By Daniel Griswold   In the spirit of civility, something lacking in Washington these days, let me start with a compliment for my worthy opponent. Ian Fletcher has resisted the temptation to demagogue trade and jobs. He is right that trade and the trade deficit do not cause a net loss

By Ian Fletcher Dan’s cheery (if somewhat bubble-inflated) statistics on the recent general prosperity of the U.S. are a mere distraction here, as nothing about these figures indicates whether free trade worsened or improved them.  So I will not address them. Some of Dan’s analytically-relevant assertions, however,

In testimony before the the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, at at a hearing on "Global Internet Freedom and the Rule of Law, Part II," Nicole Wong, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Google, provides some suggestions for "how

From Chapter 1 of the Obama Administration's 2010 Trade Policy Agenda: Work to Resolve Outstanding Issues with Pending Free Trade Agreements and Build on Existing Trade and Investment Arrangements ... Substantial investment in foreign markets has become an indispensable foundation for supporting many American exports. Bilateral Investment Treaties are

The European Court of Justice decided an interesting case last week (Case C-386/08, Brita, 25 February 2010). The Hauptzollamt Hamburg-Hafen (the main customs office of the port of Hamburg) had refused to give preferential treatment under the EC-Israel Association Agreement to products manufactured by an Israeli company in the

Free Trade Fails in Both Theory and Practice By Ian Fletcher Free trade is gradually bleeding America’s economy to death, and the much-promoted myth that economics vindicates it does not survive serious scrutiny. To debate this issue without bogging down in semantics, we need to make a few things

Main Street America Benefits from Global Engagement By Daniel Griswold Americans are better off today because of our greater freedom to trade and work with people around the world. Our growing engagement in the world economy has delivered real benefits to Main Street Americans. Competition from trade has blessed American

I'm going to step aside for a couple days (well, unless anything really important happens in the trade world, in which case I'll jump back in) so that we can have a good, old-fashioned free trade versus protectionism debate.  On the free trade side will be

From the minutes (Word doc) of the 5-6 November 2009 TBT Committee meeting, here is the discussion of the U.S. and Canadian tobacco laws that affect clove cigarettes and burley tobacco, respectively (a favorite blog topic of mine): (ii) United States – Ban on Clove Cigarettes (G/TBT/W/323)