commerce in January and February, knowing that COVID-19 was headed our way, was actually encouraging manufacturers to export them to China," she added.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), who chairs the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, accused the Commerce Department of encouraging companies to take advantage of China's move to lower import restrictions at the time, even as the threat of coronavirus was ramping up.

When comparing exports of face masks to China this February and last February, for example, exports to China increased a staggering 2,179 percent, while imports dropped 24 percent, according to Public Citizen’s data.

Only more recently, Wallach says, did the government begin implementing export reviews based on public health needs

Wallach points to Germany as an example of how the system should function, with a national agency coordinating between public health agencies, states and manufacturers to assess and ensure supply.

"That level of supply management based on coordinating demands is how it’s done when it’s done right. That is not necessarily how it’s being done here in the U.S.," Wallach said.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has complained that states are bidding against one another and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, raising prices and hampering procurement efforts.

Just this week, the U.S. International Trade Commission said it would investigate key imported products and produce a report by April 30 at the request of Congress.

The announcement was in response to a request by House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) earlier in April.

"We are keenly aware that our challenges are being severely exacerbated by disruptions and deficiencies in our supply of equipment, inputs, and substances needed for treating and otherwise responding to the COVID-19 pandemic," Neal and Grassley wrote.

Another broader problem is that U.S. supply chains are brittle, often relying on key parts or materials from just one country.

More often than not, that country is China.

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that new export restrictions from China have hampered face masks, test kits and other medical supplies from getting to the U.S. Among them were 1.4 million test kits.

The Journal cited a State Department report saying that Chinese policies "disrupted established supply chains for medical products just as these products were most needed for the global response to Covid-19."

China said some of the restrictions and delays were meant to ensure quality control, which has also been an issue plaguing import markets with the sudden spike in demand for new products.

The same is sometimes true of medications. Even when some generic drugs are imported from a variety of countries, Wallach notes, many of them get the main ingredient in the drug from one source country.

India, another major exporter, banned a variety of exports on personal protective equipment (PPE) in late January, though it has stepped back some of its export restrictions.

When Trump took similar steps earlier this month, blocking exports of some PPE as part of the Defense Production Act, some worried that it would invite retaliation.

"It’s just a massively shortsighted policy because it provides any country out there with an excuse to stop trade," said Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

3M, the company that produces the critical N95 masks doctors need while dealing with some COVID-19 patients, raised similar concerns.

"Ceasing all export of respirators produced in the United States would likely cause other countries to retaliate and do the same, as some have already done. If that were to occur, the net number of respirators being made available to the United States would actually decrease," the company wrote in a statement following the announcement.

It also noted the humanitarian implications for countries that do not produce their own masks.

Bown noted that tariffs Trump imposed as part of his trade war with China were still in effect on some key supplies until fairly late in the game.

“Their trade war tariffs on ventilators and masks were still in place until March 17. That’s when they got a tariff exclusion,” he said. “When you talk about the incoherence of the Trump administration’s trade policy in dealing with a pandemic, you’ve got to recognize that.”

Companies that make and sell hand sanitizer, thermometers and disinfectant wipes have called for relief from tariffs.

Neither the White House nor the U.S. trade representative’s office offered comment.

But all in all, says Kendall, the combination of errant, discordant trade policies is hampering the efforts to fight the pandemic.

“We are pissing off our trading partners because we panicked over what we’re exporting, and at the same time we’re not taking care of our own folks, which we absolutely should be,” he said.

“But there’s no plan," he added. "And without that, you can’t square the corners.”

FRACKQUAKE
West Texas Shaken by Magnitude-5 Earthquake, but No Damage Reported

By Sean Breslin March 26 2020 weather.com


At a Glance
A magnitude-5 earthquake struck West Texas on Thursday morning.
Residents in El Paso felt the shaking, some 200 miles from the epicenter.
It was one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded in Texas.

A magnitude-5 earthquake rattled West Texas on Thursday morning and was felt by hundreds of thousands in El Paso, west of the epicenter.

The tremor struck at 11:16 a.m. EDT about 26 miles west of Mentone, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. At a depth of about 5 miles, the quake was felt in El Paso, nearly 200 miles from the epicenter, but no damage was reported.

It was only the third earthquake ever recorded at magnitude-5 or higher in the Lone Star State, according to KVUE.com.

(PHOTOS: Utah's 5.7 Magnitude Quake, in Pictures)

"It felt like the vibration of a train when it passes, but bigger," Guillermina Estrada told the El Paso Times. She's a resident of Clint, located southeast of El Paso.

Though there was no damage, the shaking forced the evacuation of the state's 2-1-1 call center that is located in El Paso.

It wasn't immediately clear if the quake was caused by plate tectonics or fracking, but the epicenter was located in an area where fracking has been widespread in recent years.

Citing USGS data, the Houston Chronicle said there have been 61 earthquakes recorded in West Texas so far in 2020, but Thursday's tremor was the strongest ever recorded in that region of the state.

In the hours that followed, the USGS measured at least three aftershocks ranging between magnitude-3 and 3.4. The main quake was also felt on the other side of the U.S.-Mexico border in the town of Juarez, the El Paso Times also said


Fracking may indeed be causing earthquakes in Texas, according to UT study

Rates of earthquakes in West Texas have grown dramatically over the past decade. 

Now, for the first time, studies from SMU and UT track the rise and suggest fracking could be to blame.

Oil pumpjacks line the horizon just west of Penwell, Texas in the 

Permian basin on Nov. 2, 2018. 

(Ryan Michalesko/The Dallas Morning News)

By Anna Kuchment Nov 11, 2019

Since Texas earthquake rates first picked up in 2008, academic scientists, regulators and oil and gas companies have publicly agreed on one thing: fracking was not to blame. Instead, studies tied the quakes to the disposal of wastewater from oil and gas production.

Now, a new study suggests for the first time that some Texas earthquakes — specifically, those in West Texas — may indeed be connected to hydraulic fracturing, the process of injecting fluid, sand and chemicals underground at high pressure to release oil and gas.

“However, it’s not the only cause,” said Alexandros Savvaidis, a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin’s Bureau of Economic Geology.

