From a letter sent by a diverse coalition of think tanks, activists and lobbying groups urging the Bush Administration to forego “midnight regulations,” an excerpt:

As a coalition, we do not take a position on any particular rule but, rather, a principled stand on the proper conduct of rulemaking. Our coalition likely contains proponents and opponents of nearly every major regulation you would consider. We have different interests but share a conviction: for the next few months, you should avoid issuing all but the most urgent new regulations.

Agreed, as a matter of principle. Last-minute regs meant to “advance controversial policies while subverting transparency, rigor, and legitimacy in the rulemaking process” are objectionable. But the Administration asserts — with solid justification, seems to us — that it’s doing nothing of the sort and in fact has taken effort to ensure public input and transparency.

If work on a regulation has been under way for nearly two years — see the Family and Medical Leave Act discussion – should everything just come to an end now, arbitrarily? Is Halloween the drop-dead date? Or maybe next Wednesday, the day after the election, because the incoming Administration should enjoy a de facto veto? Or perhaps the first Sunday of Advent because, well, it’s Christmas time and people are busy?

We detect a slippery slope. If the Administration calls it quits now, the November deadline will become a July deadline soon enough. Eventually some activists will demand that future Administrations take no action at all in their final year in office — that is, they will demand it of executive branch officials who might favor deregulation or at least be skeptical of an expanded regulatory state. The more liberal, pro-regulation, economically intrusive Administrations will get a pass from some of those now raising objections.

So far, the Administration has made a much compelling argument about its careful, coherent and transparent approach toward the regulatory process than have groups like OMB Watch, who really just dislike the substance of the regulations under consideration. Behind their attack against process is the usual old desire for more government control of the private sector.

The signers of the letter, which include some solid pro-market advocates, follow. We hope they’re not being played.

Eli Lehrer, Senior Fellow, The Competitive Enterprise Institute
Steve Pociask Chief Economist, American Consumer Institute
Robert Dewey, Vice President, Government Relations and External Affairs, Defenders of Wildlife
Terrence Scanlon, Chairman & President, Capital Research Center
Adam Kolton Sr. Director, Congressional & Federal Affairs, National Wildlife Federation
Wayne Brough, Ph.D., Vice President for Research & Chief Economist, FreedomWorks
David Jenkins, Government Affairs Director, Republicans for Environmental Protection
Marcia Aronoff, Senior Vice President for Programs, Environmental Defense Fund

A late entry today, very late. Consider it our “Midnight Follies,” rushed through at the last minute as favor to big business John Peel’s fans.

It’s the 30th anniversary of the great, great punk-era song, Teenage Kicks by the Undertones.

Which isn’t really that funny or follies-related. But the version by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain is.

Ah, you think, how middle aged self-indulgent. And the Buzzcocks had more staying power.

But there’s an intellectual property rights angle, of great interest to manufacturers. Feargal Sharkey, the singer who defined the Undertones sound, is now a music executive in the U.K. And he’s in the news.

Former Undertones frontman Feargal Sharkey will launch a new organisation later today  (October 27th) aimed safeguarding the future of the music industry.The UK Music body will call on the government to address the problem of illegal file sharing, as well as extend the copyright term afforded to artists, which is currently limited to fifty years.

The organisation represents a wide range of music bodies, including, BPI, the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters, and the Music Managers Forum.

“The thing we all realised is that we all agree with each other 95% of the time. It’s looking at where the industry is going to be three, four or five years from now,” Sharkey told the Guardian newspaper.

Wanna hold ya, wanna hold ya, wanna hold ya tight, get teenage-kicks and property rights! All right!

P.S. Wow. Everybody covers Teenage Kicks. A copyright violation?

The long presidential campaign season is almost over. Election Day is Nov. 4.

Nationally recognized pollsters John McLaughlin and Allan Rivlin will appear on this week’s “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” radio program to offer the latest election forecasts. And National Association of Manufacturers Executive Vice President Jay Timmons will talk about how manufacturers plan to work closesly with whoever wins the White House and congressional races.

