In normal times, you could bank the bet that a man who was a Russian stooge, gave comfort to neo-Nazis and spent his first year in office trying to take health care from 22 million Americans was going to get destroyed when voters finally had a chance to send him a message. [Timothy Egan | August…
By Jeff Ferry, CPA Research Director Economists in the US are overwhelmingly in favor of free trade. But they continue to be frustrated that the public doesn’t buy their arguments. So frustrated are they that last May, one of the leading pro-free-trade think tanks, the Peterson Institute, invited highly respected economist Alan Blinder, now a…
The United States has just started renegotiating its free trade deal with Canada and Mexico, but President Trump is already warning the talks may fail. [Jethro Mullen | August 23, 2017 | CNN Money] “Personally, I don’t think we can make a deal because we have been so badly taken advantage of,” Trump said during a…
(WASHINGTON) – The following is a statement by Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa in response to the conclusion of the first round of NAFTA renegotiation talks that ended Sunday. [August 22, 2017 | Teamsters] “The Teamsters have been calling for NAFTA withdrawal or its dramatic renegotiation for more than 20 years. Therefore, we support…
China is trying to clamp down on overseas acquisitions by its companies. Hostility is growing in the United States toward Chinese deals. And the auto industry faces substantial change in the form of battery-powered vehicles and autonomous cars. [JACK EWING and KEITH BRADSHER | August 21, 2017 | The New York Times] None of that deterred one Chinese…
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials this week moved to collect millions of dollars in unpaid anti-dumping penalties after finding that Chinese companies obscured the source of exports to the United States by shipping them through other countries. [Brendan Kirby | August 18th, 2017 | PoliZette] The agency issued 10 decisions under the Enforce and…
The first round of the Trump administration’s NAFTA renegotiations began in Washington wrapped up on Saturday. The negotiators will meet again in September in Mexico City and then again in October in Canada. The United States has not yet proposed any specific measures on important issues such as labor rights, currency manipulation, or rules of origin. By all accounts,…
“The administration should reject fears of supply-chain disruption asserted by the import lobby,” said Michael Stumo, chief executive of the Coalition for a Prosperous America. “Successful trading nations like China and Germany ‘disrupt supply chains’ intentionally, working to increase their domestic supply chains at the expense of foreign suppliers.” [Sara Schaefer Muñoz and Bob Davis…
U.S. negotiators are considering a new approach to the controversial investor-state dispute settlement mechanism featuring an opt-in clause that would allow each of the three NAFTA countries to decide whether to use the provision, sources told Inside U.S. Trade. [Jenny Leonard | August 19, 2017 | Inside US Trade] Citing a recent letter to U.S. Trade…
It emerged this week that the Chinese government has been taking action to make sure that the Chinese Communist Party is the ultimate decisionmaker at dozens of state-owned Chinese businesses. The Financial Times reported that more than 30 Chinese state-owned companies have had their by-laws amended to state that the Communist Party provides “direction” on key decisions. …