Savvaidis, who manages TexNet, the state-funded seismic network, identified the connection as he and colleagues worked to better pinpoint earthquake locations in the region, which is home to one of the world’s hottest oil plays. By 2023, oil production from West Texas’s Permian Basin is expected to double, surpassing the production of every OPEC nation except Saudi Arabia, according to at least one estimate.

As part of the TexNet program, seismometers have been placed all across the state. (Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer)

He linked earthquakes to hydraulic fracturing by matching earthquake times and locations with those of fracking operations.

Earthquake rates near Pecos, a city of 10,000 in Reeves County, soared from about two per year in 2008 to more than 1,400 in 2017, according to another new study led by researchers at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics. The vast majority have been too small to feel, and several residents reached by phone in the Pecos area said they had never felt one.

“It very much mirrors how production spread across the Permian Basin,” said Heather DeShon, a seismologist at Southern Methodist University and a co-author of the second study.

The second paper was published Nov. 4 in the same journal as Savvaidis’s. In it, scientists led by UT senior research scientist emeritus Cliff Frohlich, examined data from one of the world’s most sensitive seismic arrays. The TXAR system in Lajitas was set up by SMU researchers and is used to detect nuclear explosions as far away as North Korea. By sorting earthquakes from quarry blasts and other disturbances, researchers were able to identify when quakes started near Pecos: in 2009, well before TexNet began operations in 2017.

Since 2008, Texas has seen a surge of small to moderate tremors. Scientists have linked those in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to the disposal of wastewater from hydraulic fracturing, but none in North Texas have been linked to fracking itself. Researchers believe that differences in the geology of West Texas and North Texas account for the different triggers.

While the earthquakes in West Texas have been small — the largest near Pecos registered 3.7-magnitude, just intense enough to feel, but not strong enough to cause damage — they could grow larger as production accelerates, researchers said.

To reduce the risk of larger earthquakes, operators should “be mindful of their rates of injection,” said Michael Brudzinski, a seismologist at Ohio’s Miami University who studies human-induced quakes. To help reduce the risk of earthquake damage, some companies have deployed their own seismic stations and implemented monitoring systems that quickly alert operators when small quakes take place.

The Railroad Commission of Texas, the agency that regulates oil and gas, has been monitoring wells more closely since implementing new rules governing disposal wells in 2014. In areas of historic seismicity, the commission has required operators to reduce maximum daily injection volumes and pressures, and to record that data daily instead of monthly.

“Commission staff work closely with academic researchers and industry professionals to ensure RRC policies and procedures are based upon the best available science,” Railroad Commission seismologist Aaron Velasco said in a statement.

On Tuesday, Nov. 12, companies, regulators and federal and academic scientists will gather at an industry-sponsored workshop in Dallas to share the latest research on human-induced earthquakes.

Researchers are still puzzling out how fracking triggers earthquakes large enough to be felt. Fluid pressure from the injections can travel to nearby faults and cause them to slip. That same pressure can physically alter rocks, pushing and pulling them like rubber bands. That “elastic stress” can travel through rocks until it reaches a fault and gives one side of it enough of a push to make it rupture. A similar mix of factors lies behind earthquakes caused by wastewater injection.

In North Texas, operators inject wastewater deeper into the ground than in West Texas, below the layer of rock that bears oil and gas. In West Texas, it’s often the opposite: operators dispose of wastewater above where hydraulic fracturing takes place. This difference may account for the different earthquake triggers, since deeper faults in older rocks can accumulate more stress and release more energy, Brudzinski said. He added that wastewater disposal and other factors likely also contribute to the earthquakes in West Texas.

A truck hauling wastewater from gas drilling operations drives through a rural Parker County neighborhood in December 2014. SMU researchers say two deep underground wells used to dispose of fracking fluids likely caused a series of earthquakes starting in November 2013 in Parker County. (Tom Fox - Staff Photographer)

Scientists say they believe that fracking poses less of an earthquake hazard than wastewater injection. The largest earthquake tied to fracking in the United States has been in the 3-to-4 magnitude range, said Brudzinski, while the largest earthquake tied to wastewater disposal was a 5.8-magnitude quake that struck Pawnee, Okla., in 2016, causing significant damage to buildings.

Residents in the Pecos area reached by phone and Twitter on Thursday said they were not troubled by the quakes. Joel Chavez, a former middle school teacher from Pecos, said he was initially concerned by the quakes but felt better once scientists like Savvaidis came and set up monitoring stations. “Most people felt at ease after the researchers came in,” he wrote in a Twitter direct message. “Over time, economic development continued and the town is getting so much better that it’s not that big of a concern.”

Joel Madrid, owner of the El Oso Flojo Lodge in Balmorhea, about 40 miles south of Pecos, said in a telephone interview that he hadn’t felt any earthquakes and equated the phenomenon with fake news. “I’ve heard on the radio about people feeling earthquakes,” he said. “In my book, that’s hearsay unless I feel it, hear it, and see it.”

He added that oil and gas development has been a boon to his area.

“I love it,” he said. “I’m a businessman. The more activity, the more money I make, the more business to my little city, to my little town. I wish there was more of it.”

Anna Kuchment is a staff science reporter for The Dallas Morning News. She’s also co-author of a forthcoming book about human-induced earthquakes and will speak about the public response to earthquakes related to oil and gas activity at the industry-sponsored workshop “Injection Induced Seismicity - The Next Chapter” in Dallas on Wednesday.

Anna Kuchment. Anna Kuchment covers science for The Dallas Morning News and for Scientific American, where she is a contributing editor. She previously worked as a senior editor at Scientific American and as a staff reporter, writer and editor at Newsweek magazine. She holds a Master of Science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.akuchment@dallasnews.com @akuchment

Bill Gates has a big problem with Trump’s ‘dangerous’ decision to defund the World Health Organization

Published: April 18, 2020 By Shawn Langlois MARKETWATCH.COM

Bill Gates Getty ImagesPresident Trump announced Tuesday, at yet another contentious White House briefing, that the U.S. would suspend funding to the World Health Organization, citing the group’s role in “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.”

While his supporters backed the move, Microsoft MSFT, +0.88% co-founder Bill Gates clearly didn’t, and he let his feelings be known on Twitter TWTR, +0.56% :

“Halting funding for the World Health Organization during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds,” the billionaire wrote. “Their work is slowing the spread of COVID-19 and if that work is stopped no other organization can replace them. The world needs @WHO now more than ever.”

