Free Republic

...when making laws or economic decisions, it is imperative that we examine not only what is seen but also what is unseen. In other words, examine the whole picture... ...A concrete example was the Bush administration’s 8% to 30% tariffs in 2002 on several types of imported steel. They were levied in an effort to protect jobs in the ailing U.S. steel industry. Those tariffs caused the domestic price for some steel products, such as hot-rolled steel, to rise by as much as 40%.... ...there is no such thing as a free lunch... ...steel-users — such as the U.S. auto...

Somebody please tell Donald Trump: A trade deficit isn’t a loss. You could even argue it’s a gain. The Republican presidential frontrunner has been railing against “bad trade deals” since declaring his candidacy last summer. And he’s amplified the criticism, if that’s possible, in recent weeks. “If you look at China, and you look at Japan, and if you look at Mexico … they’re killing us,” he said during the latest Republican debate on Fox News. “With China we’re going to lose $505 billion in terms of trade …. Mexico, $58 billion. Japan, probably about… $109 billion.” Trump is talking...

Donald Trump has pitched himself to voters as a proud protectionist, intent on punishing the Chinese companies that he says are hurting American workers. In his January meeting with the editorial board of the New York Times, he said he would impose a 45 percent tariff on all products imported from China. Luckily, we don’t have to guess how such a tariff would impact the economy, because the Obama administration attempted a version of Trump’s idea seven years ago. It did not go well. “It’s basically a real-world case study on what would happen if we imposed 35 percent tariffs...

The Department of Commerce today announced its affirmative preliminary determinations in the anti-dumping duty investigations of imports of cold-rolled steel flat products from Brazil, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the United Kingdom. In the Brazil investigation, mandatory respondent Companhia Siderurgica Nacional received a calculated preliminary dumping margin of 38.93%. The second mandatory respondent, Usiminas Siderurgicas de Minas Gerais, did not respond to all of Commerce’s requests for information, and therefore received a dumping margin based on adverse facts available. Usiminas and all other producers/exporters in Brazil also received a preliminary dumping margin of 38.93%. China Receives Heavy Duties...

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...

Here’s a story which seemed to get lost in the shuffle this month, what with so many other alerts devouring the news cycle. A memo was sent out from the Obama administration early in January directing a change to how products from Israel are labeled. As Adam Kredo at the Washington Free Beacon explains, this has riled up many folks on both sides of the aisle. A memo issued earlier this month by the Obama administration directs the U.S. "trade community" and government partner agencies to explicitly label Israeli-made goods that have been produced in the West Bank.The Jan. 23...

Donald Trump exemplifies one of the strange and lamentable dynamics in democratic discourse: People tend to have the strongest opinions on those things about which they have the least knowledge. Herr Apfelstrudelfuhrer imagines himself issuing decrees that presidents have no power to issue, and he doesn't seem to understand that illegal immigration -- his headline issue -- isn't in the main driven by people walking across the Mexican border. He doesn't seem to understand how laws are made or how government money is appropriated. He has, to say the least, a lot to learn. Now he wants to launch a...

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...

Free trade is supported by enlightened thinkers and academic economists.  Those who are opposed to free trade are seen as special interests trying to shelter uneconomic industries that can’t stand up to foreign competition.  It is a truism that no trade transactions would take place if they weren’t to the advantage of both parties.  What could possibly be wrong with trade that is advantageous to both parties? If free trade is so wonderful, one has to wonder why many of our trading partners are resistant to it.  Perhaps these countries are just behind the times.  They may not have...

“Claims that trade deals increase exports and create jobs are based on flawed trade models, and on distorted and one-sided interpretations of the findings of those models,” Scott explained. “If you’re president, you’re going to have to live with it,” Pelley said to the billionaire businessman during the interview, referencing NAFTA. Trump fired back: “Excuse me, we will either renegotiate it or we will break it. Because, you know, every agreement has an end.” Pelley said Trump can’t just break the law. “Excuse me, every agreement has an end. Every agreement has to be fair,” Trump reiterated. “Every agreement has...

Donald Trump is firing salvo after salvo tonight on 60 Minutes. He's winning the arguments in a hostile, communist environment. The unhinged far-left interviewer, Scott Pelley, may have been born in Texas but he's not a true Texan because he rejected the Conservative Christian (and Jewish) values of the Lone Star state. Since Pelley (like Dan Rather, Walter KKKronkite and Egbert R. Murrow) is a limp-wristed metrosexual who hates America, it's great to see him getting TRUMPED! Go Trump go! Attack! Attack! Attack!

