From Rep. Mark Pocan: Welcome to Magic Mondays, a weekly video series where I try to explain the crazy world of Washington and give you an insiders look at our nation’s Capitol using magic. What’s said “inside the beltway” and what happens in the real world are sometimes as different as can be. For this…

“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…

  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…

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…

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…

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…

A secretive group met behind closed doors in New York this week. What they decided may lead to higher drug prices for you and hundreds of millions around the world. [Reposted from The New York Times  |  Joseph E. Stiglitz  |  January 30, 2015] Representatives from the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries…

(Michael Stumo, CEO of CPA, is quoted in the following article) Rep. David Young, an Iowa Republican, was recently at a Des Moines event commemorating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. when he was buttonholed by an activist urging him to vote against giving President Obama trade-promotion authority—aka fast track—to allow him to expedite a…

PHILADELPHIA — As Congress and the White House work on a trade agreement with Pacific countries, a key Democrat in the negotiations is criticizing the Obama administration for a lack of transparency — and more specifically, a lack of access to the actual text. [Reposted from Roll Call  |  Matt Fuller  |  January 29, 2015] Ways and…

WASHINGTON, Jan 30 (Reuters) – The Obama administration must insist that U.S. trading partners pledge not to manipulate currencies when negotiating trade deals, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance said on Friday. [Reposted from Reuters  |  January 30, 2015]   Addressing currency concerns was key to winning lawmakers’ support for a bill to…