Jump-Starting Europe
Europeans are scrambling to adjust after the United States by all accounts withdrew the security guarantee it had provided since World War II. Well before then, Europe was already facing headwinds, with slow growth and deindustrialization amidst a lurch to the right. Mario Draghi produced a now-famous report and on February 18, 2025 addressed the European Parliament, insisting that…
The Wisdom of the 1945 State Department: Progressive Trade Policy is Good for American Foreign Policy
For decades now, the conventional wisdom has led us to believe there is a tension between a progressive trade policy – one that focuses on values beyond returns to capital – and American foreign policy. This is a false tension, however. Far from impeding American foreign policy goals, a progressive trade policy advances them. FDR’s…
The Modern Agreement of Amity and Commerce: Toward a New Model for Trade Agreements
The Open Society Foundation has published a white paper on a new model for trade agreements. As OSF explains: Around the world, the process of economic globalization is under fire for serving the needs of corporate elites rather than ordinary citizens. But it is important to recall that trade does not have to aggravate inequality.…
U.S. Trade and Development Policy
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…
Kamala Harris, the Environment, and Trade
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,…
TPP Doesn't Address the China Problem. But With These Four Changes, It Might
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…
Connecting the Dots: The Appellate Body, NAFTA, and Labor
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…
NAFTA 2.0: K Street Claptrap
The conventional wisdom on trade, which typically emanates from K Street, is generally long on being conventional, and short on being wise. Today’s version is the meme that Democratic demands on NAFTA 2.0 are just politickin’ to deny Trump a victory. How about a few facts, and then we can reevaluate that line of thinking.…
Labor and Environment Arbitrage Quiz
Who said the following: many . . . have focused in particular on enforcement of labor and environmental provisions . . . . I am pleased that we obtained strong provisions in those areas, and I agree that they should be fully and effectively enforced so that our companies can compete based on…
NAFTA 2.0: The Environment Chapter
Although the Trump Administration is no friend of environmental groups, the current U.S. Trade Representative has, as we have noted before, enforced environmental provisions under the U.S-Peru trade agreement. In that context, it is not as surprising as it might otherwise be that the NAFTA 2.0 environmental chapter contains new, positive provisions. However, on the whole,…
The Mad Dash to Deem Trade Agreements “Progressive”
2018 seems to be the year of the Progressive trade agreement. The Trans-Pacific Partnership has been renamed the “Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership” (CPTPP). Canada has floated proposals in the NAFTA renegotiation that it has advertised as progressive. Why? Populists in 2016 reminded us that trade agreements are inherently not progressive. Economic theory…
Is the Administration's Ban on Imports of Peruvian Wood a Big Deal? Yes.
On October 19, 2017, USTR announced that imports of Peruvian wood from the exporter Inversiones Oroza would be banned. Notably, the ban isn’t being executed pursuant to environmental laws such as the Lacey Act – it’s being executed pursuant to an annex to the U.S.-Peru Trade Partnership Agreement. That agreement gives the United States the…