US Commerce Research Articles

Trends in NHANES Biomonitored Exposures in California and the United States following Enactment of California's Proposition 65.

The prevalence of toxic chemicals in US commerce has prompted some states to adopt laws to reduce exposure. One with broad reach is California's Proposition 65 (Prop 65), which established a list of chemicals that cause cancer, developmental harm, or reproductive toxicity. The law is intended to discourage businesses from using these chemicals and to minimize consumer exposure. However, a key question remains unanswered: Has Prop 65 reduced population-level exposure to the listed chemicals? We used national biomonitoring data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to evaluate the impact of Prop 65 on population-level exposures. We evaluated changes in blood and urine concentrations of 37 chemicals (including phthalates, phenols, VOCs, metals, PAHs, and PFAS), among US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) participants in relation to the time of chemicals' Prop 65 listing. Of these, 11 were listed prior to, 11 during, and 4 after the biomonitoring period. The remaining 11 were not listed but were closely related to a Prop 65-listed chemical. Where biomonitoring data were available from before and after the date of Prop 65 listing, we estimated the change in concentrations over time for Californians compared with non-Californians, using a difference-in-differences model. We used quantile regression to estimate changes in exposure over time, as well as differences between Californians and non-Californians at the 25th, 75th, and 95th percentiles. We found that concentrations of biomonitored chemicals generally declined nationwide over time irrespective of their inclusion on the Prop 65 list. Median bisphenol A (BPA) concentrations decreased 15% after BPA's listing on Prop 65, whereas concentrations of the nonlisted but closely related bisphenol S (BPS) increased 20% over this same period, suggesting chemical substitution. Californians generally had lower levels of biomonitored chemicals than the rest of the US population. Our findings suggest that increased scientific and regulatory attention, as well as public awareness of the harms of Prop 65-listed chemicals, prompted changes in product formulations that reduced exposure to those chemicals nationwide. Trends in bisphenols and several phthalates suggest that manufacturers replaced some listed chemicals with closely related but unlisted chemicals, increasing exposure to the substitutes. Our findings have implications for the design of policies to reduce toxic exposures, biomonitoring programs to inform policy interventions, and future research into the regulatory and market forces that affect chemical exposure. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP13956.

William F. Meggers: The Dean of American Spectroscopists

William Frederick Meggers, honored as the Dean of American Spectroscopists by the US National Bureau of Standards (NBS), dedicated over five decades of his career to NBS, which later became the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 1988 under the United States Department of Commerce. Throughout his extensive tenure, spanning over half a century, Meggers made significant contributions to the fields of spectroscopy, atomic physics, and photographic techniques. Retiring officially at the age of 70 in 1958 as Chief of the Spectroscopy Section of the NBS organization, his impact endured. He was notably recognized as the first recipient of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy Gold Medal and remains immortalized through the Meggers Award, an annual accolade bestowed for the most outstanding paper published in the journal Applied Spectroscopy.

Tourism Resilience in CALABARZON Region Philippines

This research explores the tourism resilience of Resort Hotels in Region IV – A or CALABARZON which comprises 6 provinces namely, Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon. This region is one of the tourism hot spots in Philippines and it is also susceptible to disasters like volcanic eruption, earthquake, flooding of its coastal areas and one of the most affected areas in Philippines next to National Capital Region by COVID-19 pandemic. According to the CALABARZON Regional Development Plan 2023-2028 prepared by the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA), the escalating losses and damages incurred because of disasters underscore the imperative of fostering resilience within this region. It is important to measure the resilience of tourism enterprises as it is vital in determining their capability and capacity to cope up and recover from the socio-economic impacts caused by these disasters. A total of 101 Department of Tourism (DOT) accredited accommodation establishments have participated in the study which were represented by their respective managers. The researcher measured the tourism resilience index of resort hotel industry of Region IV A (CALABARZON) using six (6) indicators namely, business operational resilience, disaster preparedness, marketing, workforce, use of national and local resources, and resource access and knowledge adopted from Tourism Resilience Index developed by Mississippi Alabama Sea Grand (MASGP) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of US Department of Commerce (NOAA). Moreover, comparison on the tourism resilience assessment of resort hotels when grouped according to their enterprise profile and managers profile was further analyzed.

