Editors note: no signs yet that China plans to play nice in the future. BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s customs authority has suspended customs clearance procedures for Model 3 cars built by Tesla Inc, the financial publication Caixin reported on Tuesday. [Yilei Sun, David Stanway | March 5, 2019| Reuters] The report said the customs authority…
By Steven Byers, CPA Senior Economist Last summer, Chinese officials began talking about the liberalization of Chinese markets, in response to criticism of the highly nationalist and protectionist Made in China 2025 (MIC2025) strategic plan. That was in response to growing trade tensions with the US, and other foreign governments and businesses. Flying under-the-radar, however, the…
Excerpt: “The corrupt policy that prevents consumers from knowing from which country the beef they purchase for themselves and their families originated is the best policy the old-guard politicians and their multinational corporations can buy.” For decades old-guard politicians and multinational corporations worked together to satisfy their mutual self-interests – more wealth. They did so with little…
Editor’s note: CPA supports strong Buy America rules in government procurement. Our government’s procurement policy falls far short of its potential to encourage and support good jobs in domestic manufacturing. We need to strengthen domestic sourcing requirements for publicly funded programs, including those intended to repair our failing infrastructure…. [Owen E. Herrnstadt | March 4, 2019…
Editors note: Dear Mr. President, we have a paper on that. https://www.prosperousamerica.org/quantifying_economic_growth_job_creation_competitive_dollar President Donald Trump said Saturday that the U.S. dollar is too strong and took a swipe at Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell as someone who “likes raising interest rates.” [Alyza Sebenius | March 2, 2019 | Bloomberg] The dollar was quoted lower against the…
Editor’s note: 1) Will China cut the VAT for imports? 2) CPA’s position is that the US should have a VAT or goods and services tax to counter foreign VATs and to fund the reduction of other domestic taxes and costs. 3) This article also shows that using a VAT can, when needed, provide an…
Excerpt: However, “the United States remains an independent nation, and our trade policy will be made here – not in Geneva. We will not allow the WTO Appellate Body and dispute settlement system to force the United States into a straitjacket of obligations to which we never agreed,” the report said. WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration filed…
Editor’s note: Tariff-armageddon is still not happening. China know that its tariffs were pro-growth for its economy. We are just re-discovering that fact. But we also need to fix the overvalued dollar. Manufacturing employment has risen for 18 straight months, the longest stretch of gains among nonsupervisory roles since the mid-1990s [Chip Cutter | March…
Editor’s note: Excellent article by Bob Kuttner on Lighthizer and laying out a liberal view of economic nationalism. However there is a significant omission that Trump has been consistent on trade deficits for thirty years. Will Robert Lighthizer restrain Donald Trump’s impulse to take a headline-grabbing and self-defeating China deal? [Robert Kuttner | February 28, 2019…
Editors note: Good news. An important expansion of buy America programs. We need to expand it even more this year so US taxpayer money is spent on buying made in USA goods. New recruits at Lackland Air Force Base shuffle into a room stacked high with shoe boxes. They’re in the middle of one of…