“International trade” on The Daily Caller

We skeptics of free trade are used to being told, “You don’t understand economics.”  In fact, one major reason I wrote the book Free Trade Doesn’t Work was simply to expose, once and for all, that there do exist extremely serious and intellectually reputable arguments, within the confines of accepted mainstream economics, which question free trade.  And indeed they exist. (more)

Business headlines may soon be making yet another comparison between current economic circumstances and the Great Depression if international events trigger the return of a hallmark of the 1930′s — the trade war. (more)

MEXICO CITY — The movie that Mexican director Luis Estrada is putting out for his country’s bicentennial is bluntly named “Hell.” (more)

Those glum faces you’ve been seeing at the start of this school year?  It’s not the disappointment of kids seeing their summer vacations coming to an end.  It’s the resignation you see when working parents realize the ever-increasing price tag for getting their kids back to school.  That resignation has grown more palpable this year.  With more and more school systems finding themselves in tough financial times due to the economic downturn, parents are finding themselves having to pay directly for materials traditionally provided by schools — materials whose costs continue to skyrocket. (more)

WASHINGTON — The economy turns out to be weaker than we thought, and the outlook for the rest of the year is now looking dimmer. (more)

The trade deficit peaked at 6% of gross domestic product in 2006. It fell during the recent recession to about 3% of GDP. While this decline has quieted those who support protectionism, and allowed the Obama administration to declare that there are no countries manipulating currency values, protectionism is never far from the political front burner. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. posted solid gains in exports in May, a positive sign for the economy. And while imports grew even faster, some economists saw that as a hopeful sign because it suggests companies are betting that consumers will spend more in coming months. (more)

If there’s one thing everyone knows these days, whether they’re happy about it or not, it’s that we live in a “global” economy.  This fact is taken as so obvious that anyone who disputes it is regarded as not so much wrong, but as simply ignorant—not even worth arguing with.  So it may come as a shock to many that, in reality, the cliché that we live in a borderless global economy does not survive serious examination.  The key is to ignore the Thomas Friedmanesque rhetoric flooding the media and get down to some hard numbers. (more)

China and Taiwan have signed a historic trade pact, seen as the most significant agreement since civil war split the two governments 60 years ago. (more)

As America continues to contemplate its trade mess, the question naturally arises how other developed nations manage to trade with the world without deficits and without turning high-wage industries into low-wage industries to compete. Although some other developed nations, like Britain and Spain, have trade situations almost as bad as ours in recent years, some have been quite the opposite. (more)

Most Americans accept, grudgingly, their government’s heavy subsidy of American farmers. But few know that the U.S. government may soon subsidize Brazilian farmers as well. On June 17, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office formally agreed to pay Brazil almost $150 million a year in “technical assistance” to compensate for the damage our cotton subsidy program has done to Brazilian agriculture. (more)

TORONTO (AP) — President Barack Obama said Saturday his administration will launch talks with South Korea aimed at resolving remaining issues blocking the completion of a South Korea free trade agreement. (more)

SHANGHAI—The yuan rose Monday to its strongest level against the dollar in the currency’s modern era as traders bet on the likelihood of long-term appreciation despite the Chinese central bank’s surprise move to keep the exchange rate flat ahead of trading. (more)

China said it will allow a more flexible yuan, signaling an end to the currency’s two-year-old peg to the dollar a week before a Group of 20 summit. (more)

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — In a series that has felt like a swap meet with the way the Flyers and Blackhawks have traded goals, Philadelphia found itself with some extra room to work with in the third period of Game 4. (more)

Washington, D.C.—Last week negotiators held the eighth round of negotiations of the hotly contested Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in New Zealand. As a result of these negotiations, negotiators publicly released the previously confidential negotiating text for the first time. The negotiations have been plagued with leaks over the past several years, and non-governmental organizations have criticized both the Bush and Obama administrations for their failure to release the confidential text before now. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) released the 39-page ACTA text this week, which includes numerous brackets around provisions that remain under negotiation between the parties. (more)

There is a myth in wide circulation that the superiority of free trade is simply a settled question on which all serious economists agree. The flip side of this myth, of course, is that anyone who criticizes free trade must either be ignorant of economics, or the spokesman of some special interest that hopes to benefit from trade restrictions. Such critics are not only wrong, the story continues with admittedly impeccable logic, but also profoundly worthy of public contempt, as they are necessarily either dumb or corrupt. (more)

The debate over free trade is riddled with myth after myth. One that keeps resurfacing again and again, no matter how many times it is discredited, is the idea that protectionism caused the Great Depression. One occasionally even hears that the same protectionism—specifically the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930—was responsible in significant part for World War II! This is nonsense dreamed up for propaganda purposes by free traders, and can easily be debunked. (more)

As Americans ponder how to get the U.S. out of its current trade mess, we are constantly warned to do nothing – like impose a tariff to neutralize Chinese currency manipulation – that would trigger a “trade war.”  Supposedly, no matter how bad our problems with our trading partners get, they are less bad than the spiraling catastrophe that would ensue if we walked a single inch away from our current policy of unilateral free trade. (more)

Last week, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) released new information about the high-profile and hotly debated Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The entire text was also leaked last week for the first time by the French digital rights group La Quadrature du Net, despite the official designation of the text as confidential between the ACTA negotiating parties. ACTA is an intellectual-property rights (IPR) agreement aimed at combating counterfeiting and piracy. ACTA negotiators are from Australia, Canada, the EU and its 27 member states, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United States. USTR estimates that these countries make up half of all global trade. Thus, ACTA is a high-stakes agreement that has the potential to have a positive impact on IPR protection and enforcement, opening markets, and promoting global trade for U.S. businesses. The next round of ACTA negotiations will be held in New Zealand starting on April 12, 2010. (more)