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged up to $100 million to help contain the coronavirus just a week after the WHO declared the outbreak a global public health emergency at the end of January. The outbreak was declared a pandemic on March 11. A chunk of the foundation’s donation went to both the WHO and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Gates has been vocal in recent weeks about the need for stricter social-distancing measures. Late in March, he made his case in an op-ed for the Washington Post.

“Despite urging from public health experts, some states and counties haven’t shut down completely,” he said. “In some states, beaches are still open; in others, restaurants still serve sit-down meals. This is a recipe for disaster. Because people can travel freely across state lines, so can the virus.”

As for the WHO, Trump blamed the group for failing to get experts in China to objectively assess the situation on the ground and to call out the country’s lack of transparency. “The outbreak could have been contained at its source with very little death,” he said at the briefing.

Last week, the WHO director-general responded to prior critiques from the president.

“If you don’t want many more body bags, then you refrain from politicizing it,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement. My short message is: Please quarantine politicizing COVID. The unity of your country will be very important to defeat this dangerous virus.”

Gates isn’t the only one airing concerns over the president’s move to pull the financing.

“During the worst public health crisis in a century, halting funding to the World Health Organization is a dangerous step in the wrong direction that will not make defeating COVID-19 easier,” American Medical Association President Patrice Harris said in a statement cited by CNN.

OMGUS Chamber of Commerce criticizes Trump decision on WHO
BY ALEX GANGITANO - 04/15/2020

© Greg Nash

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce criticized President Trump’s decision to halt funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday, saying it is not in the best interest of the country.

“The Chamber supports a reformed but functional World Health Organization, and U.S. leadership and involvement are essential to ensuring its transparency and accountability going forward,” Myron Brilliant, the Chamber's executive vice president and head of international affairs, said in a statement.

Brilliant added, “However, cutting the WHO’s funding during the COVID-19 pandemic is not in U.S. interests given the organization’s critical role assisting other countries — particularly in the developing world — in their response.”

Trump announced he will halt funding pending a review of the WHO for what he described as its mismanagement of the coronavirus outbreak at a White House briefing on Tuesday. He criticized the WHO for its opposition to travel restrictions and lack of quick, accurate information on the coronavirus.

Trump joins government officials like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in criticizing the international body. Pompeo slammed the WHO recently, saying that the organization needed to “do its job."

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) had previously called for a congressional probe into the health organization, saying, "When it comes to Coronavirus, the WHO failed. They need to be held accountable for their role in promoting misinformation and helping Communist China cover up a global pandemic."

The American Medical Association also criticized the president's announcement, calling the move a “dangerous step in the wrong direction” and urging Trump to reconsider.

BIGGEST WELFARE STATE IN THE UNION

Texas requests federal funding to cover coronavirus testing for the uninsured

The federal funds became available in mid-March. Texas has more than 5 million uninsured residents, or about 18% of its population, a higher rate than any other state.
BY EDGAR WALTERS APRIL 16, 2020 TEXAS TRIBUNE

A Legacy Community Health clinic in Houston. 

Photo credit: Pu Ying Huang for The Texas Tribune

Texas health officials announced Thursday they have requested federal funds to expand coverage for coronavirus testing for the uninsured.

Congress voted last month to make temporary funding available to pay states’ full costs for providing testing to people who lack health insurance, but states had to opt into it.

Texas has more than 5 million uninsured residents, or about 18% of its population, a higher rate than any other state. Experts have warned that barriers keeping uninsured patients from accessing COVID-19 testing or treatment could hinder the containment of the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

In the month since the federal funding became available, a diverse group of health care interests has urged Gov. Greg Abbott to tap into it. A letter signed by more than 50 advocacy groups called on state leaders to “avoid the dangerous public health consequences if a large share of the population were left out of testing and tracking of the disease.”
“Obviously, having funding for testing is not the same as having tests, but it is an important piece of the puzzle,” said Anne Dunkelberg, a health policy expert for the Center for Public Policy Priorities, which signed on to the letter.

The health commission is “working to ensure that, to the extent possible, coverage is effective retroactively to March 18,” Texas Health and Human Services Commission spokeswoman Christine Mann said in an email.

The funding would also reimburse uninsured patients’ doctor visits associated with COVID-19 testing, Mann said.

Clinics serving low-income and uninsured Texans have paid private labs, such as Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, for the bulk of tests they’ve ordered.

USA /CANADA
More than half of renters say they lost jobs due to coronavirus: ‘They could face housing situations that spiral out of control’

‘Low-income renters, especially those who lose employment during the crisis, will have a hard time paying back rent’

Bartender Andy Bechtol makes cocktails to go at Caffe Dante bar 

and restaurant in Manhattan on March 19 just after the city’s

 stay-at-home order where only ‘essential businesses’ are

 allowed to remain open. Getty Images


The longer some people stay at home, the more difficulty they have making ends meet.

“Low-income renters — many of whom work in service industries hit hard by the pandemic shutdown — are at high risk for eviction and homelessness during shelter-in-place measures,” according to Mary Cunningham, a fellow at the Urban Institute, a left-of-center nonprofit policy group.

The recent $2 trillion CARES Act, a federal stimulus package, “didn’t do enough to address increases in housing insecurity for the nearly 11 million low-income renter households paying more than half their income toward rent before the pandemic,” Cunningham added.

“Eventually, the rent will be due and someone needs to pay it,” she wrote. “Low-income renters, especially those who lose employment during the crisis, will have a hard time paying back rent, and they could face housing situations that spiral out of control.”

More than half (53.5%) of renters reported that they lost their job due to the measures introduced in their town or city due to the COVID-19 pandemic, concluded a survey made up of 2,775 landlords and 7,379 tenants by Avail, an online resource for landlords.



“Some cities are also requiring renters to provide documentation demonstrating that their inability to pay rent is a result of circumstances created by the coronavirus,” Avail’s report said. But 66% of renters said they did not know if their state had paused evictions or was considering such moves.

The National Multifamily Housing Council tracked data from 13.4 million apartment units and found that 31% of renters had not paid their rent in the first week of April, up from 19% for the same period in the previous month, according to a report released this week.

