Intel Co

rove owned stock, guided merger?
=<div><div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/05/21/national-association-manufacturers-climate-microsoft/">https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/05/21/national-association-manufacturers-climate-microsoft/</a></div><div>
</div><div>docket</div><div>microsoft is a prominent example of an American company walking a public relations tightrope on climate change. It professes a serious commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, touts its clean energy bonafides and vocally supports the Paris Climate Agreement and the dire need to combat a growing climate crisis. But it also remains a member of a trade group, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), which has worked for decades to delay action on climate change and defend the fossil fuel companies whose products cause it.</div><div>
</div><div>NAM, in fact, has been so proactive in anti-climate action projects that it draws comparisons to its <a href="https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/results/#q=%22national%20association%20of%20manufacturers%0A%22&h=%7B%22hideDuplicates%22%3Atrue%2C%22hideFolders%22%3Atrue%7D&subsite=tobacco&cache=true&count=6053" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">support for the tobacco industry</a> as it faced a liability battle in the 1980s. NAM, along with other trade groups, backed tobacco companies as they faced hundreds of lawsuits and were charged with racketeering by the federal government for deceiving the public about the catastrophic health hazards of smoking. NAM has <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/02/26/national-association-manufacturers-oil-climate-liability/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">even hired the same law firm</a> that defended the tobacco industry to launch an assault on climate liability lawsuits. As then, NAM’s member companies face public pressure for supporting those efforts. Microsoft, along with other companies, including Intel and Proctor and Gamble, told Climate Liability News that they disagree with NAM’s actions and policy positions on climate change. But they have not ended their memberships. While other climate change-denying groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council have suffered membership losses because companies like Google and Apple felt they could no longer be publicly associated with its tactics, NAM has experienced no such repercussions so far. “The views expressed by NAM do not reflect Microsoft’s position on climate change,” a Microsoft spokesperson wrote in a statement. “Microsoft is committed to sustainability and addressing climate change. We work with many groups on various technology policy issues and do not expect that any organization’s agenda will align to ours in all policy areas.” <h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Trade Group Tango </h4>Whether a company joins—and remains—a member of NAM or any trade group depends on how much it agrees with the association’s activities and how its membership in the association affects its reputation, said Michael Barnett, a professor of management & global business at <a href="http://www.business.rutgers.edu/faculty/michael-barnett" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Rutgers Business School</a> who has studied trade groups. “[Trade associations] are effective by influencing what others outside the industry think of the industry, like regulators, like customers, like communities,” Barnett said. Trade groups help shield individual companies from the public relations backlash of lobbying on behalf of their industry. They often work as organizing forces to oppose regulation of industries and to lobby government for favorable laws and policies.“The member firms want cover, they want that legitimacy, they want an improved reputation, but they don’t want to do those things necessary to gain that,” Barnett said. “It’s sort of like they’ve hired a personal trainer and they want that trainer to say, ‘Eat cake and you’re going to get fit.’” Sharon Eubanks, a former Department of Justice lawyer who led the government’s racketeering case against the tobacco industry, compared efforts by NAM to defend the fossil fuel industry’s inaction on climate change to efforts by trade groups to back the tobacco companies. She cited the Tobacco Institute and the Center for Tobacco Research, which provided faulty research and inaccurate testimony to support the tobacco industry’s lies about the harms of its product.“I would say that this group is a little more in your face and direct than the tobacco industry was in what they are doing,” Eubanks said.  “They tried to put on a fig leaf, the tobacco industry did, but NAM, there’s no fig leaf—it’s out there.” NAM has attacked climate scientists, undermined international climate negotiations and worked to delay the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions through the <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/04/25/gcc-global-climate-coalition-history/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Global Climate Coalition</a>, a fossil fuel front group that operated from 1989 to 2002. NAM and the Global Climate Coalition were so closely intertwined that one recently discovered document instructs members to make dues checks payable to “NAM – Global Climate Coalition.”More recently, NAM launched its <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/02/26/national-association-manufacturers-oil-climate-liability/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Manufacturers’ Accountability Project</a> to defend big polluters against climate liability suits. Formed in 2017, the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project