NAFTA, TPP, Paris Accord, EPA Regulations,

Thanks for reminding me of the one good thing that Trump has done since assuming the presidency: he made sure TPP was killed and is working on NAFTA. The Paris Accord and EPA regs, though, are something you may want him to keep, unless you plan on dumping your fly fishing business. My hometown has spent the last 40 years cleaning up the pollution in the Mahoning River so that it's now the proper blue/green it should be instead of the sludge filled brown it was when I was a boy. Still, it will be generations before you can pull a fish from there that would be safe to eat.

From my perspective, there's a good reason why the Paris agreement was called the Paris Accord and not the Paris Treaty. The treaty would never have gotten Senate approval, because it was a bad deal for the USA. It did nothing to control the world's biggest polluters; China and India, while costing a developed country like the USA boatloads of money. As far as the EPA is concerned, I don't think I. nor the Trump folks want dirty water, air, etc. But when they come up with more and more regulations each year, it gets to a point where manufacturers in the USA simply say "Screw it, we'll have our widget manufactured in China", where even worse pollution is created because they have no environmental laws. And the pollution that they create does not stay local to China. Just my humble 2 cents. I appreciate your point of view, Swiggy.

We're closer than you may think. I still worry about the EPA regs. Yeah, there's a lot of them there, but they were not put there on a whim. I pointed out the river that runs through my hometown, but do you remember the times (yes, that's multiple) the Cuyahoga River caught fire? From 1868 to the last in 1969, 13 separate fires were reported. The worst in 1952, did over a Million dollars in damages ($1.3 million 1952 dollars which is about $12 million today) The fire of '69 was a bargain, costing about $100K ($666K in today's market) So far, I've only heard of 5 lives lost in the fires, 1912, but that doesn't include injuries. If you worked on a ship on the Cuyahoga back in '69, and fell in, the first thing they did was rush you to the ER because of the contamination.

The EPA regs came about because, in their quest for profit, businesses paid no heed to environmental concerns. Even with that, look at the problem contaminated water caused Flint Michigan a few years ago.

So, who pays for the clean ups? Certainly not the actual polluters nor their shareholders. It falls on the backs of the taxpayers. Not only for the clean up, but for the long term affects. At least 9,000 children will have life long affects from the contaminated water. And it turns out that Flint isn't the only place with this problem.

No, the EPA is needed, because businesses do not want to take the responsibility of the clean up, regardless of what their public relations people tell you.

We are in agreement that the EPA is needed.