Bring Back “Trump Classic”

We’re now almost a year and a half into Trump’s second term. From almost every point of view, it’s worse than his first term.  It reminds me of the “New Coke” that Coca Cola once introduced, which was a disaster that led to the reintroduction of what was then dubbed “Coke Classic.”  Trump Classic was committed to fossil fuels and eliminating environmental protections. But in almost every respect, his policies were less radical and his methods were less drastic.

To take just a couple examples. Both incarnations of Trump featured efforts to limit the Endangered Species Act through rulemakings in a couple of key areas, definition of a species’s critical habitat and lessened protections for species that are threatened rather than endangered.  But only New Trump engaged in unprecedented use of national security powers to eliminate protections for endangered species across the entire Gulf of Mexico.  Another example: Trump Classic revised the White House regulations governing environmental impact statements, while New Trump abolished those regulations entirely, leaving individual agencies free to limit environmental reviews. This required repealing an executive order dating back to Jimmy Carter on the subject.

As that example indicates, New Trump is dedicated to wiping out policies that were long accepted as part of the fabric of environmental law. While Trump Classic was focused on rolling back Obama’s environmental policies, New Trump has gone further back in time. Thus, although Trump Classic was no friend of environmental justice efforts, New Trump repealed Bill Clinton’s executive order calling on the government to avoid harming vulnerable communities. New Trump followed up by abolishing all environmental justice and equity offices in the government. Or to take another example, Trump Classic weakened fuel efficiency standards for cars, while New Trump got Congress to gut the standards by eliminating all penalties for violation. Thus, carmakers are free to return to the era of the 1950s and 1970s when gas buzzlers ruled the roads.

In both Administrations, Trump’s favorite target has been climate policy. He once called climate change a Chinese hoax, and there’s no sign that his view has changed. While Trump Classic withdrew from Obama’s Paris Agreement on climate change, New Trump also withdrew from George H.W. Bush’s foundational treaty on the subject. The goal is to make it more difficult for any future president to engage in the UN climate negotiations.

In terms of domestic climate policy, Trump Classic weakened emissions standards for greenhouse gases. New Trump is attempting to abolish them entirely by repealing the EPA finding that these emissions cause harmful climate change. The theory behind the repeal is that, although the US is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, neither our vehicle emissions nor our power plant emissions have a significant impact on climate change (nor it appears that no one is individual is responsible for the outcome they have all collectively caused. If Trump succeeds in this effort, EPA will have no power to regulate carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas.

Withdrawing from international agreements and repealing regulations are established methods for a new President to change policy, though New Trump is engaging in them with unusual abandon.  New Trump has also pioneered a new method of deregulation by destroying or severely damaging the agencies in charge of those policies.  For instance, New Trump eliminated experienced lawyers in the Justice Department’s environmental division, replacing them with anti-environmental lawyers whose only interest is deregulation. He also eliminated EPA division of environmental science, since scientific facts have a nasty habit of contradicting Trump’s policies.

As these examples show, New Trump. like New Coke, has been far worse than the original. The soft-drink analogy is obviously flippant, in that we’re talking about a much more seri9ous subject. Future generations will pay a serious price for Trump’s destructive practices. The federal government has suffered a brain drain that will take years to recover from.  And outside of the environmental area, there has also been a terrible price, with children needlessly dying from infectious disease, and civilians killed in “wars of choice.” In short, Trump has succeeded in his second term in making every past President including even himself look better.