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Forbes
2 minutes ago
- Forbes
Moving Forward: International Tax After The OBBBA
In this episode of Tax Notes Talk, Alan Cole of the Tax Foundation discusses the international tax provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and what may be next for negotiations on a global tax framework. Tax Notes Talk is a podcast produced by Tax Notes. This transcript has been edited for clarity. David D. Stewart: Welcome to the podcast. I'm David Stewart, editor in chief of Tax Notes Today International. This week: rethinking revenge. When the House released their initial version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the international business community was concerned by the proposed section 899, which came to be known as the revenge tax. We covered this provision in a previous episode, which we'll link to in the show notes. Since then, the bill has been through a number of changes at the behest of senators and one significant change requested by the administration, concluding in the final version signed into law by President Trump. So where did Congress end up on international tax? And what does the bill mean for efforts to reach a consensus on international corporate tax? This episode is part of an ongoing series on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. As we continue to dive deep into the most important tax changes and provisions in the coming weeks or even months, we'd like to hear from you. If there's an aspect of the bill you'd like to hear more about, please email us at podcast@ But for now, here to talk more about this is Tax Notes senior reporter Jonathan Curry. Jonathan, welcome back to the podcast. Jonathan Curry: Hello again, Dave. David D. Stewart: Now, I understand you recently talked to somebody about this. Who did you talk to? Jonathan Curry: Yeah. I talked to Alan Cole of the Tax Foundation. He's a senior economist there, and he's full of great insights. David D. Stewart: And what things did you talk about? Jonathan Curry: Well, we focused on the international tax provisions of the OBBBA, or the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. We covered quite a lot of ground, to be honest. Of course, this didn't happen in a vacuum. We went through the context, the history that led us to this point. We cover some of the major provisions in the bill, things that a lot of our listeners are, I'm sure, familiar with: the [global intangible low-taxed income, foreign-derived intangible income, and base erosion and antiabuse tax] and now the sad, new nicknames we all have to memorize in order to keep track with this evolving tax landscape that we're in. You'll hear things like the foreign tax credit haircut, the [controlled foreign corporation] look-through rule, things that might not necessarily jump off a page when you're scanning a bill. But it's stuff that's important for a lot of multinational corporations, international tax practitioners in particular, and it's going to have a lot of impact for certain industries. There are going to be some winners, some losers, and things like that. And of course, we talked about one of my favorite topics — which I'm sad it's not going to be in law anymore — the revenge tax, section 899. You'll hear Alan's views on what impact it had on the tax debate and international negotiations. And on the topic [of] international negotiations, all these international tax changes took place in the context of the pillar 2 global minimum tax framework. And you'll hear how he thinks that this moves us in some ways closer to that and some other considerations there. David D. Stewart: All right. Let's go to that interview. Jonathan Curry: Well, Alan, it's great to have you here on the Tax Notes podcast. I know you're excited to talk about your favorite topic in the world: international tax. Welcome. Alan Cole: Thank you. Absolutely great to be here. Jonathan Curry: Yeah. So we're going to dive in and start off by talking from a 30,000-foot view, the big picture here. What was the international tax landscape prior to this new "big beautiful bill" coming into effect? I mean, why were lawmakers even wanting to make changes on the international tax end in the first place? Was this a major reform? Is this [Tax Cuts and Jobs Act] 2.0? What are we looking at here? Alan Cole: Mostly, we're looking at TCJA 2.0 on the international side. This is a very similar coalition to the one that wrote the international tax reform in 2017. Same party, same president. And that means that there's a limited desire to tinker with too much. And on top of that, the coalition had a pretty narrow majority in the House of Representatives, and that also lends itself to not making too many ultra controversial changes. That said, there were reasons to tweak TCJA even from the perspective of a party that had already passed it in recent memory. Jonathan Curry: Yeah. Now, the House version of the bill, when we got the first draft of it, I remember seeing the draft document come out and thinking, "Oh, boy, here's this whole new set of stuff to write about." And I looked at it, and there wasn't very much in there on the international tax space, except for section 899, which we'll get into later. But I mean, can you imagine the world in which international tax just got ignored altogether and the system we have currently in place was just left to continue running? Or was the Senate vision of making some changes here inevitable? Like this was going to have to happen one way or another? Alan Cole: One way you could look at it would be from the House's perspective, it's hard to get unanimous approval for something among the Republican members, and you effectively need unanimous approval in order to get a majority in the House if you're relying only on Republican votes. And that lends itself to just doing what