In a recent joint letter to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., chairman of the Senate Finance subcommittee on international trade, customs, and global competitiveness, and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, ranking member on the trade subcommittee, made a case for strategic trade reengagement in the Indo-Pacific region. The two senators pointed out, “Our current trade … Continue reading Time to Act on a Trade Deal With Taiwan
Category: Trade
Lumber prices have gone through the roof over the past year—up 370%. The lumber needed to build a new home now costs nearly $36,000 more than just 12 months ago. The reasons include lower production levels at U.S. sawmills when the pandemic was raging, high demand for new homes as millennials enter the peak homebuying age group, and … Continue reading Tariffs on Canadian Softwood Lumber Hitting US Homebuyers Hard
At last week’s climate summit, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai underscored that “trade policy can be a powerful tool to create incentives for positive competition” as countries explored domestic measures for how best to handle environmental challenges. Indeed, advancing free trade is a key policy action for effectively facilitating a healthy environment. The proven, right way to ensure … Continue reading Why Advancing Trade Freedom Is Key to Cleaner Environment
Recently, a few journalists and (unsurprisingly) the U.S. lumber industry have downplayed U.S. "trade remedy" duties' potential contribution to skyrocketing domestic lumber prices, noting that current duty rates stand at "only" 9 percent for most imports from Canada - the largest foreign supplier and longstanding target of U.S. trade restrictions. Surely, many factors (most obviously pandemic-induced shocks … Continue reading U.S. Lumber Duties Are More Than Just a Rate
The Wall Street Journal reports that skyrocketing construction material costs are inflating home prices, pressuring homebuyers and threatening the booming U.S. housing and construction industries: Lumber, one of the biggest costs in home-building after land and labor, has never been more expensive and is more than twice the typical price for this time of year. Crude oil, a … Continue reading How U.S. Trade Policy Helped Construction Materials Costs Go Through the Roof
In an interview with MSNBC last Thursday, new Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo spoke highly of the "national security" tariffs that President Trump placed on steel and aluminum imports in 2018 under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. According to Secretary Raimondo, "[t]he data show that those tariffs have been effective." As my colleague Simon … Continue reading By Supporters’ Own Standards, the Steel Tariffs Haven’t Been “Effective”
My colleague Scott Lincicome wrote about a NY Times piece that discussed “the Biden White House’s plans to ‘transform the economy’ through ‘dramatic interventions to revive U.S. manufacturing’ — heavy on economic nationalism, industrial planning, and manufacturing jobs.” Scott focused on economic nationalism in the auto sector. I’m going to add a point about different kinds of protectionist measures to … Continue reading Tariffs Are Bad, and Clever‐Sounding Substitutes for Tariffs Are Just as Bad
Bloomberg reports that American steelmakers are imperiling President Biden’s goal of boosting the U.S. manufacturing sector and might, in fact, cause more industrial offshoring: Producers that shut furnaces in response to falling demand during the early stages of the coronavirus are still operating plants at well below pre‐pandemic levels, even as recovering economies and tight supplies drive prices higher. … Continue reading Tariffs (That Biden Won’t Remove) Threaten the U.S. Manufacturing Recovery (That Biden Wants)
The global semiconductor shortage roiling the U.S. automotive industry has become the latest pandemic‐induced supply chain disruption embraced by economic nationalists to justify their preferred trade and industrial policies — policies that would renationalize global supply chains and supposedly improve America’s economic “resilience” during future emergencies. President Biden is also reportedly considering an executive action to address … Continue reading The Global Chip Shortage Doesn’t Demand Supply Chain Nationalism
The New York Times [ Feb. 11] provided an in-depth look at the Biden White House's plans to "transform the economy" through "dramatic interventions to revive U.S. manufacturing" - heavy on economic nationalism, industrial planning, and manufacturing jobs. If that approach sounds familiar, it should: it's essentially the same gameplan that Biden's predecessor used, with the only major … Continue reading Will Biden Repeat Trump’s Automotive Mistakes?
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