“There is no person who stood for election, particularly this year, who also does not care about jobs,” Timmons says. “We all have a stake in ensuring that this economy is strengthened and that our country is strong and vibrant into the future.”

This Manufacturing Institute  recently launched an Education Council. This new group will focus on expanding and enhancing our nation’s workforce. We’ll hear about the group’s goals from two charter members. They are Dr. Timothy Franklin, director of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development at Penn State University, and Dr. Cynthia Bioteau, president of Salt Lake Community College.

Europe is about to implement new trade regulations that would make it more difficult for America’s small and medium manufacturers to ship products to Europe. Commerce Department international trade specialist Don Wright will join Mike to discuss the possible pitfalls of Europe’s REACH regulations.

Over the last year the nation’s electronics makers have made a push to become more environmentally friendly. Some of these companies have even slashed electricity use by 25 percent. Joanne Sonenshine, senior manager of environmental policy at the Consumer Electronics Association, will talk about why and how electronics makers are going green.

In our regular segments, Renee Giachino of American Justice Partnership gives us the latest on tort reform and commentator Hank Cox recalls “The Way It Was.” And our program will close with “The Last Word” from the National Association of Manufacturers President Gov. John Engler.

For more about “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” and to listen to the program online check out http://www.americasbusiness.org.

The White House is pushing back against the campaign to (pre)delegitimize its agencies’ regulations as “midnight regulations” (see our post here). At today’s press briefing, Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto described the Administration’s thorough, well-documented process for promulgating regulations in the final months of the President’s term in office. Excerpt:

And go back to early this year, the current Chief of Staff, Josh Bolten, issued a memorandum to the heads of departments and agencies on how to deal with regulations. In fact, what the Chief of Staff wanted to avoid was this very charge that we would be trying to, in the dark of night in the last days of the administration, be rushing regulations into place ahead of the incoming, next administration.

So what he did is he set out a timetable for the consideration of regulations, when they could be approved, when final regulations should be brought forward for regulatory review, and to do it in a way that preserves all of the integrity of the regulatory review process — all the transparency, the public comment period, the internal agency review, the ability to listen to interested parties who have concerns over the regulation to come in and voice their concerns and express their points of view on proposed regulations, and then to issue them in a timely and orderly way. That’s exactly what we’re doing.

So just to hammer home the point on this, we’re trying to avoid that situation where there is a rush of regulation, or the regulation is being put forward in a way that is counter to the very appropriate goals of a system that’s characterized by integrity and transportation and public — I’m sorry, transparency and public comment and agency review of the regulations.

Thus, the Bush Administration is going to be a stickler about process and integrity, restraining itself and not doing any last minute regulatory favors for its supporters in the business community. Unlike the Clinton Administration that rolled out the monkey-fun barrels of regulations for its environmentalist and activist allies.

Seems so …fair.

We’ve put the rest of Fratto’s comments on the topic in the extended entry. The reporters ask good and fair questions, too.

NAM President John Engler appeared on Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s monthly radio program on WCCO today, a conversation that covered lots of issues. Showing more interest in the topic than presidential debate moderators, Gov. Pawlenty asked about the Employee Free Choice Act, that purposefully misnamed “card check” legislation would destroy secret-ballot elections in the workplace, allowing labor organizers to intimidate employees into joining a union.

Pawlenty: Why do the advocates want that? Why do they want the ability to do that without a secret ballot? Seems it just violates people’s privacy or confidentiality.

Engler: Just flat-out it’s a money issue. It’s a dues issue for the unions themselves. Union membership in the country has been declining and this is a way to force a lot of people back in, but what it does for the workplace is quite destructive.

 You can listen to the full two-minute segment on card check by clicking here.

