 |
|
|
|||||
In a first-of-its kind move, Hawaii lawmakers are ready to hike a tax imposed on travelers staying in hotels, vacation rentals and other short-term accommodations and earmark the new money for programs to cope with a warming planet.State leaders say they’ll use the funds for projects like replenishing sand on eroding beaches, helping homeowners install hurricane clips on their roofs and removing invasive grasses like those that fueled the deadly wildfire that destroyed Lahaina two years ago.A bill scheduled for House and Senate votes on Wednesday would add an additional 0.75% to the daily room rate tax starting Jan. 1. It’s all but certain to pass given Democrats hold supermajorities in both chambers and party leaders have agreed on the measure. Gov. Josh Green has said he would sign it into law.Officials estimate the increase would generate $100 million in new revenue annually.“We had a $13 billion tragedy in Maui and we lost 102 people. These kind of dollars will help us prevent that next disaster,” Green said in an interview.Green said Hawaii was the first state in the nation to do something along these lines. Andrey Yushkov, a senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization, said he was unaware of any other state that has set aside lodging tax revenue for the purposes of environmental protection or climate change. Adding to an already hefty tax The increase will add to what is already a relatively large duty on short-term stays. The state’s existing 10.25% tax on daily room rates would climb to 11%. In addition, Hawaii’s counties each add their own 3% surcharge and the state and counties impose a combined 4.712% general excise tax on goods and services including hotel rooms. Together, that will make for a tax rate of nearly 19%.The only large U.S. cities that have higher cumulative state and local lodging tax rates are Omaha, Nebraska, at 20.5%, and Cincinnati, at 19.3%, according to a 2024 report by HVS, a global hospitality consulting firm.The governor has long said the 10 million visitors who come to Hawaii each year should help the state’s 1.4 million residents protect the environment.Green believes travelers will be willing to pay the increased tax because doing so will enable Hawaii to “keep the beaches perfect” and preserve favorite spots like Maui’s road to Hana and the coastline along Oahu’s North Shore. After the Maui wildfire, Green said he heard from thousands of people across the country asking how they could help. This is a significant way they can, he said. Hotel industry has mixed feelings Jerry Gibson, president of the Hawaii Hotel Alliance, which represents the state’s hotel operators, said the industry was pleased lawmakers didn’t adopt a higher increase that was initially proposed.“I don’t think that there’s anybody in the tourism industry that says, ‘Well, let’s go out and tax more.’ No one wants to see that,” Gibson said. “But our state, at the same time, needs money.”The silver lining, Gibson said, is that the money is supposed to beautify Hawaii’s environment. It will be worth it if that’s the case, he said.Hawaii has long struggled to pay for the vast environmental and conservation needs of the islands, ranging from protecting coral reefs to weeding invasive plants to making sure tourists don’t harass wildlife, such as Hawaiian monk seals. The state must also maintain a large network of trails, many of which have heavier foot traffic as more travelers choose to hike on vacation.Two years ago, lawmakers considered requiring tourists to pay for a yearlong license or pass to visit state parks and trails. Green wanted to have all visitors pay a $50 fee to enter the state, an idea lawmakers said would violate U.S. constitutional protections for free travel.Boosting the lodging tax is their compromise solution, one made more urgent by the Maui wildfires. A large funding gap An advocacy group, Care for Aina Now, calculated a $561 million gap between Hawaii’s conservation funding needs and money spent each year.Green acknowledged the revenue from the tax increase falls short of this, but said the state would issue bonds to leverage the money it raises. Most of the $100 million would go toward measures that can be handled in a one-to-two year time frame, while $10 to $15 million of it would pay for bonds supporting long-term infrastructure projects.Kwika Riley, a member of the governor’s Climate Advisory Team, pointed to the Hawaiian saying, “A stranger only for a day,” to explain the new tax. The adage means that a visitor should help with the work after the first day of being a guest.“Nobody is saying that literally our visitors have to come here and start working for us. But what we are saying is that it’s important to be part of of the solution,” Riley said. “It’s important to be part of caring for the things you love.” Audrey McAvoy, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
