Canadian Wildfire Damage & Trump's Multibillion Dollar Lawsuits

0:00Michael Gerrard:So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now, a global workforce of 300 ,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94 % of common questions. Not noise. Proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business. IBM.

0:59you listen.

1:02Michael Gerrard:This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio. Canada's wildfire crisis remains critical. About 900 wildfires are currently burning in Canada, and more than 9 million acres of land have been burned. The crisis has spilled across the border, sending dangerous smoke that has turned the skies over cities like New York, Chicago and D.C. into a toxic haze. Smoke from wildfires carries noxious gases and particulate matter that can trigger severe respiratory and heart problems in people living thousands of miles away. Last week, more than 100 million Americans were under air quality alerts.

1:47It's just gotten so, so, so bad.

1:49Michael Gerrard:It's affecting everybody's physical activity, no doubt. It's terrible. I feel like you go inside and you can still smell it. In post this weekend, President Trump called Canada's handling of the wildfires willful negligence and said the cost of the pollution should be added to tariffs on that country. My guest is Columbia Law School professor Michael Girard, an expert in environmental law and director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. How much of a danger do the Canadian wildfires pose? These Canadian wildfires are enormous. They're spreading unhealthy air throughout North America. And we know that this wildfire smoke causes all kinds of negative health effects.

2:33Michael Gerrard:So this is a very serious event. The number of wildfires in both Canada and the United States seems to be growing every year. Is that because of climate change? Yes, they're sparked mostly by lightning. But climate change is making them much worse. When you have extreme heat conditions, which is what we've been having, it dries out the trees and the other vegetation. And when the lightning hits, it causes a major fire. So we've always had wildfires, but they're much worse, and the smoke conditions are now much worse than they had been in the past. This situation with smoke crossing borders, that's not just limited to Canada and the U.S., is it?

3:15It's a global thing.

3:17Michael Gerrard:That's right. This has happened for a long time all over the world. There have been efforts to address it legally, but there really isn't anything effective that the law can do in terms of imposing liability over this kind of smoke. If it were coming from a discrete factory or something, that could be a different story. But these wildfires coming from immense areas, there's not really a legal remedy. Would the wildfires be considered a natural disaster like an earthquake? Yes, like an earthquake or a volcano or something like that in a country that's not liable for a natural disaster that happens within its borders that causes harm in other countries.

3:55Michael Gerrard:There are other things that countries are doing that are increasing these wildfires, most notably greenhouse gas emissions, but we don't have an effective legal remedy for this kind of thing. Over the weekend, President Trump expressed criticism of Canada's handling of the wildfires, calling it willful negligence. We're holding Canada responsible for the fact that they're not properly maintaining their forests and brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air. Well, it's true that a lot of bad air is coming down from Canada, but that's the only part of it that's true.

4:31Michael Gerrard:The Canadian northern forests, the boreal forests, are about seven times the size of Texas. So what do you do? How do you control that? It's naturally occurring. As I say, it's lightning that sparks the wildfires. If anybody wants to complain about the causes of the wildfires, it's mostly climate change. And the U.S. is responsible for something like 10 times the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere than Canada. So if anybody could sue anybody, it would be Canada suing the U.S., but of course they can't either. Is that because there's no jurisdiction? That's right. The International Court of Justice in The Hague can adjudicate disputes between countries that have consented to that kind of jurisdiction.

5:15Michael Gerrard:The U.S. has not consented to the jurisdiction of the ICJ for this kind of case. Even if it had, what would the remedy be? It's not as if Canada can go in with 10 million airplanes and put out the wildfires. There really isn't an effective remedy for that. Trump says he's going to increase the tariffs. I mean, that is something I guess he can do, right? Well, there's actually a legal dispute about that, whether he has the authority to increase the tariffs. But he can try and it may not succeed in courts. But what does it do to help the wildfire situation? It does nothing. I guess it's like a tit for tat.

5:51We'll get some money from you, you know, just recompense, I guess.

5:55Michael Gerrard:But, you know, the wind goes in both directions. Sometimes the smoke from the U.S. goes north. And so it is tit for tat and it could start going in the other direction. Singapore has a law in the books. Right. In Southeast Asia, there's a great deal of wildfire smoke coming primarily from agricultural burning in Indonesia and Malaysia. So Singapore is one of the places that especially badly hurt by that. Sometimes they have to shut down their airports, close their schools. There is a regional agreement in Southeast Asia to try to deal with this, but it hasn't accomplished much. The one thing that has happened is that Singapore passed a law saying that any Singaporean companies that engage in this kind of burning in other countries can be liable.

