On February 8, the government will release data for 2012 imports and exports. This annual release often ignites a debate about trade policy. But among economists, there’s not much debate over the benefits of free trade. The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business regularly surveys economic experts. Last year, …
The Obama Administration’s Commerce Department recently took a preliminary position in favor of ending a 16-year-old trade agreement governing tomatoes imported from Mexico. The Florida Tomato Exchange asked the Administration to end the agreement because it doesn’t want to compete with low-priced tomatoes grown in Mexico. This announcement took Mexico …
The G-20 meetings in Mexico over the weekend might actually have accomplished something. Mexico was today invited to join the nine countries, including the U.S., currently negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an investment and trade agreement. If nurtured properly, this development has the potential to improve the global trading system. …
Since 1989, the United States has enacted numerous free trade agreements with countries around the world. These agreements have increased trade, improved international relations, and strengthened the U.S. economy. But don’t let the facts stop a good political fight. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), enacted in 1993, inspires …
The March 3 working meeting between Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon and U.S. President Barack Obama loomed as a showdown over Mexico’s sputtering war against crime and increasingly prickly relations between Mexico and the U.S. The encounter, however, took a sunny turn when the two presidents agreed to focus on trade, …
When the Mexican government imposed punitive tariffs last year on $2.4 billion in American products the average Mexican citizen may not have noticed. But no more. Try finding a U.S.-grown Christmas tree in Mexico City this week. They are scarce since Mexico’s usual suppliers of holiday evergreens, growers in the …
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 …
Today, President Obama is hosting a jobs summit at the White House with union bosses and corporate CEOs to discuss ways to accelerate job creation in the US. Noticeably absent are any representatives from the Chamber of Commerce or the National Federation of Independent Businesses, who represent most of the …
Three years ago the U.S. finished negotiating a free trade agreement (FTA) with Colombia that would have given American businesses reciprocal access to the Colombian market that Colombian companies have been receiving for years. Two years later, in an unprecedented move, Speaker Pelosi denied the FTA an up or down …
If you support free markets, Mary Anastasia O’Grady’s Wall Street Journal op-ed makes for frightening reading: The U.S. hasn’t elected a genuinely protectionist president since Herbert Hoover, and for most of the last 80 years a rough bipartisan consensus has held that free trade is in the American national interest. …