you did before because that's the baseline that everyone can at least start from. But on the other hand, international corporate income tax is not usually an area that draws a lot of political controversy where you'll see a big dispersion in what different members believe. Especially if you're doing things carefully and relatively evenhandedly, and not trying to create big winners and losers. So there was room for a little more reform. I'm not surprised that ultimately the Senate did more to change international corporate income tax provisions than the House did, because the Senate definitely felt like they had room. They had effectively a larger majority than the House majority. But ultimately the House just agreed to the Senate's changes because international corporate income tax is not that politically controversial among members in the sense that there aren't different beliefs among members. So if you're going to present a package and say, "This is the best that our writers could do given the constraints," most of the members are probably going to go, "OK." And that's kind of what happened. The House roughly accepted the Senate's changes, and that's how we ended up with a somewhat more interesting international package than the initial House bill looked like. Jonathan Curry: Well, we've been talking about changes to the international tax portion of our laws here. Let's go over some of those changes. Let's start with the big three: GILTI, FDII, BEAT. Can you just run through us real briefly just a high-level view of what the changes that were made were? Alan Cole: GILTI and FDII both have new names now. Their acronyms are now NCTI [net CFC tested income] and FDDEI [foreign-derived deduction-eligible income]. Those names actually kind of existed before. They were intermediate steps in the calculations that got you to GILTI and FDII. But the reason for the name change is that one of the final steps is no longer there, and that is the subtraction of [qualified business asset investment] from the base of both of those tax bases. And the subtraction there is effectively a subtraction of the return on tangible investments. The idea is if you start with all income and then you subtract the return on tangible investments, what you have left is your intangible income. And that's indeed where the I's in GILTI and FDII come from. Both have an I that stands for intangible, and then the other I stands for income. Now they are each down to one I, just the one that stands for income, and they no longer target intangibles. That change is a "made in America" Trump agenda type change, I think. It's one of the places where you can see a bit of a Trump ideological stamp. And overall, I'm not a fan of this for reasons we can get into, but it's one of the few places where this is really something more than just an update to TCJA. It goes in a new direction, and it takes away the original purpose of GILTI and FDII, which was to target intangible income. Jonathan Curry: And about those acronyms, they used to have these memorable acronyms: GILTI, FDII. We still have BEAT, of course. Have you settled on a way to refer to these new acronyms, the two new acronyms we have here? It's NCFCTI and FDDEI. Any good quick shorthand in your mind that you've settled on? Alan Cole: We're talking about NCTI versus NCFCTI? The C standing for CFC, which stands for controlled foreign corporation. That's the international income component of the new bill. Usually I'm hearing NCTI that can maybe be turned into "necktie" or "nicktee," but I'm not sure which one of those two will win out. And some people have gone with "fidday" for the new FDII, F-D-D-E-I. But it's always been awkward to come up with good names for these things, and certainly the long acronyms are doing themselves no favors. Jonathan Curry: Yeah. It will take a while for the dust to settle and for the tax community to settle on an agreed-upon way to refer to these, I think. Personally, I vote for "necktie." So GILTI and FDII had some pretty substantial changes. BEAT, as I understand, is fairly not that different, correct? Alan Cole: BEAT we can actually go through pretty simply. There was an idea for a whole bunch of changes to BEAT in the Senate draft, but they got rid of that set of changes and went with a much more simple rate hike to BEAT, not as big as the rate hike that it was scheduled for. It was scheduled to go from 10 [percent] to 12.5 [percent], and instead they made it go from 10 [percent] to 10.5 [percent]. So they kind of curved much of the rate increase in BEAT, and they preserved the current-policy treatment of credits and set it in law permanently. So mostly, they punted on BEAT. But there was an effort to do something more interesting, which was a high-tax exemption. And that would have actually done a lot to put BEAT a little bit more towards its intended purpose, or at least its stated purpose. It says it's a base erosion tax. That's what the B-E stands for. And base erosion would be when you're trying to get to a lower-tax jurisdiction, you're taking deductions in the U.S. by making payments out to some lower-tax jurisdiction so that your income shows up there instead. And the U.S. doesn't like that; the U.S. calls that base erosion because they would rather the income be in the U.S. and taxed as U.S. income. And that would make sense if all instances of stuff taxed under BEAT were base erosion. But in many cases, it's effectively just going after normal large countries with high corporate income tax rates because it doesn't actually make any determinations based on what kind of country a company is making payments to, or what kind of presence they have there. It just looks at categories of accounting that are deemed suspicious. So the Senate had an idea: "Well, let's actually look what kind of country it is. And if it's a high-tax