EU

Europe gives Trump Administration excellent tutorials on how not to regulate pesticides

The U.K. withdrawal (“Brexit”) from the European Union drove the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 611 points, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. Though the stock market rebounded, more unsettling news is on the way on economic, political and social fronts. Events will be startling, severe and global.

The recent vote within the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union has once again implicitly raised the issue of the right of self-determination through secession. In other words, do individuals have a right to determine under which political authority they shall live and be represented?

Donald Trump’s rise in political power seems to be America’s angry message to its leadership just as the Brits sent a blistering message in the form of “Brexit” to their leaders. The recent vote to leave the European Union sent shock waves throughout Europe and various parts of the World. Political leaders and the media in both the United States and Europe expressed bewilderment, or perhaps an unwillingness to understand that Americans and the Brits have the following in common: both are disgusted with the inability of their leaders to resolve basic problems, such as a failed immigration system.

“California’s largest utility and environmental groups announced a deal Tuesday [June 21] to shutter the last nuclear power plant in the state.” This statement from the Associated Press reporting about the announced closure of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant should startle you. The news about shutting down California’s last operating nuclear power plant, especially after Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) had sought a 20-year extension of the operating licenses for the two reactors, is disappointing—not startling. What should pique your ire is that the “negotiated proposal,” as the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) called it, is between the utility company and environmental groups—with no mention of the regulators elected to insure that consumers have efficient, effective and economical electricity.

President Obama continues to use “dangerous manmade climate change” to justify a massive regulatory onslaught that will “fundamentally transform” America’s energy, economic, business, industrial, social, legal and constitutional systems before he leaves office.

The European Commission has charged Alphabet-Google with abusing its dominance in the market for “general Internet search services,” by implementing an Android “strategy of mobile devices to preserve and strengthen its dominance in general Internet search.” The EU objects to a variety of secret Google contract conditions to manufacturer licenses to leverage the dominant (>90% share) Android OS to secretly restrict and foreclose competition in ways that ultimately harm consumer choice and innovation. The EU effectively charged that Google has already anticompetitively extended its >90% dominance in search to dominance in the >90% share of the “licensable smart mobile operating system,” and to dominance in the >90% share of the “app stores for the Android” market.

Few outside of Alphabet-Google understand the immense market, economic, and technological power of an unaccountable monopoly over the underlying software that controls most all mobile devices in the world. Fortunately EU antitrust enforcers are some of the few who understand it.