
New state law bolsters Red Hill fuel spill remediation efforts
Gov. Josh Green on Friday signed a bill into law that directs a state Department of Land and Natural Resources official to develop a public dashboard to display water test results from sources around the Red Hill facility, which is being decommissioned by the Navy under a closure plan anticipated for completion in 2028.
Act 197, which originated as House Bill 505, also includes a directive to develop a broader three-year public education program focused in part on efforts to remediate contaminated soil and water stemming from decades of fuel spills at the World War II-era facility. The Red Hill facility was built over 500 feet underground with tanks capable of storing 250 million gallons of fuel, 100 feet above the aquifer and connected to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
Heading up the initiative will be a Red Hill Water Alliance Initiative coordinator, a new position created within DLNR.
Funding for this position, an outreach coordinator and an administrative support specialist was appropriated by the Legislature last year. Recruiting efforts have been underway this year.
The envisioned work by the three-person team among other things is expected to facilitate implementation of recom mendations made in a November 2023 report from the Red Hill Water Alliance Initiative, or WAI, working group.
Another element in Act 197 establishes a special state financial account to receive contributions including appropriations and donations from the U.S. government, the state, the city and the public to address contamination from Red Hill and administered by the WAI coordinator.
Healani Sonoda-Pale, a leader of the Native Hawaiian organization Ka Lahui Hawai 'i, said the new law was a product of community organizing efforts over more than two years and is a testament to the people's power.
'We know that restoring our aquifer and holding the federal government accountable will be a marathon, not a sprint, ' she said in a statement.
The WAI working group formed in May 2023 was made up of state and city leaders including Green, Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi, Honolulu City Council Chair Tommy Waters, DLNR Director Dawn Chang, Honolulu Board of Water Supply Chief Engineer Ernie Lau and leadership in the Legislature.
The working group's final report criticized Navy statements over contamination levels, and contended that far more fuel had been spilled over the past 80 years from Red Hill than has been documented.
There have been 70 documented incidents over eight decades amounting to potential spills totaling 180, 000 gallons of fuel, including around 19, 000 gallons in a 2021 spill that contaminated a Navy well and water system on Oahu serving 93, 000 military members and civilians. The WAI report said total spill volume could be as high as 1.94 million gallons.
The working group's 2023 report also called for access to Navy monitoring wells, stepped-up testing and payment from the Navy to repair Oahu's compromised water system.
In direct response to the 2021 spill, BWS shut down several of its nearby wells to guard against fuel contaminating water distributed to other parts of the island.
BWS also filed a $1.2 billion claim with the Navy to recover costs of the water agency's response under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
The Navy has said it has a long-term commitment to protect Oahu's aquifer, environment and community members.
Lau told state lawmakers in January while testifying in support of HB 505 that in working on the Red Hill issue for 11 years, it's clear to him that a structure beyond existing regulatory framework is needed to restore land and water contaminated by Red Hill fuel.
The changes under HB 505 are intended to be part of the desired new structure.
Sonoda-Pale said at the same Jan. 28 hearing on the bill held by the House Water and Land Committee that special officials are needed to ensure that Red Hill disaster remediation is carried out.
'It's going to take decades, ' she said.
Alfred Medeiros told the committee that local government needs to do more to hold the Navy accountable for what he called crimes. 'Ola i ka wai. Water is life, ' he said.
Medeiros added that people may have forgotten that the Navy poisoned the public water supply and that much more work needs to be done.
'There's still sediment sitting in those tanks, ' he said. 'There's still procrastination … they (the Navy ) don't show up to meetings.'
Davie-ann Momilani Thomas told the committee that her family living in the Pearl City Peninsula community on the Navy water system still can't trust that their water is free of contaminants after cleanup efforts and monitoring by the Navy.
'I just want you all to know that I support this bill, because me and my family and many affected family members that are still living on the Navy interconnected plumbing pipes, we are still living off of bottled waters, ' she said. 'I do not trust our island water flowing through their (Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command ) plumbing pipes.'
Testimony on the bill at the hearing was all supportive except for one comment pertaining to the special fund, and included endorsements from DLNR, BWS, several organizations including the Sierra Club of Hawai 'i and about 55 individuals.
