WASHINGTON — Lawmakers and presidential candidates are having their say about the 12-nation Pacific Rim trade accord that is President Obama’s top economic priority in his final year in office. But lately the liveliest debate over the deal is among blue-ribbon economists. [Jackie Calmes| February, 1 2016 | The New York Times] On Monday, it…
Factory workers in the old Soviet Union had a cynical joke: “We pretend to work. They [the bosses] pretend to pay us.” Similar logic applies in the world trading system. Washington pretends to write the rules; other nations pretend to obey them. [Eamonn Fingleton| February, 1 2016 | Forbes] For two generations already, increasingly pathetic American trade…
The NYT had an article on different trade models that are being used to predict the impact of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It reported on the projections from a model from the Peterson Institute which shows that the TPP would add 0.036 percentage points to the annual growth rate over the next 14 years. On the other…
President Obama will meet with Republican congressional leaders next Tuesday (Feb. 2) to discuss legislative issues on which they can work together in 2016. [Daily News| January, 29 2016 | Inside US Trade] The meeting comes after administration officials have made clear they want Congress to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as soon as possible…
In an interview from Davos with Bloomberg TV on January 20, Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue, a top lobbyist for the pro-corporate-power Trans-Pacific Partnership [TPP] agreement, assured viewers that if Hillary Clinton wins the Presidential election, Clinton will support the TPP, even though she opposes it now. [Robert Naiman| January, 28 2016 | Huffington Post Politics] Reporting on…
After angering some within the liberal wing of his party, Democratic Rep. Ami Bera came to Sacramento on Sunday to make a personal appeal but still failed to receive enough support from activists to secure the Democratic endorsement for his re-election. [Daily News| January, 31 2016 | The Sacramento Bee] Bera, a perennial target of…
I am president of I Squared R Element, a local manufacturing company that I started in my garage in 1964. It now employs 85 people. I have managed millions of dollars of sales in all the industrialized nations of the world. I have donated over $5 million to the University at Buffalo, my alma mater,…
If you were Donald Trump, you would probably summarize the academic paper’s finding as follows: China is beating us. [Josh Barro| January, 28 2016 | The New York Times] A new working paper from the economists David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson argues that trade with China is having persistent, negative effects on parts of the…
The Obama administration has invited major U.S. companies and business associations to the White House this Friday (Jan. 29) for a meeting on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that informed sources predicted is an effort by the administration to rally support for early congressional passage of the agreement. [Daily News| January, 29 2016 | Inside US…
A PEEK under the hood of three new cars from Volvo, Buick and Cadillac will not reveal a Made in China label. But those cars are breaking new ground in the auto industry, becoming the first to be manufactured in the People’s Republic and exported to the United States. [Lawrence Ulrich| January, 28 2016 | The…
