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International Trade and Finance Policy Studies

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• Trade Agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea: What Are We Waiting For?

  By Rafael Gomes, National Center for Policy Analysis
  
  Brief Analysis, 09/02/2010
  

  American businesses pay billions of dollars in tariffs each year on exports to countries that are willing to eliminate those tariffs. Why? Because Congress has failed to ratify three key trade agreements already negotiated and signed by the United States.

  
  
  

• Prevention through Global Surveillance: A Task beyond the IMF

  By Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar, Cato Institute
  
  Cato Journal, 09/01/2010
  

  The proposed new role of the IMF, for global surveillance and crisis prevention, looks perilous and possibly doomed from the start. It may appear to work for some time but will almost certainly fail when the next major crisis arrives. The IMF’s shareholders are governments, and the IMF is often obliged to pull its punches with major shareholders. Governments struggling with problems keep assuring their public that all is well, and will wish to discourage IMF warnings that might cause panic. Large creditor countries ignore IMF lectures: only borrowers listen, out of compulsion. The United States has formally accepted the need for peer review of its policies, but no one in Congress is really going to change his views—or congressional actions—because of peer review by China or Brazil on U.S. follies. This adds to the earlier problem—that prediction is anyway very difficult, and the IMF’s forecasting record leaves much to be desired. In coming years, the IMF will no doubt provide the G20 with voluminous surveillance reports and sundry warnings on risks. But the hope that this will prevent future crises looks like one more example of what Kahneman calls “delusional optimism.”

  
  
  

• Role of the IMF in the Global Financial Crisis

  By Miranda Xafa, Cato Institute
  
  Cato Journal, 09/01/2010
  

  The key role of the International Monetary Fund is to identify contingent risks that threaten global economic and financial stability and to develop policy responses. With its global membership and its mandate to promote economic and financial stability, the Fund is uniquely placed to provide a forum for discussion of international economic issues and to help reach consensus on policy responses. Through its governing bodies the Fund facilitates international dialogue and helps forge a consensus that is reflected in the documents that are discussed by the Executive Board and released to the public. Its members’ obligation to engage in bilateral and multilateral surveillance provides the means to integrate macro analysis with financial sector issues at the country, regional, and global levels.

  
  
  

• The “Beijing Consensus” in Energy and the Environment

  By Derek Scissors, The Heritage Foundation
  
  WebMemo, 07/26/2010
  

  It is plain that a “Beijing Consensus” in energy and environmental issues would be disastrous. The world is struggling to accommodate one country following the PRC’s energy and environmental priorities—more would be that much worse. This potential calamity has particular implications for American policy. Chinese state intervention and, now, tens of billions of dollars in annual spending are consistent with an energy and environmental performance that is vastly inferior to that of the United States. Federal government tax and spending actions can certainly boost individual wind and solar companies but may harm the economy, make the U.S. less energy efficient than it otherwise would be, and do little for the environment. Rather than trying to match the various kinds of Chinese subsidies, as some green energy advocates suggest, the U.S. should start near the opposite pole of the Chinese model.

  
  
  

• Europe: What Future?

  By Robin Harris, The Heritage Foundation
  
  Special Report, 07/16/2010
  

  The pretense that the European Union is successful and stable—and that the euro is a successful and stable currency—has been exploded by events surrounding the financial bailout of Greece. No one knows where the contagion will spread or how it may end. The world’s financial markets have occasionally teetered on the edge of panic. But the full implications of what has gone wrong still need to be grasped by euro-zone countries, European countries outside the zone, and the United States. The global lessons to be learned are both political and economic; they relate especially to the danger of allowing politics to prevail over economics, as has happened repeatedly in Europe. The crisis in the euro zone goes to the heart of the European project itself. That project needs to be rethought, and European institutions and arrangements need to be remodeled. America, which for decades urged European countries (including Britain) to create a Union that has turned out to be the opposite of what was hoped, has an interest in this. Today, America has only limited power to help put the difficulties right, but it can and should offer advice before events once again spiral out of control. It should also watch where it is going.

  
  
  

• “Rebalancing” Chinese Investment in the U.S.

  By Derek Scissors, The Heritage Foundation
  
  WebMemo, 07/14/2010
  

  China’s investment in the U.S. is skewed toward the government in part because political opposition has blocked spending outside bonds—investment protectionism. There is certainly a very narrow range of sectors directly important to national security that should be off-limits. Yet most of the political opposition goes well beyond that. Such opposition is not well-considered; the U.S. should accept more non-bond investment.

  
  
  

• Tracking Chinese Investment: Western Hemisphere Now Top Target

  By Derek Scissors, The Heritage Foundation
  
  WebMemo, 07/08/2010
  

  The expansion of Chinese activity in the Western Hemisphere, especially, will provoke much gnashing of teeth. There is an obvious means to counter this challenge: strengthen the American economic and political presence by ratifying the Colombia and Panama free trade agreements and seek other partners. When China is involved, it is well recognized that better economic relations bring the possibility of greater political influence. When it is time for the U.S. to act, the same fact tends to be forgotten. Concerns about American influence lost to increased Chinese investment and business activity should be addressed by encouraging the expansion of American economic activity, from investment in Ivory Coast to trade with Taiwan.

  
  
  

• Trade, Taxes, and Terroir

  By Noel D. Johnson, John Nye, Raphaël Franck, Mercatus Center
  
  Working Paper Series, 07/06/2010
  

  There is an extensive literature on the protectionist effects of border tariffs. In this paper we use data on the wine market in France at the turn of the twentieth century to argue that excise taxes collected on quantity can also be protectionist.

  
  
  

• Time to Build a Clean Energy Future through the KORUS FTA

  By Anthony Kim, The Heritage Foundation
  
  WebMemo, 06/28/2010
  

  The pending Korea–U.S. Free Trade Agreement, known as the KORUS FTA, is a ready-made vehicle for pioneering a clean energy future and ensuring greater prosperity in the two nations. Accelerating U.S. clean energy innovation and production has become an economic necessity for America’s future. Liberalizing trade should be a fundamental part of any U.S. strategy to promote clean energy technology. The KORUS FTA poses a practical policy choice to achieve that goal. Now is the time for President Obama to act.

  
  
  

• European Aircraft Subsidies: A Study of Unfair Trade Practices

  By Loren Thompson, Lexington Institute
  
  Studies, 06/22/2010
  

  If the United States fails to put an end to the European practice of subsidizing Airbus planes, it will continue to lose market share in the commercial transport business, just as it has in steel, electronics and other sectors where it was once a dominant global player. With the United States currently running a trade deficit of over a billion dollars per day in manufactured goods, European aircraft subsidies have become a test case for the future of free trade and America’s global competitiveness. The issue is likely to influence how the U.S. military goes about buying a future aerial refueling tanker, since one of the planes that has been offered is based upon the heavily subsidized Airbus A330.

  
  
  
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