country, defined as having at least 90 percent of the U.S. tax rate, then we can exempt you from BEAT, because there, you're not base eroding, you're just paying tax to another country that has a similar tax rate to ours. Presumably because you honestly believe that the royalty payments actually do belong to your enterprises in that other country." And that makes sense if you're a Japanese company and you say that a lot of your work comes from engineers based in Japan. That's a very believable claim, and that's not really a tax evasion-like claim. Same with France, for example. That's not a country that you would try to increase your income tax liability in because it's a high-income tax country. So that idea had a lot of promise, but I think the Joint Committee on Taxation scored it more expensively than perhaps writers thought it would be. I was surprised to see the number that high. I had been conditioned to think that the Joint Committee on Taxation thought that BEAT was a relatively smaller provision. And then we got this larger number, and then sure enough, it was gone in the next draft, and they did something simpler on BEAT. So I think it was just a matter of they didn't get the score they wanted and they pulled back from it. Jonathan Curry: I see. So you don't think it's a policy decision that lawmakers are like, "We don't think we should do this." It's more like, "Well, maybe on the margin, it's just not really worth making the change because it will add to our numbers, our bad math here, the deficit numbers." OK, well, that's interesting. Alan Cole: Yes. I think they were working within a current-policy revenue-neutral framework on the international side. So they were looking at 2025. What are we collecting in 2025? Let's try to design a system that collects about the same amount but is a little bit better. And if the BEAT score stopped them from reaching that goal, then that would be a reason to reverse it. Jonathan Curry: Yeah, yeah, interesting. Now there were a couple other changes in here too — CFC look-through rule, FTC haircut. Anything that surprised you? Or are these all pretty expected provisions to include in this package of proposals? Alan Cole: I think there are two categories here, and actually each of your examples comes from one of the categories. CFC look-through rule, and we could also go with the downward attribution glitch fix. There are some things that are so into the weeds that you can only really get coverage of them in a place like Tax Notes. These are really complex glitches in TCJA, or they are things that have been extended a long time, and it would be complicated if they ever went away. CFC look-through is like that. It would make the handling of U.S. multinationals much more complex without necessarily raising that much revenue. And so they made the CFC look-through rule permanent. That's a patch to the whole CFC look-through issue. And then they also included the patch to fix the problem in constructive ownership rules that was accidentally made in TCJA. It's pretty clear that there was a section of U.S. tax law that was supposed to be amended and instead it got removed, and it creates exceptions to constructive ownership rules. And that exception disappeared entirely rather than being rewritten. And as a result, people were kind of credited with having much greater CFC reach than they actually should have, and it was a whole big mess. So those are the bug fix types. And those, I think, were not big surprises. A lot of them you could see that members like Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) were talking about these things for a while, and they didn't cost much. So those were definitely going to make it in there. And then the other category has to do with kind of the way that the international situation has evolved since TCJA. It's not so much that TCJA was written in a flawed way in 2017 in these cases. It's more that the way the rest of the world does things has changed, although Republicans are not always singing the same tune as the rest of the world on international corporate income tax. Here, there were a few lateral changes that can just harmonize the U.S. with foreign tax cuts a little bit more. And basically, the situation was that the U.S. had what appeared to be lower rates, but actually its rules were less generous in unique ways that were anomalous to the United States. Those are things like expense allocation, the FTC haircut, as you mentioned. Those things make it a little bit worse to be a U.S. company. But in TCJA, you had lower nominal rates than the 15 percent target that the Europeans and OECD want a lot of people to settle on. The Senate took a look at that and said, "Well, we can just remove some of these U.S. idiosyncrasies, and that gives us effectively tax cuts for corporations. And then we can raise the nominal rate, take some of that money back. That's a neutral trade, but it makes our tax code look a little bit more in line with the 15 percent target." But notably, they went only to 14 [percent], not to 15 [percent], as if almost to say, "You're not the boss of us, we will do something slightly different than your target." But effectively, the U.S. at 14 [percent] with its rules is still maybe a little bit worse, a little bit less taxpayer friendly, at least revenue-wise, than a 15 percent rate. So I don't think U.S. companies are getting away with a lot with the 14 [percent] instead of the 15 [percent]. Jonathan Curry: With this new suite of changes that we have, are there any obvious winners and losers here? I mean, you alluded to the Trump administration having a vision and putting its stamp on things. They've talked a lot about increasing domestic investment. Did these changes move the U.S. more towards that? Alan Cole: I think there are some changes that are intended to have a real impact that aren't