WTO Director General Pascal Lamy’s speech on the financial crisis and trade (see here and here) provides the opportunity to cite a case of how the Smoot-Hawley tariffs did damage to one specific segment of the economy, in this case, egg producers. Lamy provides the big picture, and Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek focuses in, a post from June 17, 2007:

Protectionism doesn’t achieve even its own nonsense goal of increasing  exports.  A revealing, specific example involves eggs.  Smoot-Hawley raised the tariff on egg imports into the U.S. from eight cents to ten cents per dozen.  This higher tariff caused eggs imports from Canada to fall by 40 percent.  In response, Canadian authorities increased the tariff on U.S. eggs exported to Canada; this tariff went from three cents per dozen to ten cents per dozen.  The result was that American eggs exports to Canada fell by 98 percent – from 11 million annually just before Smoot-Hawley to a mere 200,000.   (I found this tidbit in Jeffry Friedan’s 2006 book Globalization.)

Tariffs on imports to the United States caused related exports from the United States to plunge 98 percent! Astonishing. Instructive.

WTO Director General Pascal Lamy’s speech Wednesday at the University of California Berkeley is an outstanding survey of the value of global trade, even more valuable when the financial crisis is shaking global economies and public confidence. Facts, figures, history and the proper emphasis on multilateral trade negotiations (with only a passing nod to the shibboleth of global climate regulation, a guaranteed economy-killer):

From “Restoring citizens’ confidence in trade requires sound domestic policies“:

Among the most disastrous political decisions taken in the wake of the Crash of 1929 was the passage of the Smoot-Hawley Act, signed into law on June 17, 1930. The idea of this ill-conceived legislation was to protect US farmers - a notion popular in many WTO member governments to this day. As farmers pressed to have greater protection from imports, many other industries joined the queue of lobbyists and as they often do, these lobbyists succeeded in gaining protection for their industries. Duties of more than 60% were slapped on 3,200 imported products, lifting overall average tariffs by about 20%. If the idea was to curb imports, Smoot-Hawley was a fantastic success - by 1933 imports had fallen from $4.4 billion to $1.3 billion while exports fell 69% over that same period to $1.6 billion. But there was an unintended consequence to Smoot-Hawley - its contribution to an economic depression. Smoot-Hawley touched off a domino effect of retaliation and counter-retaliation among trading partners which provoked a severe contraction of international trade, depressed growth and rising unemployment around the industrial world. From 1930 to 1932 the unemployment rate soared from 8.7% to 23.6% and remained at more than 14% for the remainder of the decade.

How did the collapse of trade contribute to this? One reason is that contrary to the conventional wisdom, imports are good for you. A great many Americans were then and are today employed in sectors linked to imports. Parts needed for manufacturing became dearer if they could be found at all. The soaring jobless rate was also a product of the response from other countries which were anything but pleased to be the target of trade sanctions. Predictably, these countries retaliated. US exports to Europe, for instance, declined from $2.3 billion in 1929 to $784 million in 1932. Globally trade contracted by 60% between 1929 and 1932.

If there’s anything good to be found in the financial crisis, it’s that it encourages a study of history, a study that study destroys the arguments for protectionism when economies fall into recession or depression.

Reuters, “Hopes fading for Doha breakthrough: Canadian aide“:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Prospects are dimming for a breakthrough in world trade talks before President George W. Bush leaves office in January, but a meeting of world leaders next month might be able to restore some momentum, a Canadian trade official said on Thursday.

“It’s all moving a little too slowly,” said Don Stephenson, a Canadian assistant deputy trade minister who stepped down in August as chairman of the manufactured goods negotiations in the World Trade Organization talks. “The hope is frankly beginning to fade.”

WTO Director Pascal Lamy has been in Washington Thursday and today, exploring possibilities. In a speech Wednesday at Berkeley, he restated the compelling case for a completed Doha round.

