If Congress wants to create more jobs this holiday shopping season, it can start by eliminating many Depression-era tariffs on shoes. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 186,110 Americans work for shoe stores, an industry that generates $4.6 billion in annual wages. Many people who work for large department …
Last Thursday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that included language—called the Magnitsky Act—that for the first time punishes Russian officials implicated in serious human rights abuses. The bill was passed by an overwhelming majority—365 to 43—demonstrating strong bipartisan support. The Senate will vote on the Magnitsky Act and …
The recently concluded presidential campaign contained a substantial amount of China-bashing from two candidates fighting over who would be tougher on trade. In reality, getting tough on trade would mean getting tough on poor people and destroying U.S. jobs. A working paper from University of Chicago scholars Christian Broda and …
Last week, India assisted the U.S. in securing dialogue-partner status in the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC), a 20-member grouping of littoral nations of the Indian Ocean. India and the U.S.—as well as other Indo-Pacific nations such as Australia, Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia—share an interest in maintaining …
Who fact-checks the fact checkers? After the debate Monday night, CNN engaged in a fact-checking exercise. Many criticize these exercises for being more slanted and less accurate than what’s being fact-checked in the first place, and sure enough, this is what happened with China trade and jobs. CNN, for example, …
Trade policy with China was again front and center in last night’s presidential debate, with President Obama defending his Administration’s trade policies. In particular, the President highlighted the number of cases his Administration has prosecuted at the World Trade Organization (WTO) as his signature trade achievement: [We] set up a …
Trade and job creation came up in the presidential debate last night. A longstanding argument for blocking trade is that imports hurt jobs. This argument is wrong, and we can prove it. A paper published by The Heritage Foundation documents that the process of importing—offloading from ships and planes, transporting …
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 …