From craft to industry and back: transnational efforts in reconstructing tin’s social meaning to the retail consumer (1950s–1960s)

PurposeCommodity histories generally posit colonies’ roles as mere producers but have overlooked their roles in shaping global consumption. This study aims to investigate how Malayan tin producers and British colonial institutions used public relations and advertising strategies as entrepreneurial tools to fend off competition from substitutes amid global economic and geopolitical transitions during the height of the Cold War crisis and post-war boom in the 1950s and 1960s.Design/methodology/approachThis study draws on archival research of newspaper reports written in Singapore, the USA and Britain from the inter-war years until the 1960s. It also consults advertisements placed by the Malayan Tin Bureau on Time and Scientific American, data and views on tin scarcity by US congressional reports and commodity trends data published by the US Department of Commerce and the US Department of the Interior.FindingsThis paper demonstrates how the value of tin is recreated by manipulating its symbolic meanings and embedding them within the national and political contexts of the targeted consumer markets. This creative resistance against tin substitution was enacted through a transnational collaboration among colonial institutions, entrepreneurs in colonies and marketing strategists across geographies and territories.Research implicationsThis paper provokes further reflections on the importance of socially constructed meanings in shaping the market value of a product and the understanding of embedded political value systems in marketing generic commodities. Future research may adopt this perspective to reassess the framing of meanings of commodities in the contemporary setting, especially against rising concerns on the sustainability of mining natural resources, including minerals.OriginalityThis study integrates the perspectives of Malayan tin producers in reframing the meaning of a commodity and so, widens the scope of historical analyses of commodities beyond the industrialized global North. It reassesses how a commodity’s marketing value evolves and interacts with colonial politics. It also highlights the collaborative nature of colonial governments and local producers in developing new uses and representations of a generic commodity to create new markets for its consumption.

QALYs: The Math Doesn’t Work

The quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) is a metric widely used when assessing the cost-effectiveness of drugs and other health interventions. The assessments are used in the development of recommendations for pricing, formulary placement decisions, and health policy decisions. A new bill, H.R. 485, the Protecting Health Care for All Patients Act of 2023, was approved by the US House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee that will, if passed, end the practice of using QALYs in all federal programs.1,2 Proponents of the ban say that QALYs undervalue the positive effects of therapeutics on people with disabilities.3 We share their concerns. Furthermore, our review of the mathematical properties of QALYs, including an analysis of quality-of-life utility (QOL utility) data recently collected from patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), has led us to conclude that QALYs are an inappropriate metric of drug and treatment cost-effectiveness for all people, both disabled and nondisabled, and should not be the basis for US healthcare policy decisions.

Maneuvering into the future: Open-Architecture Data Repository (OADR) prototype: Towards civil and commercial space traffic coordination

In 2018, the US National Space Council released Space Policy Directive-3 (SPD-3), which instructed relevant US government agencies to begin re-assigning many aspects of space traffic management (STM) and space traffic coordination (STC) serving non-military US space operators. This was identified as a ‘whole of government’ approach, and the organization identified to lead many of the efforts was the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Space Commerce (OSC), in the US Department of Commerce (DOC). The US Congress, in Public Law 116–93, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020, legislation directed that the Secretary of Commerce contract with the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) to study the Trump Administration's proposal. The NAPA study affirmed OSC would be best suited. Congress also mandated that OSC accomplish an important first step: assemble an Open Architecture Data Repository11Since this paper was first presented, the name for the effort, the Open Architecture Data Repository (OADR), has been changed to TraCSS (Traffic Coordination System for Space). As the focus of this work is on the prototype demonstration system, we will retain the use of OADR in this paper. (OADR) prototype to demonstrate the efficacy of the approach and architecture.OSC, along with The Aerospace Corporation, MITER, MIT Lincoln Laboratories and the University of Texas-Austin, architected and assembled a working prototype in 2021. The team obtained two-months of data from the US Space Surveillance Network (SSN), along with data from commercial space surveillance data providers and satellite operator ephemerides. Using the prototype, the authors analyzed the data, identified potential satellite conjunctions, calculated probabilities of collision, and generated Conjunction Data Messages (CDMs). The team compared the results to existing operational systems, with good agreement. OSC and their partners demonstrated the OADR prototype results to the Congress, as funded and directed by Public Law 116–260, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021. This paper describes some of the background and rationale for the prototype, goals and derived requirements of the prototype, the architecture, software deployed, data utilized, conjunction analysis results, comparison of the prototype's results with existing operational US government systems, and possible next steps for the OADR.