just a little bit of lateral shuffling and creating a 14 percent rate rather than a lower 13 percent rate. There are some things that are a little bit more intended to be substantive. But even there, from an individual company's perspective, I think a lot of these things come out to be roughly a wash relative to the 2025 tax code. For example, the elimination of QBAI — the attempt to maneuver the system previously directed at intangibles towards a little bit more of a tangible and America First and export-focused tax system — that may not have that much of an impact on an overall taxpayer bottom line because, actually, the sort of company that has a lot of QBAI domestically also has a lot of it internationally. And one of those is a tax cut, and one of those is a tax hike, so they balance out for an individual taxpayer. But overall, you want to be the sort of company that has a lot of capital expenses in the U.S. or research and development in the U.S. and then maybe exports a lot. Whether using your tangibles or intangibles, that probably comes out pretty well. The big thing that I see flagged as a likely downside from large corporate practitioners is a change to [section] 163(j) interest limitations. Effectively, international income doesn't count for that, and that means that those become much tougher on some firms. Jonathan Curry: Yeah. I've certainly heard the same listening to a lot of webinars and hearing from different tax practitioners and what they're saying their eye is on and what's the big thing for their clients to look out for. [Section] 163(j), the foreign element of it definitely comes up quite a lot. So you alluded to this earlier, the current-policy baseline. Republicans did get a little mischievous with their math this time around. They used the current policy as opposed to current law, which broke with a lot of precedent. Can you tell me: How did the math add up here on the international tax provisions? Did we come out roughly revenue neutral in terms of the changes that are the higher rates, but a broader base and so forth? Where did we land in terms of the numbers? Alan Cole: Well, the tax code that was enacted in 2017 under current-law baseline rules, there, in order to make the corporate income tax side of the TCJA permanent, they had to do a fair amount of surprise tax hikes at the very, very end of the budget window. And you can count from 2017 out to 2026. That's when those tax hikes showed up. In a few cases, they had them show up a little bit earlier so as to reduce the score of the TCJA within the budget window, but there was a suite of tax hikes. In the international sphere, a lot of those tax hikes come directly in 2026, but they kind of went for current policy 2025. So what they managed to do as a result of the switch to current policy was effectively cancel out those last minute hikes on the international side and then make permanent the slightly lower, not quite revenue neutral, TCJA international side that wouldn't have passed Byrd rule muster in 2017 without those hikes. They canceled those hikes and made that permanent. So they did get some benefit if you're looking at it from the taxpayers' perspective, or they did create some revenue loss that probably would not have been possible under the current-law baseline. Jonathan Curry: To talk about one of my favorite provisions that's actually no longer in law, section 899, the retaliatory tax, the revenge tax. I certainly had a lot of fun writing about this. It makes for a great headline, and it was such an interesting piece of policy that has kept evolving throughout the process. Section 899 had two elements, correct? There is one that was going to impose these higher, progressively higher withholding rates on corporations, individuals, countries that had what we deem the discriminatory or unfair tax, undertaxed profit rules, UTPRs, and income inclusion rules. And there was also an element that was going to target digital services taxes, which later in the Senate was only going to be happening through the so-called super BEAT that was going to supercharge the base erosion and antiabuse tax. We did get a G7 deal at the end of this where they agreed that they were going to scrap their UTPRs and IRRs. They left aside, shelved for now, the question of DSTs. But in your view, how big of an impact does section 899 have on the international discussion? Do you think that was key to the U.S. getting this agreement with the G7? Or was that just a little sideline, sideshow? Alan Cole: I think [section] 899 was a very dangerous gamble, and I think it paid off. I had concerns about it while it was still in the bill. It didn't make it into the final law, and that was actually the outcome that [section] 899's architects kind of were hoping for, I think. It would have been pretty ugly if it had happened, but it was a threat they didn't want to have to go through on. So yeah, one of the biggest aspects of the OBBB international is effectively the thing that wasn't in the bill. We talked about, I'd say three categories of things that are in the bill. There's the Trump priority type stuff with the QBAI; there's the bug fixes; and there's the moving towards the 15 percent target by doing some lateral trades. But the OBBB also had [section] 899, the retaliatory provision, kind of our doomsday device, our mutually assured destruction thing. And it was supposed to target two foreign taxes, and the G7 agreed to get rid of one. And we said, "OK, good enough." And we put it down. And I think one reason that it worked well was there's broad support for combating UTPR and DST much beyond the Trump administration. One characterization you could make of the Trump administration is it starts a lot of arguments with foreign countries. And in some cases, those arguments are idiosyncratic to the Trump administration specifically. For