Progressives believe that fair trade agreements are possible – but not if the administration follows the old model for negotiations [Reposted from The Guardian  | Raúl M Grijalva and Keith Ellison  |  March 9, 2015] The United States is currently negotiating with eleven other nations to finalize the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – one of the…

The United States had a goods and services trade deficit of approximately $463.5 billion in 2013, which cost millions of U.S. jobs. Contrary to the well agreed-upon fact that trade deficits lead to job loss, the Business Roundtable (BRT) has sponsored a study which claims to show that U.S. goods and services trade (both imports…

A third of the finished steel products bought in the United States so far this year were made overseas, and domestic steelmakers are ailing. [Reposted from NWI.com  |  Joseph S. Pete  |  March 10, 2015] Finished steel imports seized 33 percent of the market share last month, and have captured a full third of the…

(Bill Bullard, CEO of R-CALF USA, sits on the Board of the Coalition for a Prosperous America.) R-CALF USA Helps Promote COOL to White House Domestic Policy Council  Washington, D.C. – In a meeting today with White House Domestic Policy Council staff, R-CALF USA and other farm and consumer groups urged that President Obama direct…

Let’s begin with some basics: Trade deficits must be financed. A country simply cannot have a trade deficit unless private or government investors are willing to finance it. This is not simply an accounting convention – it is real debt. [Reposted from Forbes  |  Mike Collins  |  January  15, 2015] Normally trade deficits are self…

The Department of Labor reported this morning that America’s manufacturing sector added 8,000 jobs in February. [Reposted from the blog of the Alliance for American Manufacturing  |  March 6, 2014] The #AAMeter, which tracks President Obama’s promise to create 1 million new manufacturing jobs in his second term, progressed to +383,000 jobs, after revisions to…

To the Editor: Re “Congress’s Critical Role on Trade” (editorial, March 2): You write, “Congress has a responsibility to give the American negotiators clear instructions on what it would like to see” in a trade agreement. We agree, but in the case of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, those instructions are five years late. [Reposted from the…

Freshmen GOP Reps. Tom Emmer (above) of Minnesota and Mimi Walters of California tried to get all the GOP freshmen to sign a letter supporting an enormous increase in President executive authority through Fast Track. I didn’t really work. Only 26 of the 46 GOP freshmen would sign the letter (see PDF).  Twenty refused to…

Trade is great. We all trade. A lot of us trade labor for money that buys other things. A farmer trades corn for money that buys other things, and so on. No one is “against trade.” [Reposted from the Campaign for America’s Future blog  |  Dave Johnson  |  March 9, 2014] But is anything called…

U.S. Census BureauU.S. Bureau of Economic AnalysisNEWSU.S. Department of Commerce * Washington, DC 20230U.S. INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN GOODS AND SERVICESJanuary 2015 * See below for links to data tables and supplementary materials. The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, through the Department of Commerce, announced today that the goods and services…