Some cities are also requiring renters to provide documentation demonstrating that their inability to pay rent is a result of circumstances created by the coronavirus.

“The COVID-19 outbreak has resulted in significant health and financial challenges for apartment residents and multifamily owners, operators and employees in communities across the country,” said Doug Bibby, the president of the National Multifamily Housing Council.

Almost half (46%) of renters say they have less than $500 in emergency funds, while 22% of homeowners say they don’t have enough saved to cover their mortgage payment for a month, according to a separate poll of 1,000 renters and homeowners from Clever, an online service connecting house hunters with real-estate agents.

Ben Mizes, the CEO of Clever, said the cuts in lower-paid jobs in recent months were “hurting the people who need their paycheck the most,” echoing a study by Deutsche Bank that said high-wage jobs were the least affected by the coronavirus pandemic last month.




Rafael Nunez, 30, who works as a plumber in New York City, said his boss called him on Sunday to tell him that there was not enough work. “I could be home for three weeks. I could be home for four days. I have no idea,” he previously told MarketWatch.

“I even got a piece of paper in my paycheck saying that we cannot use any vacation hours or any sick hours,” he said. “That’s really upsetting because Passover is coming up. Usually, I get paid for that with my vacation hours, and now it’s like a whole month without pay again.”

He said his savings are running out. “We’re going to pay for this month. That’s what we’re leaning towards right now. But next month is still in the air.” Nunez said his landlord had the same problems with other tenants. “They seemed like they were chickens running around with their head cut off.”

Nunez spoke to his landlord to waive late fees and avoid eviction. In the midst of COVID-19, many cities and states have issued moratoriums on evictions. The CARES Act also temporarily prohibits evictions for certain properties funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

(Jacob Passy contributed to this story.)

Rafael Nunez, a New York City-based plumber: ‘We’re going to pay for this month. That’s what we’re leaning towards right now. But next month is still in the air.’ Courtesy of Rafael Nunez

The first Earth Day 50 years ago was a shot heard around the world

Contrary to its posture today, the Nixon-led U.S. was an ardent proponent of a pivotal 1972 global conference

Children use push brooms to sweep a city park during Earth Day, New York City, 1970s. Getty Images 

CHILDREN LED THE MOVEMENT THEN AND NOW

The first Earth Day protests, which took place on April 22, 1970 brought 20 million Americans — 10% of the U.S. population at the time — into the streets. Recognizing the power of this growing movement, President Richard Nixon and Congress responded by creating the Environmental Protection Agency and enacting a wave of laws, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act.

But Earth Day’s impact extended far beyond the United States. A cadre of professionals in the U.S. State Department understood that environmental problems didn’t stop at national borders, and set up mechanisms for addressing them jointly with other countries.

For scholars like me who study global governance, the challenge of getting nations to act together is a central issue. In my view, without the first Earth Day, global action against problems like trade in endangered species, stratospheric ozone depletion and climate change would have taken much longer — or might never have happened at all.
Alarms across the world

In 1970 governments around the world were contending with transborder pollution challenges. For example, sulfur and nitrogen oxides emitted from coal-fired power plants in the United Kingdom traveled hundreds of miles on northerly winds, then returned to earth in northern Europe as acid rain, fog and snow. This process was killing lakes and forests in Germany and Sweden.

Realizing that solutions would only be effective through common effort, countries convened the first global conference on the environment in Stockholm from June 5-16, 1972. Representatives of 113 governments attended and adopted the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment, which asserts that humans have a fundamental right to an environment that permits a life of dignity and well-being. They also passed a resolution to create a new international environmental institution.

Contrary to its posture today, the United States was an ardent proponent of the conference. The U.S. delegation advanced a series of actions, including a moratorium on commercial whaling, a convention to regulate ocean dumping and the creation of a World Heritage Trust to preserve wilderness areas and scenic natural landmarks.


President Nixon issued a statement when the conference concluded, observing that “for the first time in history, the nations of the world sat down together to seek better understanding of each other’s environmental problems and to explore opportunities for positive action, individually and collectively.”

Other nations were far more skeptical. France and the United Kingdom, for example, were wary of potential regulations that might hamper the British-French fleet of supersonic Concorde jet airliners, which had just entered operation in 1969.

Developing countries too were suspicious, viewing environmental initiatives as part of an agenda advanced by wealthy nations that would prevent them from industrializing. “I do not believe we are prepared to become new Robinson Crusoes,” Brazilian delegate Bernardo de Azevedo Brito stated in response to calls from industrialized countries to curb pollution.

A UN agency for the environment

Largely because of U.S. leadership, industrialized nations agreed to establish and provide initial funding for what is arguably the world’s premier global environmental institution: the United Nations Environment Programme. UNEP catalyzed negotiation of the 1985 Vienna Convention and its follow-on, the 1987 Montreal Protocol, a treaty to restrict production and use of substances that deplete Earth’s protective ozone layer. Today the agency continues to drive international efforts on issues including pollution control, biodiversity conservation and climate change.


Read:Trump’s mileage-standard rollback will cost consumers and the climate, say analysts

John W. McDonald, who was director of economic and social affairs at the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs, had been circulating the idea of a new U.N. agency for the environment, and had garnered support from the Nixon administration. But creating a new international environmental institution could only happen with financial support from industrialized countries.

In an address to Congress on Feb. 8, 1972, Nixon proposed creating a US$100 million Environment Fund — close to $600 million in today’s dollars — to support effective international cooperation on environmental problems and create a central coordination point for U.N. activities. Recognizing that the United States was the world’s major polluter, the Nixon administration provided 30% of this sum over the first five years.

Over the next two decades the United States was the largest single contributor to the fund, which supports UNEP’s work worldwide. By the early 1990s, it was providing $21 million annually – equivalent to about $38 million in today’s dollars.

As I discuss in my forthcoming book on UNEP, however, after Republicans won control of both houses of Congress in 1994, the U.S. contribution dropped to $5.5 million in 1997. It has stayed at about $6 million per year since, a decrease of 84%. Today the U.S. contribution is 30% less than that of the Netherlands, whose economy is 20 times smaller.
Ceding leadership

Regrettably in my view, the United States has relinquished its longtime role as a leader on global environmental issues. President Trump has pursued what he calls an “America First” foreign policy that includes withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement and halting funding for the World Health Organization.