Congress has overwhelmingly approved bipartisan legislation to enact stricter penalties for the distribution of nonconsensual intimate imagery, sometimes called “revenge porn.” Known as the Take It Down Act, the bill is now headed to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature.The measure was introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, and later gained the support of First Lady Melania Trump. Critics of the bill, which addresses both real and artificial intelligence-generated imagery, say the language is too broad and could lead to censorship and First Amendment issues. What is the Take It Down Act? The bill makes it illegal to “knowingly publish” or threaten to publish intimate images without a person’s consent, including AI-created “deepfakes.” It also requires websites and social media companies to remove such material within 48 hours of notice from a victim. The platforms must also take steps to delete duplicate content. Many states have already banned the dissemination of sexually explicit deepfakes or revenge porn, but the Take It Down Act is a rare example of federal regulators imposing on internet companies. Who supports it? The Take It Down Act has garnered strong bipartisan support and has been championed by Melania Trump, who lobbied on Capitol Hill in March saying it was “heartbreaking” to see what teenagers, especially girls, go through after they are victimized by people who spread such content. President Trump is expected to sign it into law.Cruz said the measure was inspired by Elliston Berry and her mother, who visited his office after Snapchat refused for nearly a year to remove an AI-generated “deepfake” of the then 14-year-old.Meta, which owns and operates Facebook and Instagram, supports the legislation.“Having an intimate imagereal or AI-generatedshared without consent can be devastating and Meta developed and backs many efforts to help prevent it,” Meta spokesman Andy Stone said last month.The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a tech industry-supported think tank, said in a statement Monday that the bill’s passage “is an important step forward that will help people pursue justice when they are victims of non-consensual intimate imagery, including deepfake images generated using AI.”“We must provide victims of online abuse with the legal protections they need when intimate images are shared without their consent, especially now that deepfakes are creating horrifying new opportunities for abuse,” Klobuchar said in a statement after the bill’s passage late Monday. “These images can ruin lives and reputations, but now that our bipartisan legislation is becoming law, victims will be able to have this material removed from social media platforms and law enforcement can hold perpetrators accountable.” What are the censorship concerns? Free speech advocates and digital rights groups say the bill is too broad and could lead to the censorship of legitimate images including legal pornography and LGBTQ content, as well as government critics.“While the bill is meant to address a serious problem, good intentions alone are not enough to make good policy,” said the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group. “Lawmakers should be strengthening and enforcing existing legal protections for victims, rather than inventing new takedown regimes that are ripe for abuse.”The takedown provision in the bill “applies to a much broader category of contentpotentially any images involving intimate or sexual content” than the narrower definitions of nonconsensual intimate imagery found elsewhere in the text, EFF said.“The takedown provision also lacks critical safeguards against frivolous or bad-faith takedown requests. Services will rely on automated filters, which are infamously blunt tools,” EFF said. “They frequently flag legal content, from fair-use commentary to news reporting. The law’s tight time frame requires that apps and websites remove speech within 48 hours, rarely enough time to verify whether the speech is actually illegal.”As a result, the group said online companies, especially smaller ones that lack the resources to wade through a lot of content, “will likely choose to avoid the onerous legal risk by simply depublishing the speech rather than even attempting to verify it.”The measure, EFF said, also pressures platforms to “actively monitor speech, including speech that is presently encrypted” to address liability threats.The Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit that helps victims of online crimes and abuse, said it has “serious reservations” about the bill. It called its takedown provision unconstitutionally vague, unconstitutionally overbroad, and lacking adequate safeguards against misuse.”For instance, the group said, platforms could be obligated to remove a journalist’s photographs of a topless protest on a public street, photos of a subway flasher distributed by law enforcement to locate the perpetrator, commercially produced sexually explicit content or sexually explicit material that is consensual but falsely reported as being nonconsensual. Barbara Ortutay, AP Technology Writer
Category:
E-Commerce
