By Michael Stumo The US International Trade Commission (USITC) and private think tanks usually do “studies” to project the impacts of trade deals. We now have more information on how freakishly wrong those studies are. Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research recently reviewed the USITC methods for projecting the economic impacts…
[ HARPER NEIDIG | November 26, 2016 |The Hill] Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Saturday he will introduce legislation aimed at preventing major companies from sending jobs to foreign countries, similar to what President-elect Donald Trump proposed on the campaign trail. Sanders pointed to Trump’s promise to prevent Carrier, an air conditioning manufacturer owned by United Technologies, from shifting factory jobs…
[Daily News| November 30, 2016 |Inside US Trade] President-elect Donald Trump plans to select Wilbur Ross to be Commerce secretary, Ross said on Nov. 30. Ross is a private equity investor with years of experience in restructuring struggling firms and operations, including some of Trump’s. He confirmed his selection in a CNBC interview. Ross told CNBC he…
[NELSON D. SCHWARTZ| November 29, 2016 |The New York Times] From the earliest days of his campaign, Donald J. Trump made keeping manufacturing jobs in the United States his signature economic issue, and the decision by Carrier, the big air-conditioner company, to move over 2,000 of them from Indiana to Mexico was a tailor-made talking point for…
[Reuters| November 28, 2016 |The New York Times] The World Trade Organization ruled on Monday that a tax break from Washington State to help Boeing develop its new 777X jetliner was a prohibited subsidy. The ruling was a setback for the aerospace giant as it seeks victory in a parallel case against its European rival, Airbus. The trade organization said the…
[Daily News| November 22, 2016 |Inside US Trade] Industry and labor sources from the domestic steel and aluminum industries are urging President-elect Trump to take steps to speed up the process for moving cases — primarily against China — through the U.S. International Trade Commission and Department of Commerce, perhaps through the appointment of a…
[Kyle Pomerleau| November 23, 2016 |The Tax Foundation] The House GOP blueprint will likely be the starting point for the tax reform debate in 2017. As with most tax reform plans, it proposes to reform the current system of taxing U.S. multinationals’ foreign profits. Under current law, U.S. multinationals are taxed on their worldwide income…
[Bob Davis| November 22, 2016 |The Wall Street Journal] Give China big credit for Donald Trump’s electoral victory, say prominent economists who study the impact of China on the U.S. economy. Rising imports from the Asian powerhouse made parts of the Midwest and Southeast more receptive to Mr. Trump’s anti-China, anti-free trade message, they found. A…
[Richard Rubin| November 24, 2016 |Wall Street Journal] WASHINGTON—Fault lines inside the corporate world are emerging over a proposed rewrite of the U.S. tax code, pitting importers against exporters. At the heart of the fight is a Republican plan in Congress that would impose corporate taxes on imports while eliminating them from exports, a move that would upend decades of tax…
[Max Ehrenfreund| November 23, 2016 |Washington Post] White Americans without a college degree are becoming more likely to die in middle age, reversing decades of progress toward better health. Researchers first noticed this worrisome trend last year. They pointed to increases in opioid abuse, obesity and suicide among the causes of death, but what caused these increases…