The other day, President Obama spoke to 100 top CEOs from the Business Roundtable. He was asked about two huge new trade deals, favored by global companies, known as TPP and TTIP. The President taunted critics of our failing trade policy, telling them, “Stop fighting the last war.” [by Stan Sorscher | December 26,…

President Obama is preparing a major push on a vast free-trade zone that seeks to enlist Republicans as partners and test his premise that Washington can still find common ground on major initiatives. [Reposted from The Washington Post  |  David Nakamura  |  December 26, 2014] It also will test his willingness to buck his own…

Christmas is a national holiday and has been since 1870.  The holiday has a long history, not uncontroversial in its secular and religious versions.  As Historian David Barton pointed out: “In colonial America, the southern regions that were more directly linked to High-Church traditions (e.g., Anglicans, Catholics, Episcopalians) celebrated Christmas; but the northern regions especially…

As soon as the new Congress is sworn in next year, the fight over Fast Track will begin. Start preparing now. [Reposted from the Campaign for America’s Future blog  |  Dave Johnson  |  December 23, 2014] David Cay Johnston, explains in “Full Speed Ahead On Secretive Trade Deal”: (Note the ‘t’ in his last name.…

It is worth examining how the process was rigged to push that budget deal through Congress over the weekend that contained Citibank-written derivative deregulation and all kinds of other goodies for the rich and powerful. That’s because the “cromnibus” formula will be formalized in the next big deal, in a process called “fast track.” [Reposted…

  Under billions of tons of imports, the American dream is suffocating. The American people have lost faith. They know that bad trade has bled factories, middle class jobs and wage increases from the country. [Reposted from the Campaign for America’s Future blog  |  Leo Gerard  |  December 16, 2014] A report issued last week…

  Inside the ‘Christmas village’ of Yiwu, there’s no snow and no elves, just 600 factories that produce 60% of all the decorations in the world. There’s red on the ceiling and red on the floor, red dripping from the window sills and red globules splattered across the walls. It looks like the artist Anish…

Stanley Black & Decker opened a plant in Charlotte, N.C., a year ago to assemble some power drills and other tools previously made only overseas. But that factory relies on parts and materials bought outside the U.S.  The U.S. has continued to grow more reliant on imports from China and other Asian countries despite a…

  China is aiming to purge most foreign technology from banks, the military, state-owned enterprises and key government agencies by 2020, stepping up efforts to shift to Chinese suppliers, according to people familiar with the effort. [by Bloomberg News | December 18, 2014 | Bloomberg] The push comes after a test of domestic alternatives in…

  The country’s top executives from Wall Street and corporate America are working directly with President Obama and members of his cabinet and appointees on passing a free-trade agenda that is unpopular among the president’s natural constituents of democrats, labor unions, environmental and consumer groups and the American public as a whole. [by Richard McCormack…