Assigning Blame for Trade Imbalances
Finance professor Michael Pettis writes often about trade imbalances, and as I've followed what he has to say on this subject over the years, I've tried to figure out where exactly he and I disagree.
Topic
Trade Balance
12 posts
Guest Post: Are President Trump’s New Section 122 Tariffs Legal?
This is a guest post from Bryan Riley and Joe Bishop-Henchman. Bryan is Director of the Free Trade Initiative at the National Taxpayers Union; Joe is Executive Vice President at the National Taxpayers Union Foundation
President Trump has issued new 10% tariffs, shortly after raised to 15%, based on Section
Section 122 as a (Partial) Replacement for the IEEPA Tariffs
Apparently, this is the era of dusting off old international economic policy statutes and figuring out what they mean and how they work. After the Supreme Court's ruling today in Learning Resources, holding that "IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs," we are now
Trade Deficits, Savings/Consumption, Currencies and the Causes of U.S. Budget Deficits
I've seen a number of recent statements by people suggesting that U.S. fiscal deficits are being driven by (1) the dollar as the reserve currency and (2) relatively low foreign consumption/high foreign savings. These factors, it is suggested, lead to lower interest rates for borrowing in
Collective Economic Security
Collective Economic Security
By Mona Paulsen (LSE Law) and Dan Ciuriak (C.D. Howe (Senior Fellow))
With a flurry of pomp and circumstance, the second Trump administration has reset United States trade with its trading partners. Based on U.S. laws that afford wide Executive discretion towards trade actions owing
Lighthizer's Proposal for the Trading System
Former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer had a recent NY Times op-ed in which he argues for some big changes to the trading system. He starts off by complaining about other governments' industrial policies:
What brought down the postwar trading order was the rise in many countries of
Chrystia Freeland on Global Imbalances and Fiscal Deficits
In a recent interview, Chrystia Freeland -- former Canadian trade minister and finance minister, and currently a candidate for leader of the Liberal Party -- made the following argument involving a connection between global macro imbalances and the U.S. fiscal deficit (starts at around 11:20 of the video)
Foreign Savings and U.S. Budget Deficits
In the context of expressing concern with trade imbalances, a recent piece by Michael Pettis and Erica Hogan argues that high foreign savings in some countries (e.g. China and Germany) is linked to the growing U.S. fiscal deficit (among other things):
The global trade system is broken. Current
Trade Balances and Trade Interventions and Trade Protectionism
Last week, finance professor Michael Pettis spoke at an event about a new paper he co-authored. From what I can tell, Pettis has had some influence recently on the U.S. trade policy debate, but I have found his views hard to decipher. He and I have interacted a bit
Ro Khanna Wants To Reconsider WTO Rules Relating To China, Still Worried about Trade Deficit
This is something from a recent speech by Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA):
The US needs to work with our allies to pursue a broad WTO dispute case against the PRC. One hurdle is that the current Dispute Settlement process cannot litigate in key China-related areas that are not adequately covered