The Influence of Fiscal Policy and Monetary Policy on Economic Growth in Indonesia

The purpose of this study is to investigate how changes in fiscal policy and monetary policy have impacted economic expansion in Indonesia. Spending by the government, tax rates, the rate at which banks open new accounts, and the total amount of money in circulation are the variables that were investigated in this study. This study takes a quantitative approach, and the analytical method that is employed is multiple linear regression using secondary data on economic growth from 2013-2022. The data for this study was collected from the United States Department of Commerce. The study's conclusions indicate that taxes and the amount of money in circulation impact Indonesia's economic growth, but neither government spending nor interest rates on BI deposits do. Additionally, how government expenditure, taxes, interest rates, and the amount of money in circulation affect economic growth. It is 99.66%. As a result, while making future decisions about the economy, the government will need to take into account both kinds of policies in a comprehensive manner.

Rice in the Time of Sugar: The Political Economy of Food in Cuba

Louis Pérez, author of more than a dozen books on modern Cuba and Cuban-American relations, here turns his hand to the history of Cuban rice. Historians interested in Cuban agriculture have written abundantly and wonderfully on sugar and tobacco. They have shown much less interest in Cuban food and food production. Pérez emphasizes early on the importance of rice to Cuban meals and diets, and its centrality to Cuban food culture. He stresses the irony that while Cubans for two centuries have been great rice eaters, trailing only some Asian populations in per capita rice consumption, they have never been great rice producers. Although Cuban landscapes, especially in the westernmost third of the island, are suited to rice growing, at many points in their history Cubans have imported 90 percent or more of their rice. This mismatch between production and consumption is what Pérez wishes to explain, especially for the years between 1840 and 1960. His stated aim is “to lift rice out of historiographical obscurity, to situate rice at the center of the very way to think about the Cuban past” (p. 23).Pérez burrows inside the politics of rice in both Cuba and the United States. At the heart of the book lies the fact that both Cuba and Louisiana could grow both sugar and rice. As a result of the growing involvement of the United States in Cuban affairs, the fate of Cuban rice farmers and rice production hinged on tariff deals between the two countries. If the US Congress and Commerce Department were to give Cuban sugar a warm welcome in US markets, then, in exchange, Cuba would have to allow US rice favorable terms. Given that economies of scale were more easily achieved by US rice farmers than their Cuban counterparts, trade deals that suited Cuban sugar producers always handicapped (uncompetitive) Cuban rice farmers. As Pérez puts it, “US rice producers had no better allies than Cuban sugar producers” (p. 25). Many Cubans lamented the lack of homegrown rice, and several governments sought to bolster rice farming, to little effect. Even Fidel Castro, who changed so much, could not change Cuba's dependence on foreign rice.Chapter 1 revisits the rise of sugar and decline of subsistence food production in nineteenth-century Cuba. Rice from South Carolina and Georgia helped make Cuban specialization in sugar feasible. By midcentury, sugar producers dominated Cuban agriculture and those aspects of policy that Spain (Cuba's colonial master before 1898) left to Cubans. Chapter 2 charts the course of rice imports from the 1890s to about 1920, an era when Cubans produced almost no rice of their own. They imported rice from several Asian countries, but the interruptions to maritime shipping brought on by World War I obliged Cubans to rely heavily on US rice for the first time. Chapter 3 explains that Asian rice reclaimed its place in Cuban markets in the 1920s, that Cuban efforts to boost rice production in the late 1920s brought meager results, and that in 1937–38 the US government negotiated new tariffs giving American rice farmers an edge over Asian ones in the Cuban market. The disruptions of World War II encouraged Cubans to try to grow more of their own rice, which they did, tripling output—but still accounting for only 3 percent of Cuban farm acreage. Chapters 4 and 5 detail the politics of rice and sugar in the 1950s. In the early 1950s, against the backdrop of a struggling economy, the Fulgencio Batista government made efforts once again to expand rice production, which had the potential to resolve the summer underemployment that came with the seasonality of sugar growing. But in 1956 Batista reversed course under pressure from sugar interests. An epilogue takes the story through the last 60 years, ending much where matters began, with Cuba importing the bulk of its rice.Pérez did research in at least eight cities. He used official documents, the press, trade publications, travel literature, and much else. The underlying research effort is one of the book's strengths. The audience that Pérez had in mind seems to be fellow scholars. The sources sometimes dominate the story, with long quotations from one or another official. A few quotations appear only in Spanish.The weakest feature in a strong book, in my judgment, is contextualization. Pérez focuses so intently on trade negotiations that he mentions only in passing important constraints and conditions that shape his larger story, such as the idea of comparative advantage and the ideology of free trade or the anxieties of Cold War Washington.