International problems demand global cooperation and leadership by example. Developing countries are more reticent to commit to multilateral agreements if the rich and powerful ones withdraw or defy the rules.

As political scientist and U.N. expert Edward Luck has written, the United States has swung for decades between embracing international organizations and rejecting them. When U.S. support ebbs, Luck observes, the U.N. is “in limbo, neither strengthened nor abandoned,” and the global community is less able to resolve fundamental problems.

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare nations’ inability to inspire, organize and finance a coordinated global response. No other government has yet been able to fill the void left by the United States.

I see the 50th anniversary of Earth Day as a fitting time to rethink American engagement in global governance. As President Nixon said in his speech outlining support for UNEP in 1972:

“What has dawned dramatically upon us in recent years … is a new recognition that to a significant extent man commands as well the very destiny of this planet where he lives, and the destiny of all life upon it. We have even begun to see that these destinies are not many and separate at all – that in fact they are indivisibly one.”

Published: April 18, 2020 By Maria Ivanova THE CONVERSATION

Maria Ivanova is Associate Professor of Global Governance and Director, Center for Governance and Sustainability, John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She receives funding from UNEP for research on the implementation of multilateral environmental agreements.

A COUPLE OF QUACKS
Dr. Phil’s argument for reopening the economy: ‘We don’t shut down the country’ for car accidents and swimming pool deaths

Dr. Phil McGraw and Dr. Mehmet Oz have both apologized for controversial COVID-19 comments


Dr. Phil McGraw compared coronavirus deaths to fatal swimming and auto accidents. Getty Images
Published: April 17, 2020 By Nicole Lyn Pesce MARKETWATCH.COM

Another celebrity “doctor” is suffering from foot-in-mouth disease.

Now that many parts of the country have spent more than a month sheltering in place amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a growing chorus is calling for reopening the American economy, which is stirring up arguments of how soon is too soon. And the latest voice entering the fray is TV personality and psychologist Phil “Dr. Phil” McGraw, who compared the death toll of a global pandemic that is still peaking to the annual number of deaths from … swimming.

“The fact of the matter is we have people dying, 45,000 people a year die from automobile accidents, 480,000 from cigarettes, 360,000 a year from swimming pools, but we don’t shut the country down for that.”

Contrary to McGraw’s comments, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that 36,560 people were killed in traffic crashes last year. What’s more, the CDC has reported 3,536 fatal unintentional drowning incidents (non-boating related) each year between 2005 and 2014 — a sobering number, for sure, but far short of the 360,000 a year figure cited by McGraw.

But the CDC does indeed estimate that cigarette smoking causes 480,000 deaths a year, including deaths from secondhand smoke.

McGraw also went on to hazard a guess that the lockdown will “actually create more death across time than the actual virus will itself” due to poverty and loneliness.

The economic situation is dire indeed. A record 22 million Americans have lost their jobs over the past month; nearly a third of American tenants missed their April rent payments and more than 4 in 10 Americans are feeling lonelier now than ever before as a result of social distancing during the coronavirus outbreak.

But to date, there are more than 2.17 million cases of COVID-19 worldwide, and at least 146,055 people have died, including 33,286 in the U.S., which has the highest death toll in the world. And there is still much that we don’t know about the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, including the long-term effects for the more than 554,000 people who have recovered from it. Some early studies have found lingering lung and heart damage in recovered patients.

Many critics on Twitter TWTR, +0.56% noted that besides giving largely inaccurate death toll figures, the examples that McGraw listed are not contagious diseases.

McGraw posted a video to his YouTube GOOG, +1.56% channel on Friday afternoon apologizing “if you didn’t like my choice of words“ and clarifying some of his remarks on Fox. (The comments feature was notably turned off.) “Last night I said we as a society have chosen to live with certain controllable deadly risks every day,” he explained. And he said the swimming data he cited was the World Health Organization’s global death count for swimming incidents, not U.S. numbers, admitting that swimming, car crashes and smoking “are not contagious, so probably bad examples.”

He added that, “I’m not an infectious disease doctor. I’m not a molecular microbiologist. I look at this from a human behavior, psychological standpoint.” And he said that he “100%” supports “we shut the country down to protect what is perhaps a small percentage of hose for whom the virus is most dangerous.”

Still, the online backlash got so bad that even Weight Watchers WW, +8.17% ambassador Oprah Winfrey was trending Friday, with people blaming her for exposing the public McGraw and Dr. Mehmet Oz in the first place.

Fellow “Oprah Winfrey Show” alum Oz was pressured to apologize on Thursday for suggesting in another controversial Fox interview that it may “only cost us” 2% to 3% of American lives to reopen schools.

“I tell you, schools are a very appetizing opportunity,” he initially said on Wednesday, before pivoting on Thursday to say that, “I misspoke.”

Read more:Dr. Oz apologizes for suggesting it may ‘only cost us’ 2% to 3% of American lives to reopen schools

As for Fox host Ingraham, she also spoke with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, during her show on Thursday. And Fauci called her comments likening COVID-19 to SARS and HIV “misleading.”

“I think it’s a little bit misleading maybe to compare what we are going through now with HIV or SARS. They’re really different,” Fauci said. He explained that while vaccines were not developed for those two diseases, researchers did come up with effective HIV/AIDS treatments that have saved lives, whereas SARS “disappeared.”

Farmers find ways to cope with milk prices down nearly 40% this year

THE CAPITALIST CRISIS IS OVERPRODUCTION
Pandemic forces changes in the dairy market
THEY DUMP MILK AS THE DAIRY MONOPOLIES ALWAYS HAVE, TO INCREASE PRICES

THIS WASTE OF SURPLUS THAT COULD BE USED FOR THE POOR, 

SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAMS, HOMELESS SHELTERS, ETC. 

IS  PETITE BOURGEOIS SOCIAL SABOTAGE

Cattle graze at Fernandez Ranch in Martinez, Calif. Myra Saefong/MarketWatch

Milk prices this year have more than erased the gains they scored for all of 2019, as the closure of restaurants and schools to prevent the spread of COVID-19 forced changes in the dairy market and in consumer buying behavior.