has attempted to discredit municipalities filing suits against oil companies for the damage they’ve caused to the climate. Last year NAM launched the <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/03/07/nam-shareholder-pressure-climate-change/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Main Street Investors Coalition</a> to fend off shareholder resolutions calling for more transparency and action on climate change. <h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Why Do NAM’s Members Abide Its Backing of Fossil Fuel Companies? </h4>NAM doesn’t publicly list its members, and companies with executives on NAM’s <a href="https://www.nam.org/About/Board-of-Directors/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">board</a> include large fossil fuel companies with a clear interest in preventing climate liability suits. At the same time, other board members come from a wide variety of companies, some which appear to have a strong commitment to protecting the climate and have little or no chance of being named in a climate liability suit, including Pella, Microsoft, Intel, Mueller WP, Volvo, Ball, Proctor and Gamble, Corning and Baker Boy, a North Dakota-based donut chain, among others.<a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/environment/carbon/our-approach" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Microsoft</a>, which has recently come under fire for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/01/microsoft-joins-group-seeking-to-avoid-climate-change-lawsuit" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">joining</a> the <a href="https://www.clcouncil.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Climate Leadership Council</a>, an <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2018/10/09/exxon-carbon-tax-climate-liability/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">industry-backed</a> group advocating for a <a href="https://www.clcouncil.org/our-plan/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">carbon dividend plan</a> that could <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2018/07/17/carbon-tax-climate-liability-waiver/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">do away with</a> climate liability suits, has tried to back away from NAM’s work without leaving NAM. Intel is also carefully distancing itself from NAM’s campaigns to delay action on climate change. Intels positions don’t always align with NAM’s, said William Moss, an Intel spokesperson. “In the case of climate change, we have raised it directly with NAM, and state in our <a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate-responsibility/environment-climate-change-policy.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">climate change policy</a> our support for the IPCC and the Paris Agreement, and our own commitment to reducing our carbon footprint,” said Moss, who added that the overall benefits of Intel’s membership in NAM outweigh its differences on issues like climate change.“In areas where we may have significant differences, we often publish our position separately so our stakeholders know where we stand,” Moss said.   Proctor and Gamble said its NAM membership is aligned with its general business goals and strategies, but the company does not agree with NAM’s position on every issue.“We also respect and value the views of our shareholders, especially on topics that are of importance to the company,” said a Proctor and Gamble spokesperson in a statement. “The trade associations of which we are members are aware of our policy positions, including our views on climate policies. We are consistent in the positions we share with external stakeholders as well as in our trade association engagement.”NAM did not respond to a request for comment, but in a radio interview last year, its president, Jay Timmons, claimed NAM’s 250 board members are “unified in their concern about what lawsuits like this will do to manufacturing operations if they are successful,” Timmons said, referring to climate liability suits. Guy Moos, president of<a href="http://www.bakerboy.com/About/Culture" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"> Baker Boy</a>, said his company remains a member of NAM because of other membership benefits, not its stance on climate issues.“In North Dakota, we’re probably wired a little differently because the Bakken oil field is a pretty big deal around here and so I personally don’t take a position of anti-fossil fuel,” Moos said. Barnett said the more trade associations try to serve a narrow focus, the more difficult it is to retain a broad industry base. After a recent <a href="https://www.shell.com/sustainability/transparency/public-advocacy-and-political-activity/_jcr_content/par/textimage.stream/1554466210642/0a46ab13e36e99f8762ebb021bd72decec2f47b2/final-industry-association-climate-review-april-2019.