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Solar Tariff Battle Triggers Domestic Production Act

The Biden Administration's clean energy agenda has taken a few hits in recent months due to several factors—high inflation, the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine destabilizing global natural gas markets, and supply chain issues resulting from the COVID‐19 pandemic and the war, to name a few. The latest controversy surrounding solar tariffs has impacted US progress toward meeting large‐scale solar energy targets in the wake of an investigation by the US Department of Commerce (DOC). In March 2022, the DOC announced it would launch an investigation into whether Southeast Asian solar cell manufacturers are using parts made in China that would normally be subject to a solar tariff—specifically from Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia. The investigation was launched following an anti‐circumvention petition by a single company (San Jose‐based Auxin Solar, which represents less than 3 percent of the US module market) that was filed alleging unfair trade practices by Chinese suppliers.

US Anti-Dumping Practices Evolving against Market Economies

AbstractThis study examines how US discretionary practices developed in the past decade have affected antidumping duty rates against exporters. Using the most recent data on dumping margin calculations, we find that the US Department of Commerce (DOC) has developed discretionary practices in a more nuanced manner to inflate dumping margins, which have primarily targeted market economy exporters. Our case studies document that practices known as targeted dumping and particular market situations appear to serve as trade protectionism for market economy exporters, especially those who could otherwise have received a negative determination without such practices. Furthermore, the DOC has brought an apparent change in its application of discretionary practices after the Trade Extension Preferences Act of 2015, leading to much higher dumping margins for the market economy. Along with empirical and case analyses, we further examine the World Trade Organization (WTO) jurisprudence concerning the extent to which the discretion of an investigating authority in anti-dumping proceedings can be condoned in the WTO.

Comments: What’s Holding Back Production Increases?