“The dairy industry remains stuck in a challenging and unfortunate position” because the processing pipeline is becoming backed up due to the abrupt loss in demand, says Rick Kment, market analyst at commodity analysis provider DTN.

Milk is a perishable product and the “ability to store it unprocessed for more than a couple of days is nearly impossible,” he says, adding that with processing plants at full capacity, farmers have had to dump excess milk.

Most-active futures prices for Class III milk DAM20, +0.16%, which is used to make most types of cheese, settled at $12.11 per hundredweight on Thursday—the lowest since September 2009. Class III milk has lost around 37% year to date, erasing last year’s 35% climb.

Meanwhile, the Thursday finish for cash-settled cheese futures CSCK20, -0.08% at $1.184 a pound was a record low based on data going back to 2010.

The impact of the coronavirus hit the dairy industry in waves, says Matt Gould, editor at newsletter The Dairy Market Analyst. The first wave was at the end of January, when the disease was rapidly spreading in China. The impact of the shutdowns there was immediately felt in the nonfat dry-milk market, says Gould.

The next wave came as states in the U.S. began to shut down, which led to a boost in purchases of pizza, he says. Pizza accounts for much of the country’s demand for cheese, which is made from milk.

Then there was a run to grocery stores, which strained the supply chain for fluid milk and saw a period of record sales for milk, butter, cheese, and yogurt. Dairy commodity prices did not initially fall, Gould says.

Read:Shuttered schools, plunging milk demand led to race among dairy farmers to tap small-business rescue program before funding ran out

But when refrigerators were restocked, consumers stopped ordering in and grocery store sales weren’t enough to offset the losses from restaurant sales, he explains.

Gould estimates domestic cheese demand loss from the food-service industry at 214 million pounds each month, which equals 2.1 billion less pounds of milk, or about 11% of all the milk produced during the month.

Gould forecasts a drop in Class III milk prices to a low of $8.95 per hundredweight in June, which he says would be a record based on data going back to 1998.

Still, the dairy industry has made moves that will lessen the blow of lost demand and the drop in prices.

Those include the dumping of excess milk at levels that are likely “substantially” larger than normally seen in the spring, when production seasonally peaks, says David Maloni, executive vice president of food-service supply-chain technology firm ArrowStream.

Cow herd “liquidation” is also anticipated in the coming months and this should “lead to much tighter milk and dairy product supplies and higher prices later this year,” Maloni says.

He also says, “U.S. dairy markets have fallen substantially below other major exporting countries’ prices,” and that should result in “better export demand in the not-so-distant future.”

An early sign of a turnaround may come from China.

“The single most important factor for dairy prices to rebound is improved buying patterns in China,” says Arun Sundaram, equity analyst at CFRA Research.

“Agricultural commodity prices should improve once we start to see greater, more consistent agricultural product purchases from China.” After its bout with the virus, the Chinese economy is beginning to open up again.

With coronavirus and locust plague, ‘nature is sending us a message,’ says UN environment head

Biodiversity matters now more than ever as pathogens more easily pass from animals to people: Inger Andersen

Demonstrators stand wearing bees masks and costumes during a 

demonstration for biodiversity in Paris last year. Getty Images

Humanity is placing too many pressures on the natural world with damaging consequences, including the deadly COVID-19 and the yet unrealized fallout from accelerating man-made climate change, says Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme.

She told the Guardian on Wednesday that the immediate priority was to protect people from the coronavirus and prevent its spread. “But our long-term response must tackle habitat and biodiversity loss,” she added.

“Never before have so many opportunities existed for pathogens to pass from wild and domestic animals to people,” she told the paper, adding that 75% of all emerging infectious diseases come from wildlife.

“Our continued erosion of wild spaces has brought us uncomfortably close to animals and plants that harbor diseases that can jump to humans.”

Australian bushfires, shattered heat records and the worst locust invasion in Kenya for 70 years only help convince her of the emergency.

‘[With] all of these events, nature is sending us a message. There are too many pressures at the same time on our natural systems and something has to give... And as we hurtle towards a population of 10 billion people on this planet, we need to go into this future armed with nature as our strongest ally.’— The UN’s Inger Andersen

The actor Idris Elba has suggested, somewhat fantastically, that perhaps the human race is “an infection” that Earth is trying to destroy before we destroy it. The 47-year-old British star revealed earlier this month he had tested positive for the COVID-19 virus but is recovering.

Still others track divine signals by earthly measures: ‘God help us all! The end is near!’ Mike Huckabee reacts to the closing of round-the-clock Waffle Houses around the country

Published: March 25, 2020 MARKETWATCH.COM

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=LOCUST

Politicians ban reusable grocery bags for spreading coronavirus — what’s the science say?

Shoppers need to wash their reusable bags more often, even in better times 

Part of the problem: way too infrequent washing. One study shows

 that if people regularly clean their reusable bags, 99.9% of all bacteria

 is destroyed. Getty Images

Illinois grocery stores are temporarily banning customers from bringing their own reusable bags, Gov. JB Pritzker said recently, and he is only the latest elected official across both political parties taking steps they believe will lower risk from the coronavirus pandemic.

But is leadership there and elsewhere opting for extreme caution to fight the deadly disease at the expense of science and consumer trends? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers no specific recommendations about reusable bags and coronavirus.

For Chicagoans, the tote bag ban means they can’t avoid the 7-cent tax per plastic or paper bag applied at the checkout, a program meant to reduce waste and net the cash-strapped city more than $5 million per year in revenue. The state, with Chicago pegged by the surgeon general to be another hot spot for disease spread, isn’t alone with its bag policy.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills was quick to heed the social-distancing policies that scientists overwhelmingly recommend to halt COVID-19’s spread and she moved even faster to delay the state’s soon-to-be-implemented ban on single-use plastic bags, Emily Akin, creator of the Heated environmental newsletter, stressed.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu has prohibited shoppers from bringing reusable bags to stores to protect vulnerable workers, so has Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, to name a few. As coronavirus news spread, the Wall Street Journal editorial board reupped its support of reversing plastic-bag bans and related taxation.