6:42Michael Gerrard:So there's a big pulp and paper company based in Singapore that is engaged in this kind of burning in Indonesia. And Singapore has taken some actions against that company. But it's a very, very small and limited kind of action. Let's say there's a business that's been damaged in some way because of the wildfire smoke. For example, some camps have experienced declining numbers. Can they sue Canada in a Canadian court? Canada and other countries have sovereign immunity for most kinds of liability, unless they have specifically waived their immunity for this kind of case. And I don't believe that Canada has waived its immunity here.

7:26Michael Gerrard:When you do have a waiver of sovereign immunity, it's usually because the country has been negligent or like somebody gets hit by a postal truck, they consider the postal service. But this is not the kind of thing that results from negligence of the kind that typically invokes the waiver of sovereign immunity. So we have an agreement with Canada, the Canadian United States Air Quality Agreement of 1991. What's that about? And does it have anything to do with what's happening now? Well, it provides that the two countries can reach agreements on specific kinds of air pollutants and what they're going to do about it.

8:04Michael Gerrard:So there's now a specific agreement on sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain. There's an agreement on mercury. So when there is an agreement on specific substances, then the country can be legally obligated to take certain actions to reduce those kinds of pollutants. But there's no such agreement between the United States and Canada covering wildfire smoke. Someday, theoretically, they could do that. They could negotiate that. But that hasn't happened. Most countries with this cross-border pollution, how do they handle it? Do they work together? Do they make agreements? If it's a controllable kind of pollutant, they can reach agreements on how to handle it.

8:44Michael Gerrard:So with acid rain, the United States now has a law to reduce the use of high sulfur coal to generate electricity. With mercury, there are other specific things that could be done. But with wildfires, particularly the kind of wildfires that are coming down from Canada, there isn't. There are certain forest management things that could be done in different kinds of forests to try to reduce the wildfires. On that, neither the United States nor Canada have done a terrific job. But these wildfires are such a magnitude that international agreements can have only a very, very limited impact. In the U.S., is that because the administration has dismantled key agencies?

9:23in fields such as climate and conservation work through mass firings of federal workers.

9:30Michael Gerrard:One of the things that can be done in certain kinds of forests is called prescribed burning. You go in and you start small fires that clear away the underbrush and so forth so that other fires can't get so large. The United States for many years had a policy that largely inhibited prescribed burning, and that's one of the reasons some of the fires in the Pacific Northwest had been so bad. Very recently, there were some prescribed fires planned for Minnesota that would have reduced fires there. But under Elon Musk's doge, they greatly cut back on that. They did not engage in the prescribed burning.

10:05Michael Gerrard:And so the fires in Minnesota seem to be much worse than they might have been otherwise. Looking toward the future, does it seem as if the wildfire situation may get worse in both Canada and the U.S.? Yes, it'll clearly get worse as the planet gets hotter and you have worse fires. There's no question that the wildfire situation and the smoke situation will get worse. Clearly, the governments can act to help protect their citizens, have better early warning systems, have clean air rooms that are provided for people who don't have air conditioning and so provide masks. There are a number of things that can be done to help protect people from the wildfire smoke.

10:47Michael Gerrard:But only a very limited amount can be done to reduce the smoke itself over the short and medium term. Over the long term, we need massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, which is mostly involving massive reductions in the use of fossil fuels. But it takes a very long time for that to have a positive impact on wildfires. I mean, the Trump administration is trying to advance fossil fuel development, right? Of course, they're moving in exactly the opposite direction of where we need to be. They're all about trying to maximize both the demand for and the supply of fossil fuels. They're denying that climate change is a serious problem.

11:25Michael Gerrard:They're trying to wipe out all U.S. policies to address climate change. Can you get insurance for smoke damage? There's actually some dispute about that, about whether conventional insurance policies cover smoke damage. You could certainly buy a policy that has a smoke rider, but that's an exception rather than the rule. Biden tried to leave an environmental legacy. And has Trump undone it already? You know, there have been a lot of areas that he's tried to roll back what Biden did. Trump is certainly working hard to undo Biden's environmental legislation and his other legacy. Now, sometimes the courts have stood in the way.

