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The marijuana industry has a pesticide problem. Many commercial cannabis growers use chemicals to control bugs and mold. But the plant's legal status is unresolved.

The grow room at Medical MJ Supply in Fort Collins, Colo., has all the trappings of a modern marijuana cultivation facility: glowing yellow lights, plastic irrigation tubes, and rows of knee-high cannabis plants.

"We're seeing a crop that's probably in it third or fourth week," says Nick Dice, the owner.

The plants are vibrantly green, happy and healthy. And Dice says that's because the company's taken a hard line on cleanliness.

"We have people who that's their only job is to look for any infections or anything that could cause potential damage to the crop," he says.

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As any farmer will likely say, damage to the crop equals damage to the bottom line. Dice's employees used to spray the crop with mild chemicals. They would switch between multiple pesticides and mildew treatments, treating anywhere from every three to four days.

Dice says he's seen other operations crumble as their cannabis succumbs to mildew or bugs. Pest controls ensure a good yield. And when it comes to cannabis, yields really matter.

Dice estimates the grow room is worth as much as $180,000. Protecting that yield is hard work. That's why many growers in states that have legalized recreational or medical marijuana use chemicals. But it's the federal government that tells farmers which pesticides are safe to use. And so far, the feds wants nothing to do with legalized marijuana. Colorado State University entomologist Whitney Cranshaw says that's left growers to experiment with little oversight.

"In the absence of any direction the subject of pesticide use on the crop has just devolved to just whatever people think is working or they think is appropriate," he says.

Tobacco farmers, for example, have a stable of pesticides the government says are safe to use. But Cranshaw says marijuana growers have none.

"Sometimes they've used some things that are inappropriate, sometimes unsafe," he says.

Brett Eaton is a plant expert with American Cannabis Company, a Denver-based consulting group. He's concerned about what the pesticides are doing to the product as well as the consumer.

"Anybody can get their hands on harmful chemicals, and they can just spray away all the way up until the last day of harvest," he says.

Safety concerns led Denver officials to place a hold on tens of thousands of marijuana plants earlier this year, pending an investigation. Colorado doesn't require growers to test the crop for traces of pesticides before being sold. But state agriculture officials did recently release a list of pesticides deemed appropriate for use on cannabis. Washington state, Nevada and Illinois have similar lists. Eaton says regulators are only playing catch up.

"Other agricultural industries already have policy in place for the safe use of spraying certain pesticides and fungicides," he says. "This being a new industry, it hasn't been addressed yet."

And with more states turning marijuana into a legal commodity crop, it'll take a mix of policy, science and industry self-regulation to figure out what's appropriate, and what's not.

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Denver

If the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal isn't revived in the next few days, labor unions will have helped defeat one of President Obama's main foreign policy goals. But what will defeating the TPP, an agreement that covers 12 nations along the Pacific Rim, do for labor?

Thea Lee, deputy chief of staff at the AFL-CIO, has had a front-row seat to the trade negotiations on Capitol Hill.

She opposes many of the provisions in the new trade deal, but she can't tell you exactly which.

"We are sworn to secrecy, so we can't talk about it — not to our colleagues, not to our members, not to the press, and so that's frustrating," she says. "If I talked to you specifically about what I think the shortcomings of the labor chapter are, I could lose my security clearance. I don't know if I'd go to jail, but ..."

So she's left talking in generalities.

"These deals make it easier for multinational corporations to move jobs overseas," Lee says.

She, as well as other union leaders, point first and foremost, to the North American Free Trade Agreement that took effect 21 years ago.

Roland Zullo, a University of Michigan labor and employment policy researcher, says that for organized labor, NAFTA's wounds still linger.

"Labor has enough of a institutional memory to know what happened with NAFTA," he says. "There was a theory behind NAFTA; there was a theory that by integrating Canada, U.S. and Mexico, there would be a sort of overall net economic benefit."

But that didn't happen for U.S. workers in sectors like manufacturing. Michigan auto workers, for example, lost more than 100,000 jobs in the years that followed NAFTA's passage.

But it's not a clear case of cause and effect. This is the period when Japanese automakers were setting up shop in the U.S. and taking market share away from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.

Other industries, and consumers, did benefit from NAFTA.

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Matt Slaughter, associate dean of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, says he understands labor's concerns about a new trade deal. But, he adds, labor faces a paradox in opposing the TPP.

"A lot of the academic research and policy work shows companies and their workers that are connected to the dynamism in the global economy tend to pay higher wages and create better jobs than do the purely domestic companies," he says.

He says labor should stop trying to kill the new trade pact, and instead push for a more robust 21st century social safety net for dislocated workers.

But that idea was torpedoed last week by House Democrats, who, ironically, support the idea. It was a political maneuver to scuttle the entire bill.

Slaughter also questions what kind of victory labor would gain by torpedoing the TPP. After all, the U.S. already has free-trade agreements with a handful of countries in the TPP talks.

"Even for countries in the TPP negotiations with whom we don't have a free-trade agreement already, we are already relatively open to those countries for bringing in imports of almost all of their goods and services," he says.

Tim Waters, the national political director for the United Steelworkers, strongly disagrees with talk like this.

"For us to just say, 'Oh well, it's inevitable, we shouldn't try to stop it, we shouldn't try to stand up, we should just try to get in there and cut some kind of deal that made it less sickening,' doesn't make any sense," he says.

Waters adds that unions aren't anti-trade; they want fair trade. He says trade deals need to put the concerns of American workers first.

And, he says, this new agreement, yet again, doesn't do that.

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House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, (R-Wis.) says approving a massive trade package sought by President Obama will allow the U.S. to "write the rules" of the global economy. Parts of the package are now in limbo in the House.