example, arguing that Canada is not doing enough to combat fentanyl crossing the northern border of the U.S., that was not on most people's radar. That seems like a fight idiosyncratic to the Trump administration. And maybe even fighting over bilateral trade deficits, that's pretty idiosyncratic to the Trump administration. But within the U.S. business community, within the U.S. Congress, there's actually quite a lot of opposition to UTPR and to DST. The former because it usurps Congress's authority. It's a little bit like, "Oh, the Treasury went out and talked to a bunch of people over the Atlantic. Now Congress has to rewrite the U.S. tax code in a bunch of ways. Some of them kind of arbitrary, but don't seem to have much rationale." That wasn't going to fly, if only because it was a usurpation of Congress's authority. And practitioners also didn't like it because it would be a lot more work and it would turn out to not actually have much of an impact on U.S. companies' taxes. DSTs, meanwhile, are basically just tariffs in disguise. They're a way for foreign countries to effectively tariff the large number of U.S. tech companies that have done really well globally. Foreign governments have seen those as big bags of money, like pinatas that they can whack at and the money will fall out and they get a treat. And there's no support in the U.S. for letting these things stand. And so in some cases, when the Trump administration is saying something, there's a little bit of a feeling, "Well, can we wait this out? Might they get distracted?" For example, they don't seem to be talking much about buying Greenland anymore. That was a big thing for a few months, and then they just moved on. And also, there's the reality that there will be a new president and maybe that president is not going to have the same idiosyncratic Trump priorities. But I think [section] 899 being there in legislative text made a lot of people realize that not only is Congress behind the president on DSTs and UTPR, but maybe even most of the rest of the United States is as well. And so there's no way of waiting out the president and maybe making inroads with opposition or with people within his party who don't agree with all of his stuff. No, this was unanimous among Republicans, and I think probably even some Democrats really would actively want these things to go away, and few would make a big priority of arguing for them. So I think [section] 899 showed Congress's stacking order of priorities, and showed the American business community's stacking order of priorities. It even went so far as to say, "These are the specific offenses that we want [section] 899 to apply to. We're going to call out them by name, and we're also going to come up with a list of things that aren't offenses and [section] 899 can't be used for." They narrowly cabin the retaliation to be just these two things. So I think if you're a foreign government and you're not sure what to do with the more hostile or bellicose U.S. trade posture — well, the things that have broad opposition in the U.S., you probably are more likely to make a concession on those than on things that are less workable. And especially with respect to the UTPR, that's something that isn't even in effect yet. So it's easier to not do something that you haven't even started doing yet. It's easier to flake out on a plan that you haven't yet brought to completion than to stop doing things the way you were already doing them for a long time. So all of those reasons, I think, meant that the UTPR was the easiest domino to fall. I don't think that the Trump administration is going to get all of its priorities. For example, the stuff about value added taxes being an unfair barrier to trade. Well, I don't think that Europe is going to reorder its entire tax system. Value added taxes in Europe probably raise something on the order of €4 [trillion] or 5 trillion per year, if you add all of the countries together. Jonathan Curry: Sounds significant. Alan Cole: Yeah, something like that. Jonathan Curry: That's not a small chip in a poker game here. No. Alan Cole: Yeah, yeah. They're not going to just come up with something new within the next three years in order to appease one U.S. president who has idiosyncratically said that VATs are an unfair barrier to trade. Jonathan Curry: Well, Alan, so looking ahead, is there any unfinished business on the international tax front? Or do you think that this round of changes will satisfy lawmakers, policymakers for the next, I don't know, couple of years, three, five years, 10 years before they decide to give things another look? Alan Cole: The biggest unfinished business is in the area of how the U.S. international income tax system will coexist with pillar 2. The G7 deal didn't say that pillar 2 is fully going away, although that's still an outside possibility. More likely, Europe continues to implement its version of CFC rules, its effective equivalent of GILTI or now NCTI. That's all likely to still happen. The U.S. wants to be independent of pillar 2, not have pillar 2 go over and touch things that have previously been touched by the U.S. tax code. In many cases, that's relatively simple. You can think of companies that are American and companies that are German, and obviously at the very top level, you'll have one or the other of the two systems. But it starts to get more complicated when you have nested acquisitions. That's something you see in, for example, the pharmaceutical industry a lot because there are both tax and operations reasons that pharmaceutical companies have long chains of acquisitions. Often there's one type of company that does research, and then another one says, "This is good research. We're going to buy your company and figure out how to distribute the drug everywhere." Once you get those nested things, it's much, much