After five committee hearings, the House and Senate unanimously passed a final version of HB 505 on April 30.
During an initial House vote taken March 4, Rep. Garner Shimizu, whose district includes Red Hill, called HB 505 a thoughtful bill.
'It continues the monitoring of the conditions at Red Hill and helps assure proper coordination between federal, county and state agencies as well as champion public transparency, ' said Shimizu (R, Moanalua-Aliamanu-Foster Village ).
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The Verge
17 minutes ago
- The Verge
Trump's AI plan is a massive handout to gas and chemical companies
The Trump administration put out its vision for AI infrastructure in the US last week. It's a dream for the fossil fuel and chemical industries — and a nightmare for wind and solar energy and the environment. An 'AI Action Plan' and flurry of executive orders Donald Trump signed last week read like manifestos on making AI less 'woke' and less regulated. They're packed with head-spinning proposals to erode bedrock environmental protections in the US, on top of incentives for companies to build out new data centers, power plants, pipelines, and computer chip factories as fast as they can. It's a deregulation spree and a massive handout to fossil fuels, all in the name of AI. What the AI plan 'is really about' is 'using unprecedented emergency powers to grant massive new exemptions for data centers and specifically fossil fuel infrastructure,' says Tyson Slocum, energy program director at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. 'I think they have a genuine interest in accommodating Big Tech's priorities. But it's an opportunity to marry their priorities for Big Oil.' 'It's an opportunity to marry their priorities for Big Oil.' Data centers are notoriously energy-hungry and have already led to a surge of new gas projects meant to satiate rising demand. But many tech companies have sustainability commitments they've pledged to meet using renewable energy, and as wind and solar farms have generally grown cheaper and easier to build than fossil fuel power plants, they've become the fastest-growing sources of new electricity in the US. Now, Trump wants to turn that on its head. He signed an executive order on July 23rd meant to 'accelerat[e] federal permitting of data center infrastructure.' It tells the Secretary of Commerce to 'launch an initiative to provide financial support' for data centers and related infrastructure projects. That could include loans, grants, and tax incentives for energy infrastructure — but not for solar and wind power. The executive order describes 'covered components' as 'natural gas turbines, coal power equipment, nuclear power equipment, geothermal power equipment' and any other electricity sources considered 'dispatchable.' To be considered dispatchable, operators have to be able to ramp electricity generation up and down at will, so this excludes intermittent renewables like solar and wind power that naturally fluctuate with the weather and time of day. Trump's AI planning document similarly says the administration will prioritize deploying dispatchable power sources and that 'we will continue to reject radical climate dogma.' Already, Trump has dealt killer blows to solar and wind projects by hiking up tariffs and cutting Biden-era tax credits for renewables. The AI executive order goes even further to entrench reliance on fossil fuels and make it harder for new data centers to run on solar and wind energy. 'Right now, you do not qualify for expedited treatment if your data center proposal has wind and solar. It is excluded from favorable treatment,' Slocum says. 'So what's the statement for the market? Don't rely on wind and solar.' That's not just environmentally unfriendly, it's inefficient — considering the current backlog for gas turbines and because fossil fuel plants are generally slower and more expensive to build than onshore wind and solar farms. 'This is not an energy abundance agenda. This is an energy idiot agenda,' Slocum adds. The Trump administration wants to speed things up by rewriting bedrock environmental laws. Trump, ever the disgruntled real estate mogul, has railed against environmental reviews he says take too long and cost too much. He has already worked to roll back dozens of environmental regulations since stepping into office. Now, the executive order directs the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to modify rules under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Superfund law, and Toxic Substances Control Act to expedite permitting for data center projects. 'That is horrifying … These [laws] protect our public health. They protect our children. They protect the air we breathe and the water we drink,' says Judith Barish, coalition director of CHIPS Communities United, a national coalition that includes labor and environmental groups. 