The newspaper isn’t the only entity leveraging the pandemic to make a policy point. Earlier this month, the Plastics Industry Association asked the Department of Health and Human Services to make a national pronouncement supporting single-use plastics and advocating against reusable grocery bags, claiming they will worsen the pandemic because they can carry and transmit coronavirus for longer.

“As the coronavirus spreads across the country, single-use plastics will only become more vital,” Plastics Industry Association President Tony Radoszewski said in a statement, citing what the trade group said are several studies in their favor. “We live longer, healthier and better because of single-use plastics.” Lauded for their relative cost and flexibility, Americans use 100 billion plastic bags a year, which require 12 million barrels of oil to manufacture, says the Center for Biological Diversity.

Related:Plastic is not the ‘enemy,’ says Shinzo Abe; Japan uses 30 billion plastic bags each year IDIOT

In work published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers tested for the coronavirus on a variety of surfaces. They found the virus was still viable 72 hours after they applied it to plastic and stainless steel, 24 hours on cardboard and just four hours on copper. The viability of the virus on cloth — used in many reusable grocery bags — was not singled out for study. Massachusetts Bureau of Environmental Health Director Jana Ferguson has said the department has seen “no scientific information specific to bags and the ability of reusable bags to be a way to spread coronavirus.”

Read:How to clean your car to reduce the risk of coronavirus

Few experts or consumers can deny that a microscopic examination of resusable bags shows that most shoppers are transporting much more than milk and eggs. But how dangerous are these bags, especially relative to other means for carrying purchases, including single-use plastic? If safety really is the issue, how do reusable bags compare to money, phones and our own hands, all of which up the risks of transmission in stores and elsewhere?

Advocates for reusable bags question the findings of a few recent studies, alleging the data have been exaggerated to fit an industry agenda. Pinning the argument to current events, such as COVID-19, reignites criticism of reusable-bag programs that undermines their long-term effectiveness, these advocates argue. “How Big Plastic is Using Coronavirus to Bring Back Wasteful Bags,” says a recent Mother Jones headline.

Among the studies against reusable bags is a 10-year-old American Chemistry Council-funded University of Arizona investigation that looked at 84 reusable bags in two states. Authors concluded that “large numbers of bacteria were found in almost all bags and coliform bacteria in half.” They did not, however, find any pathogenic bacteria or strains of E. Coli that can actually make humans sick. As Consumer Reports noted at the time: “They only found bacteria that don’t normally cause disease, but do cause disease in people with weakened immune systems.”

“A person eating an average bag of salad greens gets more exposure to these bacteria than if they had licked the insides of the dirtiest bag from this study,” Michael Hansen, a senior staff scientist at Consumers Union, said in the article. “These bacteria can be found lots of places, so no need to go overboard.”

In many cases, it’s the poor habits around using non-disposable bags that matter: if people more regularly wash their reusable bags, the Arizona study said, 99.9% of all bacteria was destroyed.

Another study, published in the international journal Food Control in 2019, found microbes capable of causing food-borne illness on the bags. This time, half the bags tested had coliform bacteria on them and some even had E. coli. No surprise, says Heated’s Akin, “because the bags had a bunch of food in them, and were not washed or sanitized.”

The studies also do not indicate that reusable bags made of plastic have a greater risk of holding the virus than single-use plastic bags, which could be infected with pathogens during transportation, manufacturing or handling.

For Akin, the debate over the efficacy of plastic-bag policies for coronavirus should continue. At the same time, discussion shouldn’t ignore other “pressing global crises,” in her opinion: climate change and ocean pollution.

Between 4.8 and 12.7 million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean each year, according to figures published in the journal Science in 2015.

PALM OIL
Cookies and wet markets: Here’s where coronavirus and climate change collide

Is palm oil as bad as cigarettes and coal in blurring the safety line between animals and humans? Analysts say ‘wet markets’ are only the tip of the issue

An orphaned orangutan is learning to fend for himself since being found wandering alone and suffering smoke inhalation from burning at a palm oil plantation in Indonesia's part of Borneo. Getty Images

Plenty of blame for the spread of the deadly coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has been leveled at the Chinese “wet markets” that offer wild animals — endangered species in some cases — as cuisine.

The cultural finger-pointing has arguably been as controversial as the practice, particularly as the pandemic has spread and governments provide varying degrees of response.

Interaction between humans and animals, often forced because of lost biodiversity, is neither exclusive to this outbreak nor likely to become less controversial absent intervention in coming years, environmentalists warn.

According to some scientists, the strain of the novel coronavirus can reportedly be tied to bats and then the pangolin, a scaly anteater that is considered a delicacy in some diets in the developing world. Studies of the coronavirus origin persist and even include so-far unproven speculation that the disease was lab-born. Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, and Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat of Delaware, are leading a group of bipartisan U.S. senators in “urgently” requesting that China “immediately” close all operating wet markets amid the coronavirus pandemic. The fresh markets are called “wet” because they sell perishable goods, distinguishing them from “dry” street markets that might sell fabrics and electronics.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that three out of every four new or emerging infectious diseases in people come from animals. Most scientists see a link between deforestation, habitat change and pandemics. From Zika to West Nile, Ebola to SARS, Nipah to COVID-19, deforestation has had a hand in many of the world’s worst viral outbreaks as lost habitat brings animals in closer contact with humans.

One sustainable-investing leader sizes up the situation in terms all consumers, across cultures, might understand: “cookies, cigarettes and coal” share the blame in bringing wild animals and humans, and their respective communicable diseases, in closer contact.

Jay Lipman, president and co-founder of sustainable asset manager Ethic, explains: the palm oil used especially in industrial baking and the tobacco grown to satisfy smoking habits which, while reduced from decades past, still enjoys strong demand in some parts of the world, are in large part to blame. Include coal-power use, particularly in parts of Asia, in his trio of violators. All require the clearing of forest habitats that force animals out of the wild into developed villages and cities. With this forced migration comes a greater chance for zoonotic or zoonosis disease spread.

Zoonotic describes an infectious disease caused by a pathogen (including bacteria, viruses and parasites) that has jumped from nonhuman animals (usually vertebrates) to humans.

