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Source: LATimes

Source: Detroit News

The joint venture proposing to build the Northwest’s largest oil-handling operation has filed for a necessary permit, officially launching a yearlong regulatory journey to decide whether Vancouver will become home to a controversial project that promises jobs and tax revenues but that raises public safety and environmental concerns.
Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies, hoping to build a terminal that would handle as much as 380,000 barrels of oil per day at the Port of Vancouver, submitted on Aug. 29 an 872-page “application for site certification” to the Washington state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council.
The council, or EFSEC, will review the application for a year or more and eventually make a recommendation to Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, who has the final say.
More at the Columbian

A new study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research finds that the Trans Pacific Partnership will depress wages and thus consumer purchasing power:
Recent estimates of the U.S. economic gains that would result from the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are very small — only 0.13 percent of GDP by 2025. Taking into account the un-equalizing effect of trade on wages, this paper finds the median wage earner will probably lose as a result of any such agreement. In fact, most workers are likely to lose — the exceptions being some of the bottom quarter or so whose earnings are determined by the minimum wage; and those with the highest wages who are more protected from international competition. Rather, many top incomes will rise as a result of TPP expansion of the terms and enforcement of copyrights and patents. The long-term losses, going forward over the same period (to 2025), from the failure to restore full employment to the United States have been some 25 times greater than the potential gains of the TPP, and more than five times as large as the possible gains resulting from a much broader trade agenda.

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