The big oil producers are balancing the chasing of more production with delivering dividends to shareholders. So far, the scale is tipping in favor of shareholders. While recent quarterly reports have made this clear, it was reemphasized at a US House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing in April when executives from Chevron, BP America, Devon Energy, ExxonMobil, Pioneer Natural Resources, and Shell USA addressed alleged “price gouging” at the gas pump and rejected pressure to shift their record profits from paying dividends and stock buybacks to ramp up production and lower prices. The executives’ statements ranged from “We can increase production and return value to our shareholders” (Chevron CEO Michael Wirth) to Devon Energy CEO Richard Muncrief and Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield stating “the answer is no” when asked if they would reduce buybacks and dividends. Gretchen Watkins, Shell USA president, said her company intends to make investor returns and increase production and investments in renewable energy. Several of the executives pointed to their industry’s record losses during the pandemic when demand tanked (global fuel consumption fell by more than 25%) and West Texas Intermediate fell off a cliff to –$40/bbl on 20 April 2020 and slowly crept up. Even if the oil price drops, retail gas prices won’t immediately follow to stem the allegations of price gouging. Garrett Golding, a senior business economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, wrote, “In the energy economics world, this phenomenon is known as ‘rockets and feathers,’ where it is commonly observed that prices at the pump shoot up with oil prices like a rocket, but fall like a feather back to the ground after oil prices drop. There are two reasons for this scenario repeating itself during oil-price spikes: the macro-level logistics of how oil and refined products churn through the physical market and the micro-level economic decisions of service station owners and their customers.” Today, demand is strong even at average oil prices of about $103/bbl over the past 6 weeks. Now, the summer driving season is around the corner and consumers are eager to hit the road and fly the skies, finally free(r) of pandemic restrictions and concerns. Yet, the Permian rig count has remained fairly flat over the same period. Despite high oil prices (WTI just below $114/bbl on 17 May), drillers aren’t ramping up activity. Many interrelated factors affect supply and demand. Simplifying the complexity of the global market shines, at best, a narrow beam on some of the factors affecting production. The supply side is dealing with volatility of oil prices; the uncertainty of Europe’s energy supplies, including Europe’s potential embargo on Russian oil; the varied focus on energy transition; sustained fiscal restraint by smaller operators as they continue to reduce or avoid debt; the shortage of sand needed for fracturing in the North American shale plays; labor shortages; the reactivation of idled equipment; and supply chain disruptions. A supply bottleneck is affecting oil country tubular goods (OCTG), which have seen volatility related to the “weak domestic demand in China due to COVID-19 lockdowns and Chinese currency depreciation,” wrote Rystad senior analyst Marina Bozkurt in a recent market note. Business activity has been affected by shutdowns and logistics problems. “OCTG prices may remain pretty high this year, driven by higher costs of raw materials due to geopolitical tensions globally and government regulations to reduce carbon emissions.” Prices continue to increase at Japanese OCTG mills, where the focus is primarily on value-added products such as 13Cr material. Propping up prices are “tight global availability and strong demand. Despite a possible price fluctuation for raw materials, prices will unlikely cool down significantly as long as the Russia-Ukraine situation continues.” In an April report, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said the growing gap between OPEC+ production quotas and actual oil production is being driven by production capacity constraints in several OPEC+ countries, largely attributable to Angola, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia. Their capacity is limited by “infrastructure issues and the difficulty of attracting sufficient investment to offset production declines at existing wells.” The shortfall was nearly 1.1 million B/D in February, the most recent month for which there were official production data available. In May, JP Morgan lowered its outlook for 2022 global oil demand by 1 million B/D, citing higher oil prices, a weakening growth outlook, and escalating geopolitical tensions. How this plays out will affect producers’ appetite to increase or decrease their production or reconsider their priorities.

Private agendas and the public good: The contested development of high-speed passenger rail transport in the United States

During the 1960s, the United States Department of Commerce (and later the Department of Transportation) cooperated with the Pennsylvania Railroad (later, Penn Central) to develop the Metroliner, an American version of the Japanese Shinkansen. Federal officials possessed overtly political motives, including an effort to build political support for the Democratic Party in the heavily urbanized Northeast. Railroad executives sought federal subsidies for conventional rail passenger service, while building political support for the largest merger in American history. The conflicting agendas precluded the development of high-speed surface transportation in the United States.