'This is an energy idiot agenda.' The coalition has come together to fight for protections for workers in the chip industry and nearby communities. Semiconductor manufacturing has a long history of leaching harmful chemicals and exposing employees to reproductive health toxins. Santa Clara, California, home of Silicon Valley, has more toxic Superfund sites than any other county in the US as a result. The coalition wants to keep history from repeating itself as the US tries to revive domestic chip manufacturing and dominate the AI market. AI requires more powerful chips, and Trump's executive order fast-tracking federal permitting for data center projects includes semiconductors and 'semiconductor materials.' Barish says 'a chip factory is a chemical factory' because of all the industrial solvents and other chemicals semiconductor manufacturers use. That includes 'forever chemicals,' for which the Trump administration has started to loosen regulations on how much is allowed in drinking water. Companies including 3M and Dupont have faced a landslide of lawsuits over forever chemicals linked to cancer, reproductive risks, liver damage, and other health issues, and have subsequently made pledges to phase out or phase down the chemicals. Now, manufacturers are jumping on the opportunity to produce more forever chemicals to feed the AI craze. Ironically, we could see data centers and related infrastructure popping up on polluted Superfund sites that Silicon Valley has already left in its tracks. Trump's executive order directs the EPA to identify polluted Superfund and Brownfield sites that could be reused for new data center projects (and tells other agencies to scour military sites and federal lands for suitable locations). Office buildings are already situated on or adjacent to old Superfund sites where cleanup is ongoing; Google workers were exposed to toxic vapors rising from a Superfund site below their office back in 2013. Since it can take decades to fully remediate a site, oversight is key. 'For Superfund sites in particular, these are the most contaminated sites in the country, and it is important that there are comprehensive reviews both for the people who are going to be working on the sites, as well as for the people who surround them,' says Jennifer Liss Ohayon, a research scientist at the Silent Spring Institute who has studied the remediation of Superfund sites. But Trump wants to erode oversight for new data center projects that receive federal support — adding 'categorical exclusions' to typical National Environmental Policy Act assessments. Environmental reviews that do take place could also be limited by the sheer lack of people power at federal agencies the Trump administration has hacked to pieces, including the EPA. 'America needs new data centers, new semiconductor and chip manufacturing facilities, new power plants and transmission lines,' Trump said before signing his AI executive orders last week. 'Under my leadership we're going to get that job done and it's going to be done with certainty and with environmental protection and all of the things we have to do to get it done properly.' Good luck. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Justine Calma Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All AI Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Analysis Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Climate Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Environment Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Policy Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. 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Vox
2 hours ago
- Vox
Is MAHA losing its battle to make Americans healthier?
covers health for Vox, guiding readers through the emerging opportunities and challenges in improving our health. He has reported on health policy for more than 10 years, writing for Governing magazine, Talking Points Memo, and STAT before joining Vox in 2017. On a Friday evening this July, the Trump administration announced it would lay off all of the health research scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency. Hundreds of investigators who try to understand how toxic pollution affects the human body would be gone. That wasn't a surprise. The EPA — which had a founding mission to protect 'the air we breathe and the water we drink,' as President Richard Nixon put it — has been busy dismantling policies that are in place to ensure environmental and public health. The New York Times reported earlier this month that the agency is drafting a plan that would repeal its recognition of climate change as a threat to human health, potentially limiting the government's ability to regulate greenhouse gases. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin has relaxed existing standards for mercury and lead pollution — two toxins that can lead to developmental problems in children. And the EPA has postponed its implementation of new Biden-era regulations that were supposed to reduce the amount of dangerous chemicals Americans are exposed to. Meanwhile, House Republicans are attempting to grant widespread liability relief to pesticide companies and restrict EPA regulation of PFAS 'forever chemicals' through provisions that have been tucked into the spending bills currently moving through Congress. (Democrats, for their part, have offered opposing legislation that would protect an individual's right to sue over any harm from pesticides.) This collective assault upon America's environmental regulations targets not just the environment, but human health as well. Which means it sits oddly with the work of another Trump official whose office at the Department of Health and Human Safety is just a 15-minute walk from EPA headquarters: Robert F. Kennedy Jr, whose Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement seeks to, obviously, make Americans healthier. But Kennedy hasn't spoken up about these contradictions — and his supporters are beginning to notice. In response to the pro-pesticide industry proposals in Congress, MAHA leaders wrote a letter to Kennedy and Zeldin voicing opposition to a bill that they believe 'would ensure that Americans have no power to prevent pesticide exposure, and no path to justice after harm occurs.' In the letter, they also urged the EPA to ban two pesticides — atrazine and glyphosate — that have been linked to birth defects and liver and kidney problems. What you'll learn from this story: The Make America Healthy Again movement depends on not only improving the US food supply but eliminating environmental pollution. President Donald Trump's EPA has taken actions to deregulate pesticides, microplastics, mercury and lead pollution, and more substances that the MAHA movement has identified as dangerous to human health. