The Environmental Protection Agency today announced a final rule the agency said sets stronger standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from heavy-duty vehicles beginning in model year 2027. Major trucking organizations reacted, saying the industry has already done plenty to reduce pollution, and the new rules will be expensive, and overly burdensome, especially for small trucking businesses.

The Biden administration finalized long-awaited regulations targeting emissions generated from heavy-duty vehicles, including trucks and buses, the latest salvo in President Biden's sweeping climate agenda.

March 20 (Reuters) - U.S. efforts to build a domestic supply chain for solar energy components is stalled and will require urgent government action to support the factories needed to compete with China, according to a report published on Wednesday.

The analysis by Guidehouse Insights, commissioned by the Solar Energy Manufacturers for America Coalition, said existing federal subsidies and trade policies are not enough to help U.S. producers succeed in the face of a global glut of solar equipment.

The Federal Reserve appears to be creeping closer to an outcome that its own staff economists viewed as unlikely just six months ago: lowering inflation back to a normal range without plunging the economy into a recession.

Plenty could still go wrong. But inflation has come down notably in recent months — it is running at 3.1 percent on a yearly basis, down from a 9.1 percent peak in 2022. At the same time, growth is solid, consumers are spending, and employers continue to hire.

Money is the economy’s fuel. When it surges, nominal GDP (real GDP plus inflation) surges. When it plunges, spending plunges. This is what the well-known and robust quantity theory of money, which has been around since the 16th century and was in recent decades championed by Milton Friedman, tells us. It’s also what common-sense, do-it-yourself economics tells us: Substantial changes in the money supply, broadly measured, make the real economy and prices, with lags, go up and down.

Calling for recession is contrarian now

At the start of 2023, it was banal to forecast a near-term recession. Today, it’s a risky call. Most economists now see a soft landing as the likeliest way this cycle ends, for good reason. Inflation keeps surprising to the downside. Consumption has powered through high rates. Behind it all is a rock-solid labour market, which added another 200,000 net jobs in November, 50,000 above consensus estimates. As Claudia Sahm argued in our latest Friday interview, supply improvements foiled recession calls.

Pennsylvania's Peter Brothers Trucking delivers goods all across America. Owner Brian Wanner says Pennsylvania bureaucrats now are driving him out of his home state.

"We have no say," complains Wanner in my new video. "We can't do anything about it."

"No say" because Pennsylvania's new rules don't come from Pennsylvania. They come from California.

"I don't want to be anything like California!" complains Wanner.

After nearly 100 years in operation, U.S. trucking giant Yellow Corp is shutting down operations. 

The company sent notices to customers and employers, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. 

The end of the road comes after the company earlier this month averted a strike by some 22,000 Teamsters-represented workers, saying the company will pay the more than $50 million it owed in worker benefits and pension accruals. 

Yellow, one of the oldest and biggest U.S. trucking businesses, shut down on Sunday, wrecked by a string of mergers that left it saddled with debt and stalled by a standoff with the Teamsters union.

The 99-year-old company is known for its cut-rate prices and has more than 12,000 trucks moving freight across the country for Walmart, Home Depot and many other smaller businesses. What Yellow couldn’t deliver—despite swallowing rivals, getting union concessions and securing a government bailout—was consistent service for customers or profits for investors.

It's the end of the road for one of the nation's largest freight carriers.

Yellow, a trucking company that just three years ago took a $700 million federal pandemic loan, is shutting down, according to the Teamsters union, which represents the company's 22,000 unionized workers.

The company is expected to file for bankruptcy as soon as Monday, according to industry experts, following a recent exodus of customers amid union strife and on top of years of financial troubles.