12:04Michael Gerrard:There are lots of litigation pending. In some cases, what Trump has tried to do has been halted. But in other cases, it's gone forward. I would say the action that has had the most serious effect is the rollback on the motor vehicle standards. Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. The Biden administration worked very hard to clean up both the passenger cars and the heavy duty vehicles like trucks and buses, and to move toward electric vehicles, which are ultimately the way we need to go. And Trump has greatly cut back on that, has damaged the U.S.

12:39Michael Gerrard:electric vehicle industry greatly helped the Chinese electric vehicle industry, since they're making terrific EVs that are very inexpensive, but you can't buy in the U.S. Trump has also slowed down or stopped the closure of a lot of coal-fired power plants, which is another major source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. So he's done a lot of damage. And he speaks out against wind and solar power every chance he gets. At a time when he's encouraging data centers, which are greatly increasing the demand for electricity. He's trying to wipe out the principal new source of electricity, which is wind and solar.

13:16Michael Gerrard:It's completely irrational. Thanks so much for joining me. That's Columbia Law School professor Michael Girard. Coming up next, Trump's lawsuits against the media and banks. This is Bloomberg. The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News keeps you on top of the biggest stories of the day. My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day. Stories that move markets. Chair Powell opened the door to this first interest rate cut. Impact politics, change businesses. This is a really stunning development for the AI world and how you think about your bottom line. Listen to The Big Take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

13:59President Donald Trump is suing The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The BBC, JPMorgan Chase, and Capital One, each for between$5 and$15 billion. And there have been some high-stakes hearings in Florida after major setbacks in a few of the cases. Joining me is Bloomberg legal reporter Eric Larson, who has been following all these cases. Eric, before we get to the cases where Trump is suing, let's talk about the civil cases where he lost and verdicts were returned against him. And those involve writer E. Jean Carroll. Tell us about the huge verdict in her defamation case against Trump. A big verdict that she won against Trump.

14:45$83.3 million is what the jury put the damages at. Of course, Trump appealed, it was upheld on appeal, and he's expected to very soon ask the Supreme Court to hear the case. Of course, unclear if the justices will take it, but he is going to ask. And of course, his other case with E.G. Carroll, the$5 million sexual abuse civil case that she also won against Trump. Trump also appealed that, and the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal. and the president has asked the justices to reconsider that decision, a pretty remarkable request that they have not responded to yet. What is his claim in the defamation case?

15:28What might the issue be that he takes to the Supreme Court? So Trump argues that at the trial, the jury heard improper evidence that should not have been in the trial, specifically the testimony and allegations of two other women who had accused Trump of sexual assault years ago, and the so-called Access Hollywood tape in which Trump is on a hot mic speaking crudely about women and being able to grab the genitals of women without consent if you're a star, that sort of thing. Trump argues that that was inappropriate to happen in the case. So let's turn now to the cases where Trump is suing over defamation.

16:13The$10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal. He's alleging that the Wall Street Journal defamed him with an article related to Jeffrey Epstein, specifically this article about Trump allegedly sending a birthday note to Epstein for his 50th birthday years ago that contained a personal note to Epstein that was sort of typed out within a hand-drawn shape of a woman and with Trump's signature forming the pubic region of the drawing. So this was a Wall Street Journal story that said that this was from Trump. Trump denied that and filed this lawsuit. I mean, there was a dismissal of the suit.

16:57Why did the judge dismiss the complaint? Right. So the first version of the complaint was dismissed because it did not have enough details in the complaint backing so-called actual malice, which is a higher standard for public figures like Trump to file defamation lawsuits, they have to show that the Wall Street Journal, in this case, knew that what it was reporting was false or had a reckless disregard for the truth. And that's actual malice. The judge dismissed the suit, granted the journal's motion to dismiss it, saying that there wasn't enough detail in there to prove actual malice. But the judge dismissed it without prejudice and said that Trump could refile a new version if he wanted to try again, which he did.

17:39The journal has moved to dismiss that version as well. And there's actually a hearing on that motion to dismiss on August 5th in Miami. As we said, it's a very high bar to prove actual malice. Did Trump in the complaint, in the new complaint, make a case for actual malice? I mean, that's really what the hearing is going to be about what the judge is going to have to decide. All I can say is that in the motion to dismiss the second complaint, the amended complaint, the journal said that there was no new detail backing up actual malice and said the new complaint suffered from all the same problems that what Trump was saying.

18:19And it was not really factual, that it was just including more details about how the journal purportedly did not support its story sufficiently, did not give enough weight to Trump's denial that he wrote that note, that he had signed it. And that's, you know, the headline and other parts of the story, you know, explicitly said that, it was Trump's note to Epstein when they allegedly did not back that up in the story. We should say that truth is a defense. And didn't a lot of media outlets describe that note as being from Trump? Well, I think the key here on the falsity angle is that the House Democrats released this actual letter.