“Due to anthropogenic activities, we are substantially increasing our exposure to pathogens we have never been exposed to, and thus we’re not prepared to respond to. We’re doing this in two main ways: bringing wildlife too close to us [such as markets], or us getting too close to wildlife [by way of overdevelopment],” says Daniel Mira-Salama, senior environmental specialist in the World Bank’s Beijing office.

“The second, large amplification phenomenon could be attributed to globalization: once a pathogen has spilled over to humans, and enough individuals are infected, international flights and cruises and global value chains, transport those infected individuals to all corners of the globe,” he says.

Human-animal contact through hunting and farming is a chief factor, but so are others. Poleward shifts in the geographic distributions of species, the spread of deadly forest fires in Australia and elsewhere and the bleaching of coral reefs have all been linked to climate change and pose a risk to biodiversity.



Research suggests that infectious disease outbreaks very often follow extreme weather events, as microbes, vectors (such as ticks spreading Lyme disease) and reservoir animal hosts exploit the disrupted social and environmental conditions left in their wake — these extreme weather events are only set to become more frequent as global warming’s effects are felt in communities across the world, according to some research.

Read:Why climate change is also a health care story — it’s the biggest health threat this century

“It underscores the need for the global community to protect 30% of nature by 2030, a goal more important than ever,” Monica Medina and Miro Korenha, write in their Our Daily Planet newsletter.

The effects of biodiversity loss caused by climate change will be felt much more quickly and intensely than previously thought if global warming is left unchecked, some researchers have said. Up to 50% of species are forecast to lose most of their suitable climate conditions by 2100 under the highest greenhouse gas emissions scenario, a 2°C rise, according to a 2018 study printed in the journal Science. This scenario is not a given and a change of course is still possible. The number of species losing more than half their geographic range by 2100 is halved when warming is limited to 1.5°C.

Breaking from typical biodiversity forecasts that emphasized individual snapshots of the future, two researchers at the University of Cape Town instead used annual projections of temperature and precipitation from 1850 to 2100 across more than 30,000 marine and terrestrial species to estimate the timing of species exposure to potentially dangerous climate conditions and now believe that climate change could cause sudden and simultaneous biodiversity losses.

Such losses could occur much sooner this century than had been expected, Christopher Trisos, senior research fellow at the University of Cape Town and Alex Pigo, research fellow in genetics, evolution and environment at the school, wrote in an opinion piece on The Conversation.

Abrupt biodiversity loss due to marine heat waves that bleach coral reefs is already under way in tropical oceans. The risk of climate change causing sudden collapses of ocean ecosystems is projected to escalate further in the 2030s and 2040s. Under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario the risk of abrupt biodiversity loss is projected to spread onto land, affecting tropical forests and more temperate ecosystems by the 2050s, they argue.

Humans are at risk of sudden economic disruption absent coordinated adaptability. Sudden disruption of local ecosystems would negatively affect their ability to earn an income and feed themselves, potentially pushing them into poverty. For instance, marine ecosystems in the Indo-Pacific, Caribbean and the west coast of Africa are at high risk of sudden disruption as early as the 2030s, the researchers said. Hundreds of millions of people across these regions rely on wild-caught fish as an essential source of food.

Eco-tourism revenues from coral reefs are also a major source of income. And sudden loss of animal communities could also reduce the long-term ability of tropical forests to lock up carbon if the birds and mammals that are important for dispersing seeds are lost.

Western populations may struggle to fully understand “wet markets” and protein choices they’re not accustomed to. But, says Lipman, the behavior that can lead to mass deforestation and related biodiversity loss around the globe isn’t as “exotic” as the cultural finger-pointers may believe.

Palm oil is the most commonly produced vegetable oil in the world and is used in food items, cosmetics and biofuels. Worldwide annual production of the oil from 2018 to 2019 was nearly 81.6 million tons, according to USDA data, and is expected to reach 264 million tons by 2050, The Guardian reported in 2019.

“We love cookies. Everyone loves cookies,” says Ethic’s Lipman. “Palm oil in baked goods, palm oil in soap and detergent is common in most households, and ‘sustainable’ investors who increasingly care about biodiversity loss might take a look in their own homes and their portfolios.”

GEE MR CHRISTIE YOUR COOKIES KILL ORANGUTAN 

---30---

 

Democratic congresswoman as red states beat out blue ones for small-business aid: ‘I smell a rat’ 

   'I’m hard pressed not to think that this is political,’ House member from California says of Paycheck Protection Program data

Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier of California speaking at a House hearing last year. Getty Images

Published: April 17, 2020 By Victor Reklaitis
‘I’m hard pressed not to think that this is political. Blue states like California got a pathetic number of loans issued. Nebraska got nearly 75% of loans requested. I smell a rat with orange hair.’— Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Speier

The line above came from Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier of California as she tweeted about data showing coastal blue states mostly lagging red states in receiving loans from the Paycheck Protection Program, the government’s new coronavirus aid program for small businesses.

Nebraska has fared the best among the 50 states as businesses there have been approved to receive enough PPP money to cover 75% of the state’s eligible payroll, according to an analysis from Evercore ISI economist Ernie Tedeschi. He used the Small Business Administration’s figures for PPP loans through Monday:

North Dakota, South Dakota and Kansas also made out relatively well by that metric, while California, New Jersey and New York didn’t. That’s shown in the table above from Tedeschi, as well as in the Bloomberg News graphic below, which is based on the Evercore economist’s figures.

The loan program for small businesses initially received $350 billion in last month’s $2.2 trillion coronavirus package, known as the CARES Act, or Washington’s “Phase 3” legislation, to support the economy during the pandemic.

The SBA said the PPP ran out of money on Thursday, and Democrats and Republicans have been locked in a stalemate over replenishing it with an additional $250 billion.

The SBA didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment on Friday.

When it comes to industries and PPP loans, Tedeschi tweeted that by “potential maximum loan size, oil/gas/mining XOP, +10.11% PICK, +3.73% and accommodation/food service PEJ, +5.88% appear to be showing the strongest demand.” He said “where the SBA data get even more curious is by state,” adding that “what could be going on is that the PPP has proven more difficult for lenders to get off the ground in the hardest-hit areas so far.”

“Or it could be that states with closer community banking relationships saw an advantage in uptake in these early stages of the program when the contours and details of the program were more uncertain,” Tedeschi said on Twitter.