INTERDEPENDENCE AND NETWORK OVERSIGHT IN 1990S INTERNET GOVERNANCE

In October 2016, the contract between the United States Department of Commerce and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) officially expired. This contract represented a long-standing and close relationship between the United States government and ICANN, a relationship that positioned the U.S. as a kind of linchpin in determining the shape and coordination of the global, extraterritorial internet. This research seeks to address the question: what interests and values shaped ICANN at the time of its establishment and in what ways do debates about this system reflect broader concerns about the U.S.-centric nature of early internet governance policy? I address this question using archival analysis focusing on the Ira Magaziner Electronic Commerce papers at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. In examining this archive, there are repeated concerns about the U.S.-centric nature of early internet governance policy, concerns that were clear as early as the mid-1990s and which remained at issue with the oversight of ICANN until 2016. While espousing the values of competitive free-market, the internet governance policy promoted by the U.S. government during the Clinton Administration raised concerns about the concentration of power and potentially monopolistic control of the network by a single nation. Understanding the foundations of debates around oversight and multistakeholderism that took place as early as the 1990s helps us better understand more recent changes in internet governance and also help contextualize and ground discussions about how to best create a truly representative global internet in the future.

‘Two Roads Diverged in [Soft]wood’ Targeted Dumping, Differential Pricing Methodology, and Zeroing: US – Canada Anti-Dumping in Softwood Lumber

AbstractThe United States and Canada have a long-standing series of disputes over softwood lumber that until now have focused on alleged subsidies and countervailing duties (CVDs). The United States changed things up this time around and the US Department of Commerce (USDOC) found dumping after applying the Differential Pricing Methodology to softwood lumber from Canada. The panel found that the USDOC erroneously aggregated export price differences when applying the differential pricing methodology (DPM), but departed from the WTO Appellate Body's previous ruling in US–Washing Machines regarding the use of zeroing and the inclusion of differential prices under Article 2.4.2 of the Anti-Dumping Agreement. To date, the United States and Canada have not been able to resolve the long-standing softwood lumber dispute, and this time the focus shifts from subsidies and countervailing duties to anti-dumping duties. It remains to be seen what happens in this specific dispute on appeal – if, and when, the WTO Appellate Body starts to function again. It will also be interesting to see whether this panel decision encourages parties to argue for, and future panels to permit departures from, Appellate Body rulings with which they disagree.

US House passes bill to control PFAS

Sweeping legislation to control pollution from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in land, water, and air passed the US House of Representatives July 21. If approved by the Senate and signed by President Joe Biden, the measure could cost the fluorochemical industry millions to clean up contaminated sites and restrict releases of PFAS pollution from factories. Chemical manufacturers would also have to sponsor toxicity studies in order to keep their PFAS on the US market. In addition, the bill would forbid introducing new PFAS into US commerce for 5 years. PFAS, a group of more than 9,000 synthetic compounds, are sturdy molecules that withstand harsh conditions and strongly resist degradation in the environment, earning them the nickname “forever chemicals.” Only a small number of these substances have been studied for toxicity, and some are linked to human health problems including birth defects and endocrine disruption. Congressional lawmakers are increasingly concerned

Evolving US Anti-Dumping Actions: What Recent Discretionary Practices Can Tell Us

This study examines how US discretionary practices in anti-dumping (AD) proceedings have developed and affected the extent of dumping margins of exporters in the past decade. Using detailed data on dumping margin calculations by the US Department of Commerce (DOC) from 2008 to 2020, we find that the DOC has endeavored to develop discretionary practices in a more nuanced way to inflate dumping margins for both ‘cooperative’ and ‘uncooperative’ exporters. Our statistical and case study show that although the practices known as targeted dumping and particular market situation are associated with smaller dumping margins than overall dumping margins, they critically increase the extent of dumping margins for cooperative exporters of market economies (ME), sometimes resulting in positive dumping determinations which would otherwise have been negative. We also empirically find that there has been an apparent change in the use of adverse facts available (AFA) that has led to much higher dumping margins for ‘uncooperative’ exporters of ME and non-market-economy (NME)-wide entities since the amendment of the Trade Preferences Extension Act (TPEA) of 2015.

