Free Republic

The Trump Administration has announced its formal inquisition into America’s trade deficit, with a particularly loaded day of testimony scheduled for May 18, in which the administration hopes to learn the various causes for America’s huge import volume. The administration conjures up an image of evil old foreign prime ministers and their assistants – grasping witches with candy-covered cottages in the forest, looking for sweet little American manufacturers – Hansel Inc. and Gretel LLC – tempting them with tasty morsels and sweet confections, luring them off the American path, moving them permanently into their distant foreign domains. While the single-minded...

The European Commission has imposed anti-dumping duties on steel products from China to stop them flooding Europe’s struggling steel market. […] The Chinese exports will now be taxed with duties ranging from 18.1 percent to 35.9 percent. …

It’s well-known among people who bother to learn the facts that U.S. manufacturing output continues to rise despite the reality that the number of Americans employed in jobs classified as being in the manufacturing sector peaked in June 1977 and has fallen, with very few interruptions, ever since.Nevertheless, some people – for example, the Economic Policy Institute’s Robert Scott – continue to insist that the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. is largely due to increased American trade with non-Americans. Other studies find empirical evidence that labor-saving innovation rather than trade is overwhelmingly responsible for the loss of manufacturing...

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) convened a needed Task Force on Reducing Regulatory Burdens as part of his legislative agenda, "A Better Way." The Speaker and his colleagues who worked on the task force have rightly identified the massive regulatory burden imposed by federal bureaucrats as an obstacle to economic growth and a distortion of our constitutional form of government. That is why it is baffling that Ryan has failed to bring regulatory reform legislation that recently passed the Senate to the floor of the House for a vote. The tale is one of catfish and courage. The catfish you...

The FedEx founder and CEO reflects on how deregulation and opening markets have wrought astonishing changes and prosperity over 50 years. During our years at Yale, the world was a different place. Foreign travel was exotic, expensive and rare among the population as a whole. While some young Americans had been abroad, by far most Americans had not—and those who did go abroad most likely traveled by sea rather than air. In the early 1960s, flying over the oceans was mainly for the affluent. Long-distance telephone calls were expensive, international calls prohibitively so. From furniture to TVs and appliances, and...

Protectionism: Officially, the Republican Party is pro-free trade. But it has done a remarkably bad job of explaining the benefits of trade to its rank and file, as exit polls of primary voters depressingly show.

Levin: Populism is Progressivism, Which is Statism (audio: 12:41)

George Washington's clone would have hard time in today's political climate, especially if he wanted to be president. The globalist controlled world would try to crush the father of our country in ways King George III could never have dreamed of.The man who warned of foreign entanglements would find a country enmeshed in foreign trade, wars and politics the likes of which would make old Georges wooden teeth fly out of his mouth. What happened to protectionism? Why is industry shutting down in the USA and off shored for labor arbitrage under the guise of government regulatory burdens? Regulations are...

It was the Detroit News headline "Trump goes after Ford Motor Co." not how long Hillary went overtime in the restroom that got our attention. Donald Trump made a whistle stop outside Grand Rapids, Michigan to take aim at Ford’s plans to expand production in Mexico. Trump promised if elected he would threaten manufacturers with big tariffs on imports to discourage building manufacturing plants south of the border. Trump to Ford, "If you build that plant in Mexico, I’m going to charge you 35 percent on every car, truck part that you send into our country," he said. "Every single...

You may not know this, but Brazilian sugar is a threat to U.S. national security. At least, that is the view of Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.). Asked this month about his support for sugar subsidies, Rubio said he would eliminate them if “the countries that export sugar into the U.S. get rid of theirs as well, and here’s why: Otherwise, Brazil will wipe out our agriculture and it’s not just sugar.” If we eliminate our sugar subsidies first, Rubio warned, “other countries will capture the market share, our agricultural capacity will be developed into real estate, you know, housing...

Here’s a historical fact that Donald Trump, and many voters attracted to him, may not know: The last American president who was a trade protectionist was Republican Herbert Hoover. Obviously, Hoover’s economic strategy didn’t turn out so well — either for the nation or for the GOP. Does Trump aspire to be a 21st-century Hoover, with a modernized platform of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff, which collapsed the banking system and helped send the U.S. and the world economy into a decade-long depression? We can’t help wondering whether the recent panic in world financial markets is in part a result of...

