While trade is indeed a great and wonderful force for improving the human condition, the fundamental problem with any agreement approaching the scope of the Trans Pacific Partnership is that the complex weave of needs and demands from many nations will invariably cause it to deviate very significantly from David Ricardo’s extremely simple theoretical model…
The Fast Track trade authority package was rejected Friday because two years of effort by a vast corporate coalition, the White House and GOP leaders — and weeks of deals swapped for yes votes — could not assuage a majority in the House of Representatives facing constituents’ concerns that more of the same trade policy…
We won. Yes, there was delay. There was confusion. That is a win for us. Not a final win. But we’ll take it. There may be another vote this week. Because of the confusion, let me explain in some detail. This is not an “action email”, but an explanatory one. I will email you separately…
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Democrats would be more likely to support a controversial trade package that was defeated on Friday if Republicans would support a long-term transportation funding package. [Reposted from The Hill | Keith Laing | June 12, 2015] Pelosi, who helped sink President Obama’s trade package in a Friday vote…
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 12, 2015 Contact: Sara Haimowitz, [email protected] Coalition for a Prosperous America New Release: House Vote Underscores Broad Opposition to Bad Trade Policy WASHINGTON (June 12, 2015) – The following statement was released today by Coalition for a Prosperous America CEO Michael Stumo in response to the announcement that the vote for…
Fast track too much power [Reposted from the CS Gazette | Kady Hommel | June 10, 2015] The Founding Fathers designed our government to ensure that no single branch – the executive, legislative or judicial – had too much power. These checks and balances ensure that no branch becomes so strong it threatens our…
Updated at 10:55 a.m.: President Obama signaled after leaving a meeting with the House Democratic Caucus this morning (June 12) that it is still up in the air whether the House later in the day will pass a bill renewing Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) and Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) that is a major legislative priority…
Congress should not grant President Barack Obama authority to conclude another free-trade agreement in Asia. Such a deal would lower American wages and exacerbate income inequality. [Reposted from the blog of Peter Morici | Peter Morici | June 12, 2015] The Trans-Pacific Partnership would eliminate tariffs and lower other regulatory barriers to trade and investment…
Luis Parada’s office is just four blocks from the White House, in the heart of K Street, Washington’s lobbying row – a stretch of steel and glass buildings once dubbed the “road to riches”, when influence-peddling became an American growth industry. Parada, a soft-spoken 55-year-old from El Salvador, is one of a handful of lawyers in…
There is a myth in circulation that economics has vindicated free trade as the best policy across the board, and that anyone who doesn’t believe this “doesn’t understand economics.” [Reposted from The Hill | Ian Fletcher | June 4, 2015] But America’s free-trade agreements, like the mooted Trans-Pacific Partnership, don’t entail free trade at all.…
