Senate Committee to Vote on Whole Milk Bill Next Tuesday
The Senate Agriculture Committee will hold a markup next Tuesday of the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, legislation backed by NMPF that would allow public schools to offer whole and 2 percent milk varieties to schoolchildren. We anticipate that the committee will endorse the bill and send it to the full Senate for further consideration. The House measure advanced out of the House Education and Workforce Committee in February by a 24-10 vote. It is awaiting further action in the full House of Representatives. As we noted in our discussion with Sen. Peter Welch during a Dairy Defined podcast last week, the odds are in our favor to pass the bill this year.
The spring roller coaster ride of up and down tariff rates entered a sudden loop de loop this week, thanks to a pair of legal rulings that cast doubt on the future of one of the Trump Administration’s key economic planks: tariffs that the president is using to reset economic relations between the U.S. and its many trading partners. On Wednesday, the federal Court of International Trade ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 does not allow the president to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world.
Just 24 hours later, the Court of Appeals for that federal circuit granted an immediate administrative stay of the CIT’s ruling Wednesday. The appeals process is likely to reach up to the Supreme Court. Then Thursday morning, D.C. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras issued a similar ruling, calling the tariffs unlawful. However, he stayed his order for 14 days so the parties may seek a further review in the D.C. Court of Appeals.
The CIT court’s decision that was subsequently stayed invalidated two broad categories of tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. First, the global 10 percent tariffs imposed last month on virtually every country were struck down, along with reciprocal tariffs that were announced but later delayed. The court also ruled against the 25 percent tariffs that the White House imposed on many products from Canada and Mexico, and tariffs of 20 percent on most goods from China, because of the three nations’ alleged failure to stop the transit of opioid drugs like fentanyl.
Other cases against the tariffs brought by additional plaintiffs are pending in other courts. However, even if these two cases scuttle most of the tariffs imposed earlier this year, they do not prevent Trump from using other measures to impose tariffs, such as Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Thus, the uncertainty about trade relations large and small is likely to continue in the months ahead.
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