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">review</a> of its membership in several trade associations, Shell found it had “some misalignment” with NAM’s climate-related policy positions. While the oil giant announced it would not renew its membership in the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, it said it would “continue to engage with [NAM] and closely monitor our alignment on climate-related topics.” Shell is facing climate <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/02/11/nyc-climate-suit-appeal-second-circuit/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">liability</a> suits in the U.S. for the <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2018/11/15/fisheries-crab-climate-change-liability/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">damage</a> its <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/03/13/san-francisco-oakland-climate-lawsuit-appeal/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">products</a> have done to the climate and for failing to adequately plan for and <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2018/05/15/shell-climate-suit-conservation-law-foundation/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">protect</a> its facilities from climate change. Seven environmental and human rights organizations in the Netherlands have filed suit against Shell for <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/04/05/shell-sued-in-the-netherlands-for-insufficient-action-on-climate-change/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">failing</a> to align its business model with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. Barnett said fossil fuel companies will continue to accrue liability as long as they deny responsibility for climate change.</div></div><div>=</div>=<div data-reactid=".ti.1.0.1.1.0.0.1.0.4.1:$p-0" style="font-size: small; box-sizing: border-box;">THE LEAKED DRAFT of a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/search/Account:10929-dan-froomkin" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">presidential memorandum</a> Donald Trump is expected to sign within days suspends a 2010 rule that discouraged American companies from funding conflict and human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo through their purchase of  “conflict minerals.”The memo, distributed inside the administration on Friday afternoon and obtained by The Intercept, directs the Securities and Exchange Commission to temporarily waive the requirements of the Conflict Mineral Rule, a provision of the Dodd Frank Act, for two years — which the rule explicitly allows the president to do for national security purposes. The memorandum also directs the State Department and Treasury Department to find an alternative plan to “address such problems in the DRC and adjoining countries.”The idea behind <a href="https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-245.htm" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">the rule</a>, which had bipartisan support, was to drain militias of revenue by forcing firms to conduct reviews of their supply chain to determine if contractors used minerals sourced from the militias.The impending decision comes as Trump held a meeting Wednesday with Brian Krzanich, the chief executive of Intel, one of the leading firms impacted by conflict mineral regulations. At the White House today, Krzanich appeared with the president to announce a new manufacturing plant in Arizona.Human rights advocates — who had celebrated the conflicts rule as a major step forward — were appalled. “Any executive action suspending the U.S. conflict minerals rule would be a gift to predatory armed groups seeking to profit from Congo’s minerals as well as a gift to companies wanting to do business with the criminal and the corrupt,” said Carly Oboth, the policy adviser at Global Witness, in a statement responding to a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-conflictminerals-idUSKBN15N06N" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" em="em" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" text-decoration="text-decoration" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; white-space: initial;">Reuters article</a> that first reported the move.</div><div data-reactid=".ti.1.0.1.1.0.0.1.0.4.1:$p-2" style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;">“It is an abuse of power that the Trump administration is claiming that the law should be suspended through a national security exemption intended for emergency purposes. Suspending this provision could actually undermine U.S. national security.”Advanced computer chips, including technology used in cell phones and semiconductors, contain minerals often sourced from war-torn countries in central Africa. Firms such as Intel, Apple, HP, and IBM use advanced chips that contain tantalum, gold, tin, and tungsten — elements that can be mined at low prices in the the DRC, where mines are often controlled by militias fueling a decades-long civil war.American tech companies, such as Intel, <a href="https://soprweb.senate.gov/index.cfm?event=getFilingDetails&filingID=0E366C08-0176-4CDF-8938-3A8ECF9BDD50&filingTypeID=60" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">lobbied directly</a> on the rule when it was proposed. But since passage, tech firms have largely used third party business groups to stymie the rule. Trade groups representing major U.S. tech firms and other manufacturers, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, attempted to block the rule through a federal lawsuit. In 2014, a federal court struck down a part of the rule that forced firms to reveal DRC conflict minerals on their corporate websites.Intel is also one of the firms that has touted its effort to comply with the law, publishing a <a href="https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-40-10/s74010-419.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">report</a> that notes the company has conducted 40 on-site reviews of smelters in the eastern DRC.Reuters also <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-conflictminerals-idUSKBN15N06N" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">reported</a> that acting SEC chief Michael Piwowar has taken steps to also weaken enforcement, asking staff to “reconsider how companies should comply.”Read the draft memo here:<a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/02/08/leaked-memo-trump-conflict-minerals/" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://theintercept.com/2017/02/08/leaked-memo-trump-conflict-minerals/</a></div>