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is facing pressure from leaders in the MAHA movement to reconcile the gap between their shared goals and Trump's environmental agenda. 'These toxic substances are in our food, rain, air, and water, and most disturbingly, in our children's bodies,' the MAHA letter says. 'It is time to take a firm stand.' Kennedy is no stranger to these issues: Earlier this year, the Trump administration's Make America Healthy Again Commission report, which sought to document and explain the dramatic increase in chronic diseases like obesity among US children, identified both chemicals as health risks. Zeldin, however, has been working to deregulate both atrazine and glyphosate in his first few months leading the EPA. 'It is completely contrary to MAHA to relax regulations on PFAS and many different chemicals. We are calling upon them and to reverse some of these actions that [the administration] is taking or seemingly may allow,' said Zen Honeycutt, one of the letter signers and the founder of the MAHA-aligned group Moms Across America. 'We are extremely disappointed with some of the actions taken by this administration to protect the polluters and the pesticide companies.' MAHA burst onto the political scene as part of Kennedy's 2024 presidential campaign. It has become a vehicle for public health concerns, some exceedingly mainstream (like addressing America's ultra-processed food and reducing pollution) and some of them very much outside of it (such as undermining the effectiveness of vaccines). After dropping his own candidacy, Kennedy joined forces with Trump, and ended up running the nation's most important health agency. But now that he's in office, he and the movement he leads are running into the challenges of making change — and the unavoidable reality that MAHA has allied with a president and an agenda that is often in direct opposition to their own. 'In the case of Lee Zeldin, you have someone who's doing incredibly consequential actions and is indifferent to the impact on public health,' said Jeremy Symons, senior adviser to the Environmental Protection Network and a former adviser to the EPA during the Clinton administration. 'In the case of Kennedy, you have someone that has spent his life thinking about public health, but seems unable or disinterested in stopping what's going on.' RFK Jr.'s HHS vs. Zeldin's EPA Kennedy has successfully nabbed voluntary industry commitments to phase out certain dyes from American food products. He has overhauled the government's vaccine policy, and one state has already followed his lead in banning fluoride from its drinking water. But his ambitions to reduce the sheer number of toxins that leach into America's children in their most vulnerable years are being stymied by an EPA and a Republican-controlled Congress with very different priorities. 'Food dyes are not as consequential as pesticides for food manufacturers. The ingredients they put into the food contaminate the food,' Honeycutt said. 'That issue is a much larger issue. That is the farmers, and changing farming practices takes longer.' To Kennedy's credit, these are issues he'd apparently like to tackle — if he could. His HHS report earlier this year pointed out that 'studies have raised concerns about possible links between some of these products and adverse health outcomes, especially in children.' Specific ingredients in pesticides have been associated with cancer, inflammation, metabolic problems and more. But the EPA, meanwhile, has reversed regulations and stymied research for those same substances. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins hold ice cream cones while announcing a major industry pledge to ditch artificial dyes by 2027. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images The EPA has proposed easing restrictions on the amount of the herbicide atrazine that can be permitted in the nation's lakes and streams. Human and animal studies have associated exposure to atrazine with birth defects, kidney and liver diseases, and problems with metabolism; the evidence, however, remains limited and the MAHA report called for further independent research. The EPA has also moved to block states from putting any new limits on or requiring any public disclosures for glyphosate, a herbicide that the MAHA report says has been linked to a wide range of health problems. Zeldin also postponed Biden-era plans to take action on chlorpyrifos, a common insecticide increasingly associated with development problems in kids. The EPA has also been slow to move on microplastics and PFAS, both substances of growing concern among scientists and the general public. These invisible but omnipresent chemicals are a priority for the MAHA movement, singled out in the White House report for further study and policymaking. The EPA, though, has delayed