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…
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…
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.…
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…
We’ve talked about one loophole in NAFTA called “de minimis.” In addition to rules of origin that already allow a certain amount of content originating from outside the region, the original NAFTA contains a loophole that allows an extra 7% on top of it. The Trump Administration, in a position completely at odds with its China…