"The Trump administration is choosing corporate profits over public safety" -- Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post, 9/18/18

Published in The Washington Post, Sept. 18, 2018

Letters to the Editor Opinion

The Trump administration is choosing corporate profits over public safety

Catherine Rampell’s Sept. 12 op-ed, “Making Asbestos Great Again,” brought to mind the long, multibillion-dollar struggle during the 1980s and 1990s between the asbestos-products industry and the Justice Department, in which the industry unsuccessfully sought to shift its tort liability to the federal taxpayers. As part of the United States’ defense team in that litigation, I learned that the industry knew about the hazards of asbestos but hid that knowledge from everyone else, including the federal government. That fact enabled the executive branch (in both Republican and Democratic administrations) to defeat lobbyists’ efforts to have Congress bail out the asbestos industry.

Now the Trump administration may be giving industry the green light to bring back the dangers in the name of corporate profits. My successors at Justice may not have the equitable argument against federal responsibility that we had. More to the point, as Ms. Rampell showed, while our economy may be getting a short-term boost from current federal policies, the price will be long-term damage to the country.

David S. Fishback, Olney

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-trump-administration-is-choosing-corporate-profits-over-public-safety/2018/09/17/5ed187ca-b84e-11e8-ae4f-2c1439c96d79_story.html?utm_term=.6934ddc704ff