implementing a new standard to limit PFAS in drinking water and announced it would consider whether to raise the limits of acceptable PFAS levels in community water systems, while also slashing funding for more research on the substance's health effects. Bisphenols (also known as BPA) and phthalates are two other common materials used in plastic production and food packaging, which have also been identified by researchers as likely dangerous because of their ability to disrupt hormone and reproductive function. The MAHA singles them out for further study and possible restrictions, but the EPA has delayed safety studies for both. The US is even moving backward on pollutants like mercury and lead, for which the scientific evidence of their harms is undisputed. They are toxins that regulators have actually taken steps over the decades to reduce exposure, through banning the use of lead paint, strictly limiting mercury levels, etc. Yet over the past few months, the EPA has moved to grant exemptions to coal power plants and chemical manufacturers that would allow more mercury pollution, while cutting monitoring for lead exposures. This is a long list of apparent contradictions and we're barely six months into Trump's term. How long can the contradictions pile up without Kennedy challenging Zeldin directly? We reached out to the Health and Human Services Department to see if we could get Kennedy's perspective on any of this. In response, an agency spokesperson sent a written statement: 'Secretary Kennedy and HHS are committed to investigating any potential root causes of the chronic disease epidemic, including environmental factors and toxic chemicals,' an HHS spokesperson wrote. 'The Secretary continues to engage with federal partners, including the EPA, to ensure that federal actions align with the latest gold standard science and the public health priorities identified in the MAHA report.' But as the EPA continues to roll back environmental protections despite the reassurances that the administration is aligned on MAHA, Kennedy's constituents are growing impatient. 'Our children's lives and futures are non-negotiables, and claims from the industry of 'safe' levels of exposure ignore the impacts of cumulative exposure and the reality of serious, evidence-backed risks,' the MAHA movement's recent letter says. 'The industry's call for delay or inaction is completely unacceptable — immediate and decisive action is needed now and is long overdue.' Why isn't RFK Jr. standing up to the EPA? The conflict between the two agencies' agendas has been striking: The EPA, under Zeldin, is allied with the industries it regulates and plans to deregulate as much as possible. HHS, on the other hand, is focused on its vision of making the environment safer in order to improve people's health — a goal that will inevitably require more regulations that require companies to restrict their use of certain compounds that prove to be dangerous to human health. Trump himself has said the two sides are going to have to work together and figure things out, Honeycutt noted — words that she is taking to heart for now. And the movement's leaders recognize that they are now in the business not of outside agitation but of working within the system to try to change it. 'We're not always going to be happy,' Honeycutt said. But Kennedy may be playing the weaker hand: Zeldin and his agency hold obvious advantages, and in a fight between HHS and EPA, EPA will likely win — unless, perhaps, Trump himself steps in. The biggest reason is a matter of authority: The EPA has the responsibility to regulate pollution, while Kennedy's HHS does not. The federal health agency can offer funding to state and local health departments to advance its policy goals, but it has effectively no regulatory authority when it comes to the dangerous substances identified in the MAHA report's section on chemical toxins. The EPA, on the other hand, has broad discretion to regulate the chemicals that industries pump into the American environment — or not. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin speaks, as he tours a steel plant in South Carolina in May. Kevin Lamarque/AFP via Getty Images The difference between the leadership at the two agencies is also stark: Kennedy is a former lifelong Democrat who has never held a government position; Zeldin is a seasoned GOP operator who served four terms in the US House. Kennedy has brought in an assortment of unconventional personnel at HHS, many with skepticism about mainstream science and who are viewed dubiously by the industries they oversee. At the EPA, representatives of long-entrenched polluting interests have commandeered powerful positions: Nancy Beck, a former scientist at the American Chemistry Council, the chemical manufacturing industry's trade association, for example, is now holding the position overseeing chemical safety and pollution prevention. The perception within the industry, according to insiders who spoke with Vox, is that Kennedy is, well, a lightweight. 'From the perspective of the polluter takeover of EPA, Kennedy is largely seen as inconsequential and ineffective. He's playing wiffle ball,' Symons said. 'Kennedy talks a good game, but watch carefully what's happening at EPA and all the favors being given to corporate polluters that are going to do far more damage than anything.' 