Here’s good news: President Trump may sign an executive order suspending the failed conflict minerals provisions of the Dodd-Frank law. Days before, Securities and Exchange Commission Acting Chairman Michael Piwowar had issued two statements directing the SEC to revisit its enforcement of the same provisions.
The provisions, enacted in 2010 as part of the wider Dodd-Frank law, impose a complex and in places impractical disclosure regime on publicly held companies that make products containing such minerals as tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold. The idea is that laying bare supply chains leading to war-torn areas of central Africa will facilitate consumer boycotts. Some reports on the draft executive order, such as that in the Guardian (via Simon Schama on Twitter), seem intent on judging the Loi Obama (as it was known in some of the affected regions) by these original intentions rather than by its actual results. Yet those actual results are no secret. More than two years ago, the Washington Post, confirming what was widely known already, ran front-page reportage about how the law had
set off a chain of events that has propelled millions of miners and their families deeper into poverty, according to interviews with miners, community leaders, activists, and Congolese and Western officials, as well as recent visits to four large mining areas.
As the economy of the area had destabilized, some miners with no other way to support their families had themselves thrown in with lawless armed groups.
At the same time, the law was set to impose billions of dollars in cost on American companies and consumers. I won’t repeat the case against the rules, since I summarized it in this space two years ago, and little appears to have changed since. (For more, check the coverage at Overlawyered.)
The rumored draft of the executive order looks good, but a president’s leeway under the law extends only to suspending its effect for a time. Putting this fiasco to an end will call on Congress to repeal the relevant sections of Dodd-Frank, and that is what it should now proceed to do.
