The latest outbreak of creeping global protectionism is in Brazil, which announced March 8 that it intends to levy nearly USD$600 million in increased import duties on more than 100 products made in the U.S. in retaliation for the United States’ failure to comply with a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling against its subsidies for cotton producers and exporters. According to “World Trade\INTERACTIVE,” the Brazilian government also plans to impose the first-ever WTO-legal cross-retaliation measures on U.S. intellectual property rights holders that could lead to more than USD$200 million in …
President Obama’s Secretary of Commerce, Gary Locke, rolled out the administration’s new “National Export Initiative (NEI)” today at the National Press Club. The way Secretary Locke described it, the NEI sounds like a great vehicle to create jobs—government jobs. Secretary Locke began by saying that the “NEI represents the first time the United States will have a government-wide export-promotion strategy with focused attention from the president and his Cabinet,” ignoring the prior administration’s success in negotiating free trade agreements with more than a dozen countries between 2001 and 2009. NEI’s …
Participants at a recent conference in Washington blamed Mexico’s failure to achieve above-average economic growth in the past decade on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This criticism is unfair and unwise. The NAFTA agreement is one of the best examples in recent history of a successful, mainstream, and bipartisan project. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in the 15 years since NAFTA came into force annual U.S. trade with Canada and Mexico has tripled to nearly $1 trillion. More than 100,000 small and medium-sized U.S. firms now …
Today, the United States began surveying the damage inflicted by a devastating earthquake in Haiti this week. In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake should address long-held concerns over the fragile political environment that exists in the region. The U.S. government response should be bold and decisive. It must mobilize U.S. civilian and military capabilities for short-term rescue and relief and long-term recovery and reform. President Obama should tap high-level, bipartisan leadership. Clearly former President Clinton, who was already named as the U.N. …
The dramatic surge in support for Germany’s pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), which received “a record 14.6% of the vote” according to the Wall Street Journal in elections on Sunday, September 27, has given Angela Merkel a second term as German Chancellor via the center-right coalition that the FDP will form with Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party and its Bavarian sister party (the CSU). The center-left Social Democrats suffered their worst defeat in 60 years. FDP supporters want to create the lasting prosperity that comes from empowering the individual …
Pittsburgh is famous for its Three Rivers. The city was founded in 1758 at the militarily and commercially strategic point where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers converge to form the might Ohio. It is somewhat ironic, then, that as the G-20 leaders arrive in Pittsburgh this evening for a sumptuous dinner hosted by President and Mrs. Obama amidst exotic flora and fauna at the Victorian-era, glass-walled Phipps Conservatory, they bring with them three major proposals for discussion. President Obama wants to impose upon China (and Americans) his “Framework for Sustainable …
Although the timing of its release may be a coincidence, Pope Benedict XVI’s recently published encyclical, “Caritas in Veritate” (Charity in Truth), sets the stage for his meeting on July 10 with President Obama. As readers around the world continue to reflect on the 30,000-word encyclical, many would like to read in it support for Obama’s all-out push for massive government intervention in the economies of the world’s nations. But the encyclical makes strong endorsements of the market-based economic principles necessary for people everywhere to enjoy economic freedom and growth. …
Tourists might buy souvenirs, but President Obama is seeking “deliverables” he can bring home to convince Americans that the millions of their tax dollars spent to send the huge U.S. delegation to the G-8 Meeting in Italy this week was money well spent. So, he has been leaning on other G-8 leaders to support his plan to provide new development assistance funds for programs in poor countries in Africa and elsewhere to help farmers learn how to grow more food. No doubt the President would also like to travel from …
Move over, Bill Ayers, you’ve got company. The arrest of retired State Department intelligence analyst Walter Kendall Myers has apparently uncovered yet another overweened Social Register Rebel in our midst. Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn, were arrested on June 5 and charged with being espionage agents for Fidel Castro for 30 years. Total damage to U.S. National Security from the disloyal Myers, who passed Top Secret info to the Castros (who, in turn, very likely sold it to other U.S. enemies) and his wife (who was in a position to …
Fears that pro-Teamster protectionists in Congress would seek to kill the U.S. Department of Transportation’s “Cross Border Demonstration Project”, that has allowed a carefully selected group of Mexican trucking operators full access to the U.S. road network have been realized. The Supplemental FY 2009 Omnibus spending bill (aka “Porkulus II”) that is currently being rushed through Congress by the Democrats contains sections (SEC. 135) that impose onerous new safety inspection requirements on the Mexican carriers as well as (Sec. 136) directly barring new funding for the USDOT pilot program. Since it is …