We know the benefits that will accrue from a successful Doha Round. We understand as well the opportunity costs of no deal. Failure to conclude the Round will not mean the demise of the WTO. We will still administer rules agreed over 60 years of negotiations. We will still adjudicate commercial disputes among members. We will still engage in monitoring and surveillance of government trade policies to ensure the most transparent trading system possible. But be in no doubt that such an outcome would hurt the credibility of our organization and the multilateral negotiating process that we oversee. Governments have said they will seek recourse to their trade problems through the dispute settlement system if they cannot negotiate rule changes. In my view, rule making through the judiciary rather than the legislature, as it were, is something which would not be sustainable.

Governments will also turn to regional or bilateral agreements rather than continue along the admittedly more difficult multilateral path. Such agreements have their place. I, myself, have negotiated a few of them in a previous life. But they are no substitute for a Doha deal. There are 430 regional and bilateral agreements in place today, 300 of these have been struck in the last eight years, and I can assure you that not one of them addresses the problem of excessive, trade-distorting farm subsidies. Not one of them will reduce the fisheries subsidies that threaten to empty our oceans. None will lead to the creation of global rules to facilitate trade or open globally trade in services.

The Washington Post publishes today as its lead, page one story, “A Last Push to Deregulate” with a subhed, “White House to Ease Many Rules.”

The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January.

The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms.

Given the placement and the headline’s tone, we anticipated another bit of agenda journalism, especially since the first source cited is one of the regulatory zealots at the group, OMB Watch.

OMB Watch leads its website with activist huffing and puffing about “midnight regulations,” the nefarious practice of enacting last-minute regulations. ABC News has already bought OMB Watch’s spiel doing a segment yesterday, “The Bush Administration’s Midnight Regulations,” referring to the lead OMB spokesman and activist on the issue as an “expert.” Right. Disinterested expert.

But, kudos, the Post story is pretty balanced. It gives the Administration a place to state its case up high in the story, noting the deadlines that OMB set to allow a full examination of regulations before they’re promulgated. The reporter, R. Jeffrey Smith, describes the Clinton Administration’s undisciplined, partisan rush of last-minute regs, as well, providing some grounds for comparison: “While it remains unclear how much the administration will be able to accomplish in the coming weeks, the last-minute rush appears to involve fewer regulations than Bush’s predecessor, Bill Clinton, approved at the end of his tenure.” Including some enacted even AFTER the Clinton Administration left office.

So good job, Washington Post. Hope all the other media outlets that get lobbied into a story by OMB Watch strive for as much accuracy, balance and context. We did laugh when we encountered this paragraph, though:

As many as 90 new regulations are in the works, and at least nine of them are considered “economically significant” because they impose costs or promote societal benefits that exceed $100 million annually. They include new rules governing employees who take family- and medical-related leaves, new standards for preventing or containing oil spills, and a simplified process for settling real estate transactions.

Surely no one is going to be audacious enough to claim proposed Family and Medical Leave Act regulations are last-minute, perfidious “midnight regulations.” The Department of Labor’s Employment Standards Administration issued a request for information on the FMLA on December 1, 2006.

Working on a regulation for nearly two years really doesn’t qualify as a midnight regulation.

Happened to just watch a campaign commercial from a candidate attacking the incumbent U.S. Senator for taking money from oil company PACs, vowing to “crack down” on Big Oil and speculators. The candidate proclaimed with the usual populist vigor: Eliminate tax breaks for Big Oil to fund alternative energies to help our families.

Of course, it was a campaign spot from last summer, the cracking time.

Lately, there’s much less oil company demonizing. Much less. Take a look: “Crack down on oil companies” then and now.

Also now: AFP, “World oil prices tumble on US economic gloom“:

NEW YORK (AFP) — Oil prices slipped Thursday in volatile trade, reversing early gains as the market reacted to news of shrinking economic growth in the United States, the world’s top energy consumer.

An overnight cut in US interest rates, along with a similar move in China, had earlier bolstered prices on the view this action would bolster demand in two crucial markets.

New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for December delivery fell 1.54 dollars to close at 65.96 dollars per barrel.

Lousy speculators.