19:01It came in as part of their Epstein investigation. The Epstein estate handed over a lot of stuff of Epstein's, including a big book that compiled all of these birthday notes from other people for Epstein's 50th birthday. So that's part of the record that was handed over to Congress. And the journal argues that that proves that it was true. And Trump doesn't see it that way. We'll see if the journal gets a dismissal and if the dismissal is with prejudice. So now he's also suing, surprise, surprise, the New York Times for$15 billion. Right. And this complaint alleges defamation from several articles and also a book written by a Times reporter called Lucky Loser.

19:49and generally the complaint alleges that the New York Times just had a policy of treating him unfairly in their stories, that the articles and book demeaned his success as a businessman and in various ways suggested that he hadn't earned his fortune or fame, that it was just sort of handed to him. This case, you might recall it was not dismissed. It was basically thrown out of court a few days after it was filed by a judge who said that it violated court rules by containing way too much detail about Trump's fame and fortune and his rise in politics and other details that the judge said was completely irrelevant to the lawsuit such that it violated court rules.

20:33And Trump's lawyer had to refile a version that was half as long. He was given a page limit and the Times has moved to dismiss it. And it's the same general arguments as the Wall Street Journal cases. They say that their reporting is accurate, they stand by it, and that Trump hasn't properly alleged actual malice. And so this was a case that they just had a hearing on the motion to dismiss last week in Tampa, Florida, before a federal judge who did not give any hint one way or the other how he was thinking during that hearing and reserved judgment, and we're expecting a decision on that at any time.

21:10That's unusual. Usually there's a little bit of a hint. Okay. And he's also suing the BBC for$10 billion. Yes, this is over that edit of Trump's so-called stop the steal speech at that stop the steal speech rally before the January 6th attack on the Capitol. In late 2024, the BBC did a panorama documentary about Trump's supporters and how he continues to keep support despite his various legal issues and controversial incidents like January 6th. And in that documentary, they spliced together two different parts of his speech into a 12-second clip that made it seem like he had made a direct call for violence.

21:56And that's actually something that the BBC chairman apologized for. He issued an apology trying to, I think, avoid this lawsuit being filed. because Trump had threatened to sue. The apology was issued, but they stood by their argument that they hadn't defamed him. So Trump did file the suit. And it's a really unusual case. Frankly, it's going in some different directions than the typical defamation case would at this point. And namely because the BBC has decided to issue dozens of subpoenas to members of Trump's inner circle, former cabinet members, federal agencies, trying to build a picture of Trump's communications before leading up to that speech.

22:39Essentially, they're arguing on the matter of falsity, whether or not the implication of the 12-second edited clip, notwithstanding the apology, whether it might have actually been accurate regardless that Trump really was calling for or inciting violence that day. And so they are arguing that the case really Trump has to prove that he did not incite the January 6th riot in order to win this defamation case. That's what the BBC has said in court and in court filings. So that's the point of all of these subpoenas. There was a hearing on those subpoenas last week in Miami and Trump, his lawyer fought very hard over a couple of hours to get those subpoenas thrown out, not only to members of the inner circle, but another subpoena to the Trump organization for all kinds of financial documents because the BBC wants to see evidence that Trump really has suffered billions of dollars in damage to his business and his brand and his future financial prospects as his complaint claims.

23:43So the judge upheld those subpoenas, but she did indicate that she might be narrowing those subpoenas to the Trump inner circle because she said she doesn't want this case to become a new trial over January 6th. So she's going to issue a written order later where we'll see what the subpoenas might be narrowed down to. But I feel like it could be a long fight over these subpoenas as well. I'll say, I don't think this is the last ruling that we'll get on those. But it is an interesting angle for the BBC's defense. Yeah. And also, I mean, Trump's wealth increased by almost$2 billion about since he's been president.

24:20The BBC's lawyer did raise that fact in the court hearing, saying that Trump, he had put the figure at$1.4 billion or so. And also the fact that Trump won the election shortly after that documentary went out. So they argued it didn't harm him anyway. But it was interesting to see Trump's lawyer arguing this particular point in court, because especially on the Trump Organization financial documents subpoena, The judge made it clear that it seemed reasonable to subpoena those records if Trump was claiming so much harm. And Trump's lawyer essentially said that he would be willing to correct the record and amend the lawsuit.