“Estimates are that the TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership] could provide $77 billion a year in real income and support 650,000 new jobs in the U.S. alone.” –Secretary of State John F. Kerry, in an opinion article titled “Alliances for Peace,” Jan. 14, 2015 “Completing the Trans-Pacific Partnership provides the opportunity to open up markets, lower tariffs…
President Barack Obama is finishing 6 years of negotiations on a broad economic agreement with 11 other nations on the Pacific Rim. Enacting this pact — The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) — is the president’s top legislative priority in these last two years of his presidency. [Reposted from the Huffington Post | Pat Choate | …
Here’s something that many Americans — including some of the smartest and most educated among us — don’t know: The official unemployment rate, as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, is extremely misleading. [Reposted from Gallup | Jim Clifton | February 3, 2015] Right now, we’re hearing much celebrating from the media, the White…
Sometimes it seems we have to play “Whack-a-mole” against well-meaning legislation that would have harmful, unintended consequences. Last year, the Innovation Act, H.R. 3309 passed the House of Representatives by a 325 – 91 vote on December 5, 2013. It seemed like a comparable bill would easily pass the Senate until a concerted effort to…
Smithfield Foods, producer of the iconic holiday ham, was one of America’s flagship food companies, steeped in centuries of U.S. tradition. [Reposted from Reveal | Nathan Halverson | January 24, 2015] The Virginia-based pork company derived its ham from a curing process Native Americans taught settlers five centuries ago. It owned part of Main Street…
TOKYO — Buoyed by a growing American car market and the most favorable exchange rates in decades, Toyota Motor is closing in on its most profitable year ever, the automaker’s latest earnings report suggested on Wednesday. [Reposted from The New York Times | Jonathan Soble | February 4, 2015] The Japanese company, which is the…
Brian O’Shaughnessy, CPA’s Co Chair for Manufacturing on the CPA Board and Chair of Revere Copper Products, will be appearing on America’s Work Force Radio this Wednesday, February 4th, at 7a. Brian will be talking about Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority, pending trade agreements, and how a progressive consumption tax could really help jobs in…
As discussions surrounding the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) heat up, there has been a new push to include provisions within the agreement to keep countries from managing the value of their currency for competitive gain vis-à-vis their trading partners. This push got an unexpected (by me, anyhow) boost recently when former U.S. Treasury Secretary and former…
Better late than never, I guess. Larry Summers wrote a recent policy recommendation report, in collaboration with the Center for American Progress, which said (see page numbered 123 at this link): The World Trade Organization, or WTO, rules pertaining to exchange rates are inadequate to address the challenge of unfair advantage from skewed exchange…
Last November, Republicans grew their strength in Congress to levels unseen since 1946. What united the party and rallied the nation was the GOP’s declared resolve to stand up to an imperious president. [Reposted from the blog of Pat Buchanan | Pat Buchanan | January 30, 2015] Give us powerful new majorities, said John Boehner…