'The food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe are going to get more toxic and more dangerous because of what's happening in EPA,' Symons told Vox. When it comes to jockeying for influence, Zeldin also enjoys more powerful friends in the Republican Party. He has relationships with conservative politicians and advocacy groups across the nation. Almost all of the Republican state attorneys general, for example, are motivated to roll back environmental regulations because it's compatible with their priorities in their respective states. 'A lot of this is being driven by polluter states, red states with Republican attorneys general,' Symons said. And, as evidenced by the pesticide liability relief legislation in Congress that prompted MAHA's letter to Kennedy and Zeldin, Republicans in the House and Senate remain much more allied with corporate interests — an alliance that has stood for decades — than with the public health movement that has only recently been brought inside the broader Make America Great Again coalition. It is a bitter irony for a movement that has often called out corporate influence and corruption for the government's failures to protect public health. The White House's own MAHA report cites the influence of big businesses to explain why the chronic disease crisis has grown so dire; in particular, the report says, 'as a result of this influence, the regulatory environment surrounding the chemical industry may reflect a consideration of its interests.' MAHA's leaders aren't running for the hills yet; Honeycutt said she urges her members not to vilify Kennedy or Trump for failing to make progress on certain issues. But they sense they're losing control of the agenda on the environment, forcing difficult questions onto the movement just a few months after it attained serious power in Washington. 'As for MAHA organizations, they must decide whether they are to become appendages of the Republican party, or coalesce into an effective, independent political force,' Charles Eisenstein, a wellness author who was a senior adviser to Kennedy's presidential campaign, wrote for Children's Health Defense, a once-fringe group with ties to Kennedy. 'To do that, the movement must hold Republicans accountable for undermining public health with policies like liability shields. It must not sacrifice its core priorities to curry short-term favor with the Republican establishment.' The MAHA movement is made up of concerned parents and others focused on childen's health. Oliver Contreras/AFP via Getty Images The MAHA-MAGA political alliance is new and tenuous — many MAHA followers voted for President Barack Obama, Eisenstein points out — and it may not be permanent. And some fractures are already apparent: Honeycutt, the leader of Moms Across America and a signer of the MAHA movement's letter to Kennedy, told Vox that her own members have told her directly that they are considering voting for Democrats in the next election. Even as she urges MAHA to keep the faith, Honeycutt said that Republicans risk alienating this enthusiastic part of their coalition by going hog wild on environmental deregulation. Her group is in the process of pulling together a legislative scorecard to hold lawmakers to account. 'There could be dire consequences for the midterm elections, if they don't realize,' she said. 'We don't care if you're a Republican or Democrat. We will support whoever supports us.' Vox climate correspondent Umair Irfan contributed reporting to this story.


Politico
3 hours ago
- Politico
Trump got his tariff hike. The rest remains murky.
Asked about the discrepancy, Trump administration officials pointed back to the joint statement to emphasize that Indonesia had agreed to lift the ban on nickel ore. 'These countries made these agreements,' the White House officials said. 'We expect them to abide by their commitments and if they reneg, the president reserves the ability to raise their tariffs again.' The deals Trump has reached have made some gains on historically thorny issues surrounding U.S. exports. Tokyo has committed to importing more U.S. rice — which is culturally sensitive in Japan — and the EU promised to eliminate tariffs on U.S. cars, which should help German companies that manufacture in the U.S. Indonesia, too, promised to adopt U.S. vehicle standards, which could ease the way for American auto companies to sell more cars to the country of more than 281 million people. And the Philippines also promised to eliminate all of its tariffs on certain U.S. goods, like autos. The most significant development, however, is that Trump has effectively reset the United States' role in the global trading system, with little retaliation so far from trading partners or blowback from financial markets. Over close to a century now, the U.S. kept its tariffs around 2 percent, part of a system it helped create after World War II to foster integrated global supply chains, lower prices and expand consumer choice. Trump's duties have also led to an influx of new tariff revenue — paid by the people and companies importing foreign goods (and not, as Trump regularly asserts, foreign governments) — coming into the country. In just a few months, the tariffs have brought in more than $136 billion, with the higher rates still yet to take effect. And, on the whole, Trump's trade policies have yet to drive a surge in consumer prices, with inflation just starting to tick up in July. That's thanks in part to the fact that companies loaded up on inventory early in the year and some have thus far absorbed the costs. Consumer sentiment has slightly improved over the past two months, further emboldening the White House.