UNCONSTITUTIONAL

Millions of American factory workers were laid off as a result; still more lost work to intense import competition. They have been rewarded for their loss of reliable middle-class incomes with marginally cheaper prices at big box stores stocked with products that aren’t made here. In 2021, Walmarts and Dollar Generals dot the landscape formerly … Read More

“We predicted then that Chinese accession to the WTO would undermine America’s manufacturing base as transnational corporate and investment elites moved production to China, and history has proved us right. America’s massive trade deficit with China has cost nearly 4 million American jobs. Read the article.

A delegation of Canadian politicians is in Washington this week to fight back against the United States’ doubling of softwood lumber tariffs. “The ongoing softwood lumber dispute continues to threaten our economy in northern Ontario and right across the country. Hundreds of thousands of jobs in Canada rely on this industry, and the government’s approach … Read More

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