The House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee had a hearing on September 10, 2020 to discuss U.S. trade preference programs, including the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act, which expires at the end of the month. My testimony focused on ways to reform these preference programs so that they more directly address the goal of promoting…

In Globalists, Quinn Slobodian examines the relationship between the Austrian School of economics, influential in the first half of the 20th century, and the rules for the global economy. Members of the School opposed the Havana Charter. The Austrian School was not monolithic. Its members variously supported pure laissez-faire, government intervention in the marketplace, and support…

As the Beltway sorts out the implications of Joe Biden’s VP pick, the trade world enjoys the benefit of having Kamala Harris’ views on the new NAFTA. While traditional critics of trade deals such as Senators Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, and Elizabeth Warren voted for the agreement on the strength of its new labor provisions,…

We think of Adam Smith as the father of free trade. Having coined the phrase “Invisible Hand,” he’s portrayed as something of a libertarian icon. But that’s a caricature of a man who had much more profound, and nuanced, views of political economy – and of the welfare of the working class.

Mr. Lewis was a civil rights icon. But he was also a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, and he had strong views on trade. Indeed, it is because of his views on civil rights that he had such strong views on trade. As he said in 2015: In a very few weeks,…

As the Trump Administration has recognized, trade involves a larger question consuming most countries: what kind of policy can make “it possible for most citizens, including those without college educations, to access the middle class through stable, well-paying jobs”? Trickle-Down Trade The Administration, however, can’t achieve this goal, because its trade policy is but an…

On June 30, 2020, the Senate Finance Trade Subcommittee held a hearing on Censorship as a Non-Tariff Barrier. It was a pleasure to testify. The hearing can be seen here, and my written testimony can be found here. My opening statement: My name is Beth Baltzan, and I am a fellow at the Open Markets…

At this point we’re all more aware of shortages relating to COVID-19 than we’d like to be. But still another shortage looms: food. Yet even as the specter of starvation emerges, farmers in the United States are plowing under their crops and dairy farmers are dumping their milk.  We are seeing deep failures in the ability of the…

Vice President Biden announced his intention to be one of the most progressive Presidents since FDR. What was FDR’s approach in the aftermath of the Depression? As the eponymous Roosevelt Institute has explained, “to restore the nation’s economic health FDR understood that he must do two things. First, re-establish the bond between the American people…

COVID-19 is exposing what many of us have known for a long time: our fealty to efficiency has left us dependent on a hostile authoritarian power for the supply of essentials, like medicines and medical equipment. TPP has been marketed for years as the antidote to the Chinese Communist Party’s mercantilist view of the world…

The trade establishment is looking for comfort as supply chain shocks upend confidence in the rules of the global trading system. They’re turning to the same playbook they used in the 1990s, arguing that tariffs, regulations, and export bans are the problem.   The supply chain shocks aren’t due to tariffs or regulations or export…

The question seems almost facile in a day and age when so many countries have so many trade agreements. But COVID-19 is leading to us to focus on aspects of globalization that have long been ignored. So let’s reevaluate the basics – like the purpose of these agreements. The Foreign Policy View The foreign policy…

We remember the Tariff Act of 1930 because it included the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs. But we should remember it for something much more important: it prohibited imports made with forced labor.  Back in the day, slave labor was seen principally as unfair competition, rather than as a matter of human rights. So the law included a “consumptive…

Trade agreements are supposed to be permanent because certainty promotes stability. Or so the thinking has been for the past few decades. The reaction when a sunset clause was included in the new NAFTA was almost uniformly one of horror: the instability of such a thing! The effects on investment! Trade flows! Peace! Prosperity! It’s…

COVID-19 has revealed something many of us already knew: our supply chains reflect a precarious dependence on the People’s Republic of China.  We don’t have enough testing kits; we don’t have enough masks; we don’t have enough ventilators. And as Congress is well aware, we are dependent on the PRC for all sorts of essential…

On December 12, the United States Trade Representative announced plans to hike the tariffs on imports of certain European products as a result of the seemingly endless Boeing/Airbus dispute. Capitol Hill was immediately inundated with the usual panoply of hyperbolic claims that tariffs spell doom for {fill in the blank} industry on the target list.…

The House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing last Tuesday with two trade topics: the WTO Appellate Body and NAFTA 2.0.  The first half of the hearing was devoted to the Appellate Body, including both support for the U.S. government’s longstanding concerns over the flaws with the dispute settlement system, as well as a…

As of today, the WTO Appellate Body will be, at least temporarily, no more. The Trump Administration has strangled it by refusing to agree to appoint new members. This can be seen as an extension, albeit an extreme one, of positions taken in prior Administrations, including the Obama Administration.  This blog explains various ways the…

The World Trade Organization’s dispute system was once lauded as an important advancement in trade law enforcement. Now it appears that the system’s legal backbone has been broken. If the dispute system cannot be salvaged from the current crisis, it’s worth asking: what do we lose? Answering that question means putting politics aside an taking…

If you are struggling to understand the rise of economic populism in the United States, and the resulting chasm between populists and elites, then Matt Stoller’s new book Goliath will enlighten you. Goliath is focused on antitrust, but it tells a much broader story of the way the intelligentsia has been led, through a combination…