harder to figure out exactly how the income inclusion rule, like the European international rules, would coexist or sit side by side with NCTI without colliding with it. So that's an area of unfinished business. Digital service taxes, also unfinished business. That's effectively kind of the European hidden tariff inside of corporate income tax policy. On our side, BEAT I think is actually unfair in some of the same ways that digital services taxes are. And then the big elephant in the room is all of the other trade policy stuff often done under the economic emergency rationale, which is actually being challenged in U.S. courts, and potentially just normal section 301 retaliatory tariffs too. All of those things create a chaotic international negotiation environment. But overall, the U.S. international tax system would hold up pretty well. My one question is, in the change to make it less targeted at intangible investment, does that end up having an effect on how, say, intangible-heavy firms look at the U.S. tax system? Jonathan Curry: Yeah, that'll be something to watch. All right. Well, Alan, thank you so much for taking time to chat with us today. I appreciate it. Alan Cole: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Associated Press
4 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Trump EPA says it will defend tough lead pipe rule from Biden, but details to come
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday it will defend the Biden administration's aggressive rule for reducing lead in drinking water against a court challenge, though public health advocates worry officials could still weaken it. The rule gave cities and towns a 10-year deadline to replace all of their lead pipes and was the strongest overhaul of lead-in-water standards in roughly three decades. Litigation against the rule was on pause so the Trump administration could decide whether it supported the policy. On Tuesday, the agency said it would defend the tough standards. 'At the same time, EPA will develop new tools and information to support practical implementation flexibilities and regulatory clarity. The agency will announce next steps in the coming months,' the agency said. Lead, a heavy metal once common in products like pipes and paints, is a neurotoxin that can lower IQ scores in children, stunt their development and increase blood pressure in adults. Lead pipes can corrode and contaminate drinking water. The previous Trump administration's rule had looser standards and did not mandate the replacement of all pipes. Jared Thompson, a senior attorney with the environmental nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council that supports the Biden-era rule, said he doesn't know what the EPA means with terms like 'practical implementation flexibility.' 'The concern is that, are they going to try to use that to create some sort of loopholes that would allow water systems to not fully comply with the rule, or will they actually proceed with full implementation,' he said. 'We just don't know at this point.' He said he's also concerned with the Trump administration's earlier proposal to significantly cut funding for local water infrastructure. The EPA has said there are programs and resources available to ensure lead pipe replacement projects proceed smoothly and cost-effectively. The agency asked a D.C. federal appeals court on Monday to resume the case. It wants to file its arguments with the court in early December. The EPA under President Donald Trump has celebrated deregulation. Officials have sought to slash climate change programs and promote fossil fuel development. On drinking water issues, however, their initial actions have been more nuanced. In March, for example, the EPA announced plans to partially roll back rules to reduce so-called 'forever chemicals' in drinking water — the other major Biden-era tap water protection. That change, however, sought to keep tough limits for some common PFAS. It also proposed scrapping and reconsidering standards for other types and extending deadlines. PFAS and lead pipes are both costly threats to safe water. There are roughly 9 million lead pipes providing water to homes and businesses in the United States. The American Water Works Association, a utility industry association, had challenged the lead rule, saying utilities should not be responsible for the portion of the lead pipe that is on private property. They also described the 10-year deadline as 'not feasible.' The Biden-era regulation required water systems to ensure that lead concentrations do not exceed an 'action level' of 10 parts per billion, down from 15 parts per billion under the previous standard. If high lead levels are found, water systems must inform the public about ways to protect their health, including the use of water filters, and take action to reduce lead exposure while working to replace all lead pipes. Lead pipes are most commonly found in older, industrial parts of the country, including major cities such as Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Detroit and Milwaukee. The rule also revises the way lead amounts are measured, which could significantly expand the number of communities found violating the rules. Water utilities were given three years to prepare before the 10-year timeframe starts. And some cities with a lot of lead will have longer. The EPA estimated at the time officials issued the stricter standards that they would protect up to 900,000 infants from having low birth weight and avoid up to 1,500 premature deaths a year from heart disease. The original lead and copper rule for drinking water was enacted by the EPA more than 30 years ago. The rules have significantly reduced lead in tap water but have included loopholes that allowed cities to move slowly when lead levels rose too high. ___ Associated Press writer Matthew Daly contributed from Washington. ___ The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP's environmental coverage, visit