Comments on Rights to Federally Funded Inventions and Licensing of Government Owned Inventions, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), United States Department of Commerce, Notice of proposed rulemaking. 86 FR 35. Agency/Docket Number: 201207-0327

This letter is written in response to the notice of proposed rulemaking published in the Federal Register on January 4, 2021, seeking public comments on the revised regulations proposed by NIST to the University and Small Business Patent Procedure Act of 1980 (the “Bayh-Dole Act”). We submit this letter as academics who engage in research on patent law and biomedical innovation. The arguments also reflect practical knowledge that one of us has acquired from a decade of working with U.S. universities and biotech companies in the process of technology transfer as a lawyer practicing in two highly regarded Boston law firms, and experience that others of us have gained from working in the U.S. government and engaging in intellectual property policy work on Bayh-Dole related issues. We submit that the proposed rule-making includes changes that are contrary to the intent and the stated purpose of the Bayh-Dole Act and that unduly limit the interpretive authority of the Federal Government in administering the Act. We suggest alternative ways in which regulations implementing the Bayh-Dole Act could be changed to further the Act’s intent and purpose.

US Legal Frameworks: A Path to Product Longevity?

Legal actions to increase product lifespans and reduce environmental damage have been explored for many regions around the world. However, little research has focused on the ways that the extant legal system affects product lifespans and product repair in the US market. Our research reviewed the network of statutes and standards on the Federal level and sampled laws from some of the fifty States, noting unique qualities of the US legal system. Literature implied the longstanding acceptance of planned obsolescence and its justification as a profitable business practice. We reviewed the scope of the well-established product warranties in US commerce, noting substantive limitations as well as their untapped potential to support of longer product lifespans. Lawyers who counsel firms that sell consumer products in the US market were surveyed, and the survey results corroborated several initial findings. While the client firms all sold some products with express warranties, most of their products relied on implied warranties, and the respondents unanimously agreed that mandatory regulations would most effectively motivate their firms to develop and sell products with longer lifespans and greater capacity for repair. We suggest a path to product longevity—mandating the labeling of all hardgoods with accurate estimates of average product lifespan and capacity to be repaired. If properly structured, the framework could push industry, government, and product owners to all accept more obligation for the materials and products that we use, while stimulating competition based on product repairability and longevity.

The American Way — Until Machine Learning Algorithm Beats the Law? Algorithmic Consumer Credit Scoring in the EU and US

Algorithmic consumer credit scoring has caused anxiety among scholars and policy makers. After a significant legislative effort by the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that has provisions tailored to automated decision-making (ADM) was implemented. When the EU Commission and the US Department of Commerce negotiated for US organizations to whom data from EU data controller is transferred to comply with the key principles of EU Data Protection Law under the EU-US Privacy Shield (PS) Framework, the Department of Commerce refused to incorporate the GDPR principles governing ADM in the PS Framework. The EU Commission accepted this refusal reasoning that where US companies make automated decisions with respect to EU data subjects, such as in consumer credit risk scoring, there are laws in the US that protect the consumer from adverse decisions. This view contradicts recommendations for implementing GDPR-Inspired law in the US to tackle the challenges of automated consumer credit scoring. This article argues that despite the differences in the approach to the regulation of automated consumer credit scoring in the EU and the US, consumers are similarly protected in both jurisdictions. Furthermore, US consumer credit laws have the necessary flexibility to ensure that adverse automated decisions are tackled effectively. This article, through analyzing statutes, cases, and empirical evidence, demonstrates that the seemingly comprehensive legal rules governing ADM in the GDPR do not make the EU consumers better off. In addition, the challenges presented by the increasing sophistication of Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially machine learning, place both the EU and the US legal regimes in similar position as neither jurisdiction is equipped to respond to autonomous, unpredictable, and unexplainable algorithms making decisions. While the EU’s risk-based approach to AI regulation adopted by the Draft AI Regulation which also contains provisions on regulatory sandboxing is a significant improvement, it does not significantly change the rules regarding algorithmic consumer credit scoring. Nevertheless, this is the approach that regulation should primarily adopt for the future.