The World Trade Organization ruled today that the US legally imposed tariffs on Chinese tire imports last year. These tariffs were imposed in response to a United Steelworkers petition, showing that Chinese firms were dumping substandard tires on US markets, causing “material injury” to the domestic tire industry. This victory at the WTO is a [...]

It’s been a pretty good day for the regulatory state. In addition to the Justice Department’s effort to block the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, they also held up South Carolina’s new voter ID law, on the grounds that it would disenfranchise voters: In a letter to the attorney general, the voting rights chief asked questions including how [...]

Just to get back to this drive for regulatory reform that you’ll see from the House GOP over the next several months, with spending de-emphasized, take a look at Eric Cantor’s memo on the upcoming agenda from the chamber. About 80% of it concerns repealing “job-destroying regulations,” which suddenly have become the core reason for [...]

I don’t think the President gets enough credit for revitalizing the NLRB. This was an example of Obama doing the right thing without worrying about the political consequences. NLRB commissioners were stuck and the board was unable to operate with less than a quorum. Republicans were holding up the commissioners, including one of their own [...]

I remember a lot of fanfare over this Joan Walsh column, where labor leaders claimed they were “declaring independence” and moving to state and local politics for the purposes of self-preservation. Indeed, some of that has happened. The International Association of Fire Fighters closed their federal PAC. Labor poured a lot of money into the [...]

President Obama was asked today about the decision by the National Labor Relations Board with respect to Boeing, and you can see his answer above. He said that the NLRB is an independent agency and that there’s a pending judicial matter. “So I don’t want to get into the details of the case. I don’t [...]

A new set of rules from the National Labor Relations Board would accelerate union elections and introduce an electronic element into the process. The labor board wants to tighten up the process by ensuring that employers, employees and unions receive needed information sooner and by delaying litigation over many voter-eligibility issues until after workers vote [...]

Last night’s Republican debate was held in Greenville, South Carolina, which has become a key early state in the Presidential nomination. It was inevitable that this would lead to a highlighting of issues particular to South Carolina, as it has for most early-primary and early-caucus states. That’s driving a lot of attention around the NLRB [...]

The President today announced recess appointments for fifteen nominees who have been waiting for confirmation in the Senate for an average of 214 days. Included in those nominees are two members of the National Labor Relations Board, which has been non-functional without a quorum for over two years. Craig Becker and Mark Pearce, two Democratic [...]

We learned a little bit in the health care debate about “credible threats.” Progressives weren’t willing to make a credible threat to walk away from health care reform, and anti-choice groups and Blue Dogs were. That’s why the law tilted away from progressives at the end. Here’s another example of a threat that isn’t credible, [...]

Earlier this month, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis intimated that Craig Becker, a nominee for the currently non-functioning National Labor Relations Board, would get a recess appointment to the body. Now Tom Harkin is saying the same thing, telling CQ “It’s going to happen” during the Easter recess, set to begin March 26, or whenever the [...]