Forbes
4 minutes ago
- Forbes
Trump Approval Rating Down 2 Points From Last Week
Aug. 4 -3 net approval rating: Trump's approval rating dipped two points, to 45%, in Morning Consult's weekly poll of 2,201 registered U.S. voters conducted Aug. 1-3 (margin of error 2), while 42% disapproved. Monday's rating is significantly better than Trump's -15 net approval rating Morning Consult found at this point in his first term, when 40% of voters approved and 55% disapproved of his job performance. July 29 -15: Trump's rating remained mostly unchanged in The Economist/YouGov's weekly survey out Tuesday compared to last week's poll, with 40% approving of his job performance and 55% disapproving, according to the poll of 1,577 U.S. adults conducted July 25-28 (margin of error 3)—a one-point decline in his approval rating from last week, though his disapproval rating remained stagnant. July 28 -3: The president's approval rating increased two points, to 47%, and his disapproval rating declined two points, to 50% in Morning Consult's weekly survey of 2,202 registered U.S. voters conducted July 25-27 (margin of error 2) compared to last week's poll. The last time Trump had a net positive approval rating in Morning Consult's poll was in March. July 24 -21: Trump's 37% approval rating is down from 47% in January, while 58% disapprove of his job performance, compared to 48% in January, according to a July 7-21 Gallup poll of 1,002 adults (margin of error 4). Trump's average approval rating for the second quarter of his second term, April 20-July 19, is 40% in Gallup polling, compared to a 39% average in the second quarter of his first term but below second-term averages for every post-World War II president. July 22 -14: Trump's approval rating is unchanged from last week in the latest Economist/YouGov survey of 1,729 U.S. adults taken July 18-21 (margin of error 3.4), with 41% approving of his job performance and 55% disapproving, compared to a 49% approval rating and 43% disapproval rating at the start of his term, according to Economist/YouGov polling. An overwhelming majority, 81% of respondents, said the government should release all documents related to its probe into Jeffrey Epstein, while 69% said they believe the government is covering up evidence about Epstein, and 56% disapprove of Trump's handling of the Epstein investigation. July 16 -16: A total of 42% approve of Trump's job performance, while 58% disapprove in a new CNN/SSRS poll of 1,057 respondents conducted July 10-13 (margin of error 3.5), representing a one-point improvement in Trump's approval rating since April and a one-point drop in his disapproval rating. The majority, 61%, of Americans said they oppose Trump's signature policy bill that would pay for tax breaks and additional border security, among other measures, in part, by cutting Medicaid, while 39% said they approve of the so-called megabill. July 15 -14: Trump's net approval rating dipped to its lowest point of his second term in Economist/YouGov polling, with 41% approving and 55% disapproving, according to the survey of 1,506 registered voters (margin of error 3.1)—consistent with his lowest approval rating of his first term, according to Economist/YouGov polling. July 14 -3: Trump's approval rating improved two points, to 47%, while his disapproval rating also improved two points, to 50%, in Morning Consult's weekly survey of 2,201 registered voters with a two-point margin of error. July 2 -16: Trump's approval rating stands at 40% in a Yahoo/YouGov poll of 1,597 U.S. adults conducted June 26-30 (margin of error 3.2), a four-point decrease from the groups' March poll, while 56% disapprove. Trump's -16 net approval rating is three points worse than it was at this point during his first term, according to YouGov data, while former President Barack Obama had a +14 net approval rating and former President Joe Biden had a +7 approval rating halfway through their first years in office. June 30 -3: Trump's disapproval rating improved from 53% to 50% in Morning Consult's weekly poll compared to its survey last week, while his approval rating increased from 45% to 47% (the survey of 2,202 registered voters was conducted June 27-29 and has a two-point margin of error). The rating was Trump's best since May and coincides with an uptick in respondents' approval of his handling of national security issues since last week, following a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Iran. June 23 -16: Trump's approval rating dipped one point, to 41%, in a Reuters/Ipsos survey of 1,139 U.S. adults taken June 21-23 from its June 11-16 survey, with 57% disapproving (the latest poll has a 3-point margin of error). The poll also found a plurality, 45%, of U.S. adults surveyed do not support the airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend, while 36% support them and 19% said they were unsure. June 17 -13: An Economist/YouGov poll found 54% of voters disapprove of Trump's job performance, while 41% approve (the survey of 1,512 U.S. adults was conducted June 13-16 and has a 3.3-point margin of error). The survey also found Trump's approval rating is underwater when it comes to his handling of Iran, with 37% approving and 41% disapproving, while 60% of respondents, including 53% of 2024 Trump voters, say the U.S. should not get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran, as Trump has repeatedly threatened U.S. military intervention. June 17 -17: Trump's net approval rating improved two points in the latest Pew Research survey taken June 2-8, compared to the group's last poll in April, with the latest survey showing 41% approve and 58% disapprove (the survey of 5,044 U.S. adults has a 1.6-point margin of error). June 16 -6: Trump's net