rejectfreeadmin The Biden administration’s decision this week to raise import duties on some Canadian lumber has US trade policy back in the headlines. Since taking office President Biden has moved to end a pair of trade spats with the European Union, while simultaneously leaving in place the Trump administration’s tariffs on Chinese exports. Read the article.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that U.S. reliance on foreign supply chains has proved a vulnerability and that the country needs to produce more critical goods domestically in order to protect both its economic and national security. “It’s possible that policies that people will describe as protectionist are going to be necessary in order to … Read More
The U.S. implemented the most measures of any country studied, relying primarily on subsidies. India and South Africa relied more heavily on trade constraints, like tariffs and quantitative restrictions, reflecting their more limited fiscal space. Perhaps a surprising outlier, China implemented the fewest new trade-related policies during the pandemic, which may suggest it had existing … Read More
The Biden administration has since updated this term to “strategic competition,” promising to prioritize the most strategic, or important, areas of competition. But competition is not the best word in either case. Competition implies that participants play, and are bound by, the same, agreed-upon rules. Read the article.
The U.S. says Canadian lumber producers dump their product into the U.S. at a lower price than American lumber companies can because they are subsidized. So the U.S. puts a tariff on all softwood lumber from Canada to raise its price at the retail level, which encourages consumers to buy American wood. Read the article.
The time it takes for goods originating in Shanghai to reach their destinations through the San Pedro Bay ports has more than doubled to 62 days since January 2020, according to freight forwarder Flexport Inc. Meanwhile, it currently costs $10,000 to $15,000 in the spot market to ship each 40-foot container from China to the … Read More
Krugman’s prestige and skill as a polemicist helped persuade elite media outlets, think tanks, government agencies, and business institutions that they could ignore the experts from varied backgrounds who were raising alarms about the consequences that offshoring U.S. manufacturing would have for supply chain fragility, domestic jobs, and U.S. military power. By the time Krugman … Read More
The US held high tariff rates from 1816 until the middle of the 20th century. The US then cut tariffs more than most countries, often unilaterally, without also requiring tariff reductions by others. Today, the US has one of the lowest tariff rates among WTO members, and by far the lowest among large importing countries. … Read More
The United States did not comply with international trade rules when it imposed rates between 30% and 44% on imports of Spanish black olives, the World Trade Organization ruled on Friday. Donald Trump’s administration argued that tariffs should be imposed on Spanish producers, and that the money was transferred directly to companies that exported. Read … Read More
A U.S. trade court has reinstated a tariff exemption on some imported solar panels, a decision that benefits domestic clean-energy developers. As a result of the court’s ruling, all of the companies that paid tariffs under the Trump era proclamation will receive refunds, according to the industry trade group Solar Energy Industries Association. Read the … Read More
