Modest progress. The NY Times editorial board generally endorses any “trade agreement” no matter whether they have read the agreement, no matter whether it is finished, no matter about the impacts of the last ones. Now they are lukewarm at best. Currency manipulation is the primary basis for the editorial board’s hesitation this time.  A…

A flood of low-cost imports have been taking business away from U.S. steelmakers and blamed for a slew of mill closings that have included the idling of East Chicago Tin, where nearly 400 people work. Last year, finished imports captured 28 percent of the U.S. market share, surpassing the previous record of 26 percent from…

Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, represents Massachusetts in the Senate. The United States is in the final stages of negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive free-trade agreement with Mexico, Canada, Japan, Singapore and seven other countries. Who will benefit from the TPP? American workers? Consumers? Small businesses? Taxpayers? Or the biggest multinational corporations in the…

The Federal Reserve is a hugely powerful institution whose policies have an enormous effect throughout the economy. For that reason, it is doubtful the United States can achieve shared prosperity without the policy cooperation of the Fed. [Reposted from The Globalist  |  Thomas Palley  |  February 24, 2015] Now, with the economy stronger, there is…

Currency manipulation by Japan—the second largest currency manipulator in the world—is a major driver of the U.S.-Japan trade deficit, which cost nearly 900,000 U.S. jobs in 2013. [Reposted from the Economic Policy Institute blog  |  Robert Scott  |  February 25, 2015] As the map below shows, the U.S. trade deficit with Japan resulted in net…

NAFTA – the North American Free Trade Agreement – was sold with promises of jobs and prosperity on all sides of the border. What really happened was that an increased trade deficit sucked demand and jobs out of the U.S. economy; workers lost bargaining power, resulting in pay and benefit cuts; and income inequality rose…

Ohio’s two senators, Republican Rob Portman and Democrat Sherrod Brown, offer a window into the White House’s coming challenges as it tries to open a path forward on trade. [Reposted from the Wall Street Journal  |  Siobhan Hughes  |  February 22, 2015] Both men have spent roughly two decades in Washington on different sides of…

I read the op-ed “A Trade Opportunity for Obama and the New Congress” by Rep. Charles Boustany and Robert B. Zoellick (Dec. 29) and wondered what economic data they are viewing. [An editorial by Bill Hickey, a CPA Supporter, reposted from the Wall Street Journal  |  January 9, 2015] Recently the Economic Policy Institute published…

WASHINGTON IS short on fresh thinking about almost everything, taxes and tax reform very much included. So it was encouraging to see Maryland’s junior U.S. senator, Benjamin L. Cardin (D), promoting a plan to overhaul the tax code that is nothing if not radical. Though imperfect, and unlikely to pass Congress any time soon, Mr.…

There is ample reason for doubt about the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), although its tenets have not been fully determined. There is more than enough reason to oppose its fast-tracking. [Reposted from the Berkshire Eagle  |  February 17, 2015] Demonstrators in Pittsfield, Springfield and Washington, D.C. will lobby First District Congressman Richard Neal, a Springfield…