Ryan spoke with NPR's Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep about the trade deal and about Trade Promotion Authority, also known as fast-track, which would allow the president to negotiate the trade agreement with Pacific Rim nations known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and then have Congress pass it with an up-or-down vote.

On what the trade package does for the U.S.:

"What we're requiring in these negotiations, as we direct in our trade promotion authority legislation, is that these other countries level the playing field — they treat us like we treat them, they open their markets reciprocally to ours to our exports, and they raise their standards to our standards. Play by our rules with respect to things like intellectual property protection, rule of law, those kinds of things that are very important to make sure that we set the standards for the global economy.

"So if it goes like people like myself hope it goes, then America along with our allies are writing the rules of this global economy at the beginning of this 21st century. If we chose not to engage, if we say America shouldn't bother negotiating trade agreements ... then we're simply saying, 'We forfeit the leadership role in the world to write the rules' and we let other countries such as China write the rules instead of us."

On arguments that deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership will cost American jobs:

"Since ... 2007, there have been 100 trade agreements struck around the world without America. And that means other countries are already doing this, getting better access, getting better market access, and we're not, and that means we lose jobs."

On arguments from some Democrats that the trade deal will allow other nations to effectively lower U.S. wages and standards for financial rules, labor regulations, and the environment:

"There really isn't any justice in that claim, it's really kind of a straw man or what I'd call a red herring argument, because we make it extremely clear in our trade promotion authority that only Congress can change laws. You can't enter into an agreement that Congress doesn't approve that changes our laws.

"We make it very clear that the goal of this is to have other countries raise their standards to our levels and not degrade their standards. That's one of the criticisms from agreements back in the 20th century. So we want modern agreements that raise high standards to get other countries to play by our rules, and we do not allow other countries through any mechanism to require or force changes in U.S. laws."

On whether the treaty would mean foreign trading partners can challenge U.S. policies and regulations that they think adversely affect them:

"No. They can get monetary damage penalties, they can't challenge or change regulations at any level of our government."

On criticism that the treaty is being written in secret:

"It's one of the reasons why we're trying to pass trade promotion authority, so that we can guarantee that the public gets to see any trade agreement that is reached. We do not have trade promotion authority in place right now, and ... as a result of that, the kind of transparency that occurs is whatever the administration wants.

"What we are demanding and insisting on in our trade promotion authority is not only that members of Congress have full access to anything that's classified for the moment, but once an agreement is actually reached between countries, that agreement must be made public ... for 60 days for the public to see before a president can even sign an agreement, and when he signs it he simply sends it to Congress and then Congress spends a minimum of 30 days ... considering the agreement.

"The reasons some things are classified right now is it's in negotiations. You don't want to go into negotiations at any level, whether it's transactions or government-to-government with all your cards face up."

trans pacific partnership

Paul Ryan

The Federal Reserve's policymakers Wednesday held steady on interest rates – and gave no specific time frame for when they might change course.

That was the expected outcome of their two-day meeting.

But this changed: The policy makers seemed a bit more optimistic about the U.S. economy. Their statement said that while inflation is very low, "economic activity has been expanding moderately."

At a press conference, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said, "We have seen some progress." Still, rate hikes won't come until the Fed sees "more decisive evidence" that growth really is sustainable.

Overall, her words struck most analysts as a sign the Fed will start to nudge up interest rates, probably once in September and again before Dec. 31.

"After that, it will take its time and will only gradually tighten monetary conditions further," Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for IHS, said in a statement.

But for now, it's still groundhog day, with no changes. The Fed has not had a rate hike since June 2006 — so long ago that the housing bubble was still inflating and Shakira was assuring us that "Hips Don't Lie."

So here's what the Fed decision means for you:

The nation's central bank is going to continue holding down interest rates to encourage you to borrow money for a new car or a home rehab or some other purchase. The goal is to stimulate a recovering economy.

Some economists say that extra help isn't needed anymore. They point to signs of an improved economy. For example, the Bertelsmann Foundation's International Non-profit Credit Rating Agency just upgraded its U.S. assessment from AA+ to AAA, saying that the "United States promises to be a more reliable driver of the global economy in coming years — with expected growth of 1.5 to 3 percent in 2015, and 2.5 to 3 percent in 2016."

But the Fed noted lingering problems, saying that "business fixed investment and net exports stayed soft."

Although the Fed statement didn't mention it, there's another worrisome factor hanging over the economy. It's the trouble in Greece, which owes more money to creditors than it can afford to pay.

Because Greece belongs to the European Union, its debt crisis is a big problem. European leaders are meeting next week and will try to sort out that debt mess. But it's possible there are no solutions and Greece might have to leave the EU. That would open up all sorts of unknowns that could upset markets.

"The one and only reason the Fed chose not to act this time was because of Greece," Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist for The Economic Outlook Group, said in a statement.

"The Fed couldn't comfortably pull the interest trigger this time until it got past the potential fallout of a Greek default," he added.

Fed policymakers have been keeping its benchmark federal funds rate at near zero since December 2008.

Translation: your cost of borrowed dollars has been at historically low levels for a long time now.

Cheap loans might sound good, but there are downsides. For one thing, it's hard on savers who need to earn more interest on their money. Also, a lot of economists worry that super low interest rates make it too easy to borrow, leading to dumb spending decisions by both individuals and businesses.

So most economists would like to see interest rates rising gradually to more normal levels amid a strengthening economy.

Fed officials worry that if interest rates go up while the economy is still fragile, consumers might stop shopping and home sales could stall. Better to keep rates low as a precaution, goes the thinking.

Janet Yellen

Economy

Federal Reserve