California Today: Jerry Brown’s China Ace Card

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/us/california-today-jerry-browns-china-ace-card.html

Version 0 of 1.

Good morning.

(Want to get California Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.)

Today’s introduction comes from Keith Bradsher, our senior writer for Asia economics and business.

China’s push to become a major player in electric cars is already shaking up the global auto industry. California’s governor is hoping it will also give the state an advantage in its continuing showdown with Detroit over battery-powered vehicles.

Gov. Jerry Brown said on Wednesday evening at an event in San Francisco that China’s electric-car effort would help California withstand demands from American automakers that the state ease back on its effort to put more clean-burning vehicles on the road. California mandates that manufacturers sell a small but growing percentage of electric cars or plug-in hybrid vehicles, which run on both gasoline and electricity.

Detroit says the mandate is technologically infeasible.

“Even now, some of the automobile companies are trying to come out and say ‘Gee, the standards in a few years will be too tough,’” Governor Brown said. “‘Will you let us off the hook?’”

But speaking at the The New York Times’s Climate Tech conference, Governor Brown said China’s push puts pressure on Detroit’s automakers to more quickly embrace electric cars or be overwhelmed by the competition.

“We have an ace card called China” in the dispute, he said.

China imposed in September a complex formula that compels automakers to sell more electric cars starting in 2019 or be banned from selling gasoline-powered cars. In response, global automakers are moving to expand sharply their electric car production and sales.

California is the largest market for electric cars in the United States, and the world’s second-largest after China.

The Trump administration has begun moving to weaken overall fuel-economy standards in the United States. Still, Governor Brown said, California and China together are such an important part of global car sales that they represent “two formidable domains that even Mr. Trump can’t overcome.”

The Chinese government said in September that it would phase out the sale of cars with internal combustion engines, a goal that Britain, France, India and Norway have already announced. Li Junfeng, a key architect of China’s energy policies and senior adviser, said on the conference sidelines that China had not yet picked a year for the phaseout to be completed.

Still, he added, “I think China will be earlier than other countries.”

(Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.)

• An American citizen was mistakenly targeted for deportation. He’s not alone. Since 2002, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has wrongly identified at least 2,840 United States citizens as possibly eligible for deportation. [Los Angeles Times]

• Harvey Weinstein’s Long Shadow: It’s awards season again. Could there be a worse time for Hollywood to celebrate itself? [The New York Times]

• Andy Rubin, a former Google executive who is widely credited with creating Android smartphone software, has taken a leave of absence from the start-up he now runs after a published report revealed an investigation into a relationship with a female employee while Mr. Rubin worked at Google. [The New York Times]

• California’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, is suing San Diego-based, for-profit college Ashford University alleging the school made false promises to entice students. [The San Diego Union-Tribune]

• For years, state lawmakers stalled on a landmark deal on housing. Then voters elected a trio of lawmakers who prevailed through a mixture of tenacity, pragmatism, arm-twisting, and sheer luck. [San Francisco Magazine]

• Nine of the 13 members of the editorial staff of LA Weekly were fired, including all the top editors and all but one of the staff writers. [Los Angeles Times]

• Two summers ago, G.M. executives began a series of visits to California to study advances in self-driving cars. On Thursday in San Francisco the company is unveiling its fleet of computer-operated, battery-powered Chevrolet Bolts. [The New York Times]

• An 11-year-old accused of being a getaway driver was the youngest of a group of juveniles arrested after a string of armed robberies and carjackings in San Jose over the weekend. [SFGATE]

• Amid concerns about fake news, Snapchat has redesigned itself, splitting personal and professional content and requiring professional posts to be vetted and approved. [The New York Times]

• Major League Soccer has formally named Sacramento one of four finalists for expansion, and a contingent representing the city’s bid will make a final pitch to a committee of league owners next week in New York. [The Sacramento Bee]

• An obscure condition called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome causes violent vomiting and affects a subset of marijuana users who smoke multiple times a day for months, years or even decades. In California and Colorado emergency physicians say they’re seeing the condition more often. [California Healthline]

There is good news and bad news for California homeowners, says Ken Rosen, chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

Home prices, he predicts as part of his annual forecast, are not due for a crash.

“I think we’re going to see a correction, but my best guess is we’ve got extra innings, a couple more years,” he said on the Haas website.

One wild card is the Republican tax plan.

Professor Rosen calculates that if state and local income tax deductions are eliminated California taxpayers could be paying $38 billion more, a 2 percent to 3 percent reduction in the state’s economy.

“One-third of people in California are going to face a tax increase that’s going to be quite substantial,” Professor Rosen said.

California Today goes live at 6 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.