approval rating dipped two points in Morning Consult's latest weekly survey of 2,207 registered U.S. voters (margin of error 2), with 46% approving and 52% disapproving of his job performance, numbers the pollster notes are on par with his ratings in April and early May, during a downward spiral that coincided with his shock tariffs. June 16 -12: Trump's approval rating remained stagnant at 42% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken June 11-16, compared to the groups' May poll, but his disapproval rating increased two points, to 54%, in the latest survey of 4,258 U.S. adults (margin of error 2). June 16 -4: Trump's approval rating declined one point, from 47% to 46%, in the latest Harvard CAPS/Harris survey, compared to the groups' poll taken last month, while 50% of respondents said they disapprove of his job performance (the online survey of 2,097 registered voters was conducted June 11-12 and has a 2.2-point margin of error). Trump's approval rating in the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll has dropped every month since February, when he had a 52% approval rating. Trump's approval rating for nine separate issues also declined from May to June, with less than half of voters saying they approve of each of them, with tariffs and trade policy receiving the lowest marks (41%) and immigration receiving the highest (49%). June 15 -10 net approval rating: More than half, 55%, of voters said they disapprove of Trump's job performance and 45% said they approve in an NBC survey of 19,410 U.S. adults conducted May 30-June 10 (margin of error 2.1). June 11 -16: Trump's approval rating dipped three points, to 38%, in Quinnipiac University's latest poll conducted June 5-9 among 1,265 registered voters (margin of error 2.8), compared to its previous poll in April, when he had a 41% approval rating, while his disapproval rating dropped one point, to 54%. The survey also found more voters, 57%, have an unfavorable opinion of Elon Musk, while 53% have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, though more than half, 53%, oppose Trump's 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' that was the source of Musk's rant against Trump last week. June 9 -10: A CBS/YouGov poll conducted June 4-6 found 45% approve of Trump's job performance, while 55% disapprove (the poll of 2,428 U.S. adults has a, 2.4-point margin of error). In a separate, one-day YouGov survey conducted June 5, amid Trump's feud with Musk, the majority of 3,812 U.S. adults (52%) said they side with neither Musk nor Trump, while 28% said they side with Trump, 8% said they side with Musk and 11% said they aren't sure. June 9 -4 net approval rating: Trump's approval rating improved one point, to 47%, in Morning Consult's weekly poll, while 51% disapprove of his job performance for the third week in a row (the survey of 1,867 registered U.S. voters has a 2-point margin of error). Trump's feud with Musk doesn't appear to have dented his approval ratings in the first two polls that overlapped with their public spat—though it's unclear how Americans perceive his response to protests in Los Angeles over his aggressive deportation push, as no reliable polling has been released since the protests began over the weekend. June 4 -4: For the first time in two months, less than half (49%) of U.S. adults surveyed by the Economist/YouGov disapprove of Trump's job performance, compared to 45% who strongly or somewhat approve, representing a significant improvement from the groups' April 19-22 poll, when Trump had a net -13 approval rating (the latest poll of 1,610 U.S. adults conducted May 30-June 2 has a 3-point margin of error). June 2 -5: Trump's approval rating dropped from 48% to 46% in this week's Morning Consult poll compared to its previous survey, while his disapproval rating was stagnant at 51% (the May 30-June 2 poll of 2,205 registered voters has a 2-point margin of error). The share of registered voters who say they identify with Trump's Make America Great Again movement has increased sharply during Trump's second term, according to NBC polling. A total of 36% of 1,000 registered voters polled March 7-11 said they consider themselves part of the MAGA coalition, compared to a 23% average in NBC's March polling and 27% in the network's 2024 polls (the most recent poll has a 3.1-point margin of error). 42%. That's Trump's average approval rating so far during his second term, higher than his 41% average approval rating throughout the duration of his first term, according to Gallup. Just after marking his sixth month in office, Trump is facing arguably the biggest public relations crisis of his second term as his base has broken with him over the Justice Department's refusal to release documents detailing its investigation into Epstein. Among other major moments of his second term: Trump launched a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, leading to a cease-fire agreement during Iran and Israel. Congress also approved his signature policy legislation that will enact some of his most significant campaign promises, including an extension of his 2017 tax cuts and tighter border control. Trump's approval rating has declined since the start of his term, with a notable plunge coinciding with his wide-ranging 'Liberation Day' tariffs he announced on April 2 against nearly all U.S. trading partners, though he has largely backed off most of the levies. Prior to the Epstein controversy, the leak of U.S. military attack plans to Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was widely considered the first big crisis of Trump's second term. His efforts to slash the federal workforce with the help of the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency and his mass deportation push are two other controversial hallmarks of his second term that have prompted numerous legal actions.