President Donald Trump signed executive orders Tuesday to relax some of his 25% tariffs on automobiles and auto parts, a significant reversal as the import taxes threatened to hurt domestic manufacturers.Automakers and independent analyses have indicated that the tariffs could raise prices, reduce sales and make U.S. production less competitive worldwide. Trump portrayed the changes as a bridge toward automakers moving more production into the United States.“We just wanted to help them during this little transition, short term,” Trump told reporters. “We didn’t want to penalize them.”Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who spoke earlier at a White House briefing on Tuesday, said the goal was to enable automakers to create more domestic manufacturing jobs.“President Trump has had meetings with both domestic and foreign auto producers, and he’s committed to bringing back auto production to the U.S.,” Bessent said. “So we want to give the automakers a path to do that, quickly, efficiently and create as many jobs as possible.”Trump signed one order on Tuesday that amended his previous 25% auto tariffs, making it easier for vehicles that are assembled in the U.S. with foreign parts to not face prohibitively high import taxes.The amended order provides a rebate for one year of 3.75% relative to the sales prices of a domestically assembled vehicles. That figure was reached by putting the 25% import tax on parts that make up 15% of a vehicle’s sales price. For the second year, the rebate would equal 2.5% of a vehicle’s sales price, as it would apply to a smaller share of the vehicle’s parts.A senior Commerce Department official, insisted on anonymity to preview the order on a call with reporters, said automakers told Trump that the additional time would enable them to ramp up the construction of new factories, after automakers warned that it would take time for them to shift their supply chains. The official said automakers would over the next month announce additional shifts for workers, new hires and plans for new facilities.Stellantis Chairman John Elkann said in a statement that the company appreciates the president’s tariff relief measures.“While we further assess the impact of the tariff policies on our North American operations, we look forward to our continued collaboration with the U.S. Administration to strengthen a competitive American auto industry and stimulate exports,” he said.General Motors CEO Mary Barra said the automaker is grateful for Trump’s support of the industry, and she noted the company looks forward to conversations with the president and working with the administration.“We believe the President’s leadership is helping level the playing field for companies like GM and allowing us to invest even more in the U.S. economy,” Barra said in a statement.Jim Farley, president and CEO of Ford Motor Company, stressed that his company does more than its peers to manufacture domestically.“We will continue to work closely with the administration in support of the president’s vision for a healthy and growing auto industry in America,” Farley said. “As the right policies are put in place, it will be important for the major vehicle importers to match Ford’s commitment to building in America. If every company that sells vehicles in the U.S. matched Ford’s American manufacturing ratio, 4 million more vehicles would be assembled in America each year.”But changing direction doesn’t help an industry that thrives on stability, said Sam Fiorani, analyst at business forecasting firm AutoForecast Solutions.“Finding a way to get the auto industry back working has to be paramount in this,” Fiorani said. “The tariffs have not looked at this industry, the way it works, and expect it to be able to jump and relocate production at the blink of an eye. It just doesn’t work that way.“Making a production change for vehicle manufacturing takes minimum, months, and usually years, along with hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars,” he added. “And so it is not something that they take lightly.”The Wall Street Journal first reported details of the actions. The White House’s Rapid Response account on X said Trump signed a second order Tuesday afternoon to prevent his various tariffs from being stacked on top of his existing taxes on imported autos and auto parts.The tariffs imposed by Trump were seen by some as an existential threat to the auto sector. Arthur Laffer, whom Trump gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to during his first term, said in a private analysis that the tariffs without any modifications could add $4,711 to the cost of a vehicle.New vehicles sold at $47,462 on average last month, according to auto-buying resource Kelley Blue Book. Tariffs stress the automotive supply chain, a complex web which spans the globe. Not only do many auto parts cross North American borders several times before being assembled into a finished vehicle, auto manufacturers rely on suppliers around the world for thousands of components.Increased levies would certainly cost new car buyerssensitive to inflationmore, driving them to the used vehicle market and quickly straining the availability of pre-owned cars. Tariffs also impact the cost of owning and maintaining a vehicle.The modifications come as Trump marks 100 days back in the White House by going to Michigan, a state defined by auto manufacturing. Trump won the state in last year’s election by promising to increase factory jobs.Still, it remains unclear what impact Trump’s broader tariffs will have on the U.S. economy and auto sales. Most economists say the tariffswhich could ultimately hit most importswould raise prices and slow economic growth, possibly hurting auto sales despite the relief that the administration intends to offer on its previous policies. St. John contributed from Detroit. Josh Boak and Alexa St. John, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||