The President’s recognition in last night’s Fox News interview that exports play an important role in bolstering U.S. economic performance was welcome, but missed at least half of the trade story. Imports benefit America, too, through lower prices to consumers and manufacturers that raise incomes and boost productivity and competitiveness. The President promised a thorough review America’s trade policy over the first half of 2009 and a new road map for U.S. trade relations this summer – a promise that remains unfulfilled as the year comes to a close. The …
This week’s collapse of the Doha Round of World Trade Organization talks was a historic defeat for free trade and will unfortunately probably have negative effects around the world for years to come. The Wall Street Journal reports today: The failure of the talks isn’t likely to have big effects immediately on the flow of world trade or on economic growth. Outside of agriculture and textiles, trade barriers generally are low globally because of decades of tariff cutting. But the consequences of the failure were still significant because of the …
Fearing that the latest round of World Trade Organization negotiations are on the verge of collapse, the New York Times looks at what failure could mean for the world: Locking in lower farm subsidies would encourage direly needed agricultural investment in Africa and in poor nations that are struggling with soaring food prices. Curbing food export barriers would also push down prices. A breakdown of the Doha talks would also weaken the W.T.O. at a moment when the world needs a credible international body to mediate trade disputes. If the …
Over at Reason Online, Bjorn Lomborg is inviting readers to rank which policy options they believe would people around the world the most. One of the 10 policy areas Lomborg covers is free trade, where one policy option he considers is completion of the Doha Development Round of trade talks: Free trade would lead to an overwhelming boost to welfare everywhere, especially in the developing world. Grasping these benefits is potentially one of this generation’s greatest challenges. The greatest hope is getting the Doha round back on track. If developing …