Via email, Michael Pettis at China Financial Markets shared his outlook for China, Europe, and the world. The overall outlook is not pretty, and includes a breakup of the Eurozone, a major slowdown for China, and a smack-down of the much beloved BRICs. Pettis Writes ... August is supposed to be a slow month, but of course this August has been hectic, and a lot crueler than April ever was. The US downgrade set off a storm of market volatility, along with bizarre concern in the US about whether or not China will stop buying US debt and the economic...

Donald Trump’s candidacy raises more urgent issues than the Donald’s sometimes poor choice of words: Trump has sparked a less-noticed but far more important debate about the future of our nation’s economy, the sustainability of American life, jobs, and a decent salary for Americans. This ultimately fuels the economic strength of the United States that makes it possible to defend our nation and its people. It’s about Smoot-Hawley. I am talking about the myth, the ghost, the coat hanging on the back of the door that looks like a monster in the dark, the nightmare that makes uninformed and gutless...

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), sometimes called ISIS or IS, is a Sunni extremist group that follows al-Qaida’s anti-West ideology and sees a holy war against the West as a religious duty. With regard to nonbelievers, the Quran commands, “And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out.” The Quran contains many other verses that call for Muslim violence against nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule.Contrast the words of the Quran with the statements of limp-wristed Western leaders such as this by President Barack Obama: “We...

Rise of protectionism in China a threat to commodities imports By Fayen Wong SHANGHAI Fri Nov 14, 2014 1:12pm EST (Reuters) - As China lobbies world leaders to back its free trade plan at an Asia-Pacific summit this week, businesses are complaining about Beijing's use of non-tariff barriers from customs clearance to quality restrictions to curb raw material imports. Amid a slowdown in economic growth, the world's top commodities buyer is facing a supply glut that has sent local prices tumbling and miners deep into the red. Inventories of iron ore, coal and cotton are bulging at ports across the...

Richard Griffin, the new general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, wants to give unions a veto over a unionized employer's decision to relocate. If Griffin has his way, and he most assuredly will, some unionized businesses will be pinned in place at the discretion of their unions. The change Griffin is contemplating is unnecessary and inconsistent with both the law and the dynamics of our free-enterprise system. It will upset the balance mandated by the Supreme Court and should send a chill up the spine of unionized companies contemplating relocating an operation. Griffin's intent was disclosed in a...

The World Trade Organization reports that the growth rate of global trade fell sharply from over 5% in 2011 to around 2% in 2012. [snip]...the U.S.’ “Buy American” initiative on government procurement (folded into the Obama stimulus package in 2009) probably restrained trade flows in a near-negligible way. No doubt that’s true, since it’s confined to certain categories of construction procurement and has more than a few loopholes. But does this mean that Buy American, or Buy French, or Buy Japanese, or Buy Madagascar stipulations on procurement are harmless after all?[snip]... the Dean Baker analysis reduces “Buy American” to the...

"This is called slave labor," said Pope Francis. The Holy Father was referring to the $40 a month paid to apparel workers at that eight-story garment factory in Bangladesh that collapsed on top of them, killing more than 400. "Not paying a just wage ... focusing exclusively on the balance books, on financial statements, only looking at personal profit. That goes against God!" The pope is describing the dark side of globalism Why is Bangladesh, after China, the second-largest producer of apparel in the world? Why are there 4,000 garment factories in that impoverished country which, a few decades ago,...

For anybody disheartened about years of disappointing economic news, Japan's recent announcement that it intends to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) offers a real reason to celebrate.Free trade agreements (FTAs) historically are some of the most surefire ways to open up new markets to U.S. exporters while enhancing American interests abroad. They create economic growth by fostering innovation and efficiency and, as a bonus, they generally produce invaluable political benefits.As FTAs go, Japan's participation in TPP makes this trade pact the Super Bowl and the World Cup of trade agreements wrapped into one. It's a game changer.It will give American...

Genetically modified crops are not just those that have been selectively bred, but they have had their DNA modified in some way as to make them more pest resistant and produce better yields. In many cases genes from other plants or even bacteria have been added to the DNA of a specific plant.This process has caused great concern among some that question whether the plants with modified genes are safe for human consumption or if there may be any long-term effects from the continual eating of these plants. There have been numerous challenges to the use of genetically modified crops...