The powerful Globalist players at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission are certainly watching the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Trump has already made statements about immigration they find troubling. They may or may not be taking Trump’s presidential run seriously. They may or may not view him as an inconsequential blowhard, a shoot-from-the-hip cowboy who forgets today what he said yesterday—but today the New York Times has made reference to Trump in a way that will make these Globalist heavy hitters pause and blink while drinking their morning coffee (Here in “As Stock...

The Republican Party must be tearing its hair out. For years, visitors from the US have extolled the strength of the party’s potential Presidential candidates for 2016. The pack is certainly more impressive than in 2012 and, with the exception of one or two candidates, they are ostensibly advocates of relatively free market policies. In a campaign against an unlikeable Hillary Clinton, many conservatives were quietly confident of victory in 2016. But all these voices are being drowned out by the brash businessman and property magnate Donald Trump. Despite widespread criticism for his remarks about “rapist” illegal Mexican immigrants, Trump...

Opposition to the U.S. Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) is now at the point where the bank’s reauthorization is genuinely in doubt. Spurred by accusations of corporate welfare, crony capitalism and outright corruption, opponents believe the Ex-Im Bank’s palpable violation of free-market principles fully warrants its early demise. The Ex-Im Bank’s critics have their economics entirely correct, but they have their geopolitics wrong. Their solution — simply terminating the bank — is appealing but counterproductive. What America should do, under a president with the wit to do it, is negotiate the global elimination of “export credits” (as these subsidies are generically known)....

The U.S. Department of Transportation says it will soon allow Mexican trucking firms to apply for authorization to make long-haul cross-border runs, potentially ending a longstanding dispute. It says it expects the move to permanently end Mexico’s on-again, off-again retaliatory tariffs on $2 billion in U.S. imports. […] The opening is a long-delayed provision of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement. …

Tuesday marks the anniversary of one of the most destructive pieces of legislation in U.S. history: the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act of 1930, which triggered a disastrous trade war, intensified the Great Depression and helped set the stage for World War II. Unfortunately, as the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act demonstrate, Washington continues its long-held tradition of passing ill-conceived legislation. The Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank, both passed in 2010, clearly have hurt the U.S. economy: increasing business costs, slowing hiring, adding to the uncertainty that investors face. But Hawley-Smoot arguably was worse. The...

When Charles Adams published his book For Good and Evil, a world history of taxation, the most controversial chapter by far was the one on whether or not tariffs caused the American War between the States. That chapter generated so much discussion and debate that Adams's publisher urged him to turn it into an entire book, in the form of When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession. Many of the reviewers of this second book, so confident were they that slavery was the one and only possible reason for both Abraham Lincoln’s election to...

European brewers last week (4 December) urged EU negotiators to put a removal of taxes on European brewers, from which their American competitors are exempt, on the table in the free-trade negotiations with the US. In the EU, small brewers have a reduced excise tax rate. This tax rate also applies to small US brewers importing to the EU, whereas the equivalent small brewer tax relief in the US only applies to domestically-produced beer. This puts EU brewers exporting to the US at an important disadvantage, Brigid Simmonds, chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, said at a...

In the wake of all the misguided pleas for negative interest rates in Europe (hoping to get banks to lend), comes news US banks warn Fed interest cut could force them to charge depositors. Leading US banks have warned that they could start charging companies and consumers for deposits if the US Federal Reserve cuts the interest it pays on bank reserves. Depositors already have to cope with near-zero interest rates, but paying just to leave money in the bank would be highly unusual and unwelcome for companies and households. The warning by bank executives highlights the dangers of one...

America’s long-standing protectionist farm policies protect inefficient domestic sugar beet growers from more efficient foreign competition, which have driven up average wholesale sugar prices in the US to twice the world price: 29 cents per pound on average in the US vs. 14.6 cents in the world market since 1982 (see chart above, data here). And as a result, US manufacturers of products with high sugar content have increasingly moved their production overseas to avoid America’s artificially high sugar prices and take advantage of the lower world price for their main input.Predictably, our protectionist trade and agricultural policies reap generous...