Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

The Biden administration said on Wednesday that it would pursue negotiations to strengthen trade and technology ties with Taiwan, a move that is aimed at countering China’s influence in the Asia-Pacific region and one that is likely to rankle Beijing.

The talks with Taiwan will cover many of the same issues as the framework, like digital trade ways to reduce red tape for importers and exporters. U.S. officials said the talks, the first of which will be held in Washington at the end of June, would focus on a variety of issues, including opening up trade in agriculture and aligning technological standards.

Several topics of the discussion are clearly aimed at addressing mutual complaints over Chinese trade practices.

Brexit Puts Britain in Need of Trade Expertise

Now the U.K. faces an unparalleled trade challenge: It must rapidly agree to new trade terms with the bloc and seek new accords with old allies and fast-growing markets. The last time the U.K. formally negotiated a trade agreement was in the early 1970s—meaning that the country has little expertise in navigating the ultracomplex world of modern deals on its own.

Even if a welfare program like the Trade Readjustment Allowance were amped up, it’s not likely that this population would become meek and grateful. They’re aware that the socioeconomic élite—lawyers, financiers, and consultants—profited mightily from the economic changes by which they were dispossessed over the past couple of decades, and I suspect that they don’t want to be the objects of such people’s charity. They want their dignity back. They want to be what they once were: workers, an independent source of economic value, ambivalently regarded by and even somewhat menacing to the upper class. As I wrote on my personal blog in May, they’d rather, if there’s no other choice, be “bad.”

These are the people who have voted into the most powerful office in the world a brittle, vindictive racist with a streak of authoritarianism. It is hard to feel generously toward them at the moment, but they need help as badly as do the people whom they have put in danger.

I suspect that working- and lower-middle-class whites feel abandoned, if not sold out, by the élites.

Donald Trump has begun carrying out his campaign pledges to undo America's trade ties -- starting Monday with executive action to pull the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

"Great thing for the American worker, what we just did," Trump told reporters

Trans-Pacific Partnership -- a 12-nation deal that had been negotiated under former President Barack Obama.

rom the outset, the Volcker Rule was the product of compromise. The Obama administration declined to favor legislation forcing banks to spin off their turbulent Wall Street operations from their deposit-taking businesses. At the same time, it did not want regulated banks, which enjoy deposit insurance and other forms of government support, trading for their own profit. That business, known as proprietary trading, had long been a lucrative, albeit risky, business for Wall Street banks.

Paul A. Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve who served as an adviser to President Obama, urged that Dodd-Frank outlaw proprietary trading. And over the objections of Wall Street, the administration inserted into Dodd-Frank what became known as the Volcker Rule.

The rule, however, does not ban types of trading that are thought to be part of a bank’s basic business. Banks can still buy stocks and bonds for their clients — a practice called market making — and place trades that are meant to hedge their risks.

In audio of a closed-door fundraiser obtained by the Washington Post and NBC News, President Trump boasts to donors that he "had no idea" whether he was correct when he insisted to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the U.S. has a trade deficit with Canada.

As she tried to explain why Trump had been right all along, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders cited trade in goods alone, leaving out trade in services. Services make up a significantly larger share of the US economy than goods production. And it isn't clear from Trump's remarks whether that is really what he was talking about.

This caught-on-tape moment comes less than a week after Trump signed proclamations putting stiff tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Those tariffs won't immediately apply to Canada and Mexico, as those countries are in the midst of renegotiating, along with the U.S., the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Based on other comments, Trump is planning to leverage the threat of tariffs to negotiate better trade terms with U.S. trading partners.

At the start of the 2016 presidential campaign, supporting trade deals was considered a strongly held Republican view. The year before, 49 out of 54 Republican Senators had voted to give President Obama the “fast-track” authority necessary to push the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) through Congress. In 2014, Republicans had told the Pew Research Center that free-trade deals benefited the United States by a margin of 19 points. Trump changed that. By the fall of 2016, by a whopping 44-point margin, Republicans told Pew that trade deals harmed the United States.

if Trump has moved the GOP toward nationalism and nativism, why can’t he—or a future Republican leader—move it back? They could, but it won’t be easy because the Republican coalition has changed.

Between 1992 and 2016, the percentage of whites with college degrees that identified as Republicans dropped five points. Over that same period, the percentage of whites with a high-school degree or less who identified as Republicans rose 18 points.

Trade has become an increasingly important part of China’s overall economy, and it has been a significant tool used for economic modernization.

In 1965 China’s trade with other socialist countries made up only about one-third of the total.

The principal efforts were made in Asia—especially to Indonesia, Burma (Myanmar), Pakistan, and Ceylon (Sri Lanka)—but large loans were also granted in Africa (Ghana, Algeria, Tanzania) and in the Middle East (Egypt).

The era known as the Age of Exploration, sometimes called the Age of Discovery, officially began in the early 15th century and lasted through the 17th century.

The period is characterized as a time when Europeans began exploring the world by sea in search of new trading routes, wealth, and knowledge. The impact of the Age of Exploration would permanently alter the world and transform geography into the

modern science it is today.

In addition to a deadly pandemic and a weakened economy, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. will inherit one more challenge when he takes office in January: a toxic relationship with the world’s second-largest economy.

President Trump has placed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of products from China, imposed sanctions on Chinese companies and restricted Chinese businesses from buying American technology

The hard choices for Mr. Biden will include deciding whether to maintain tariffs on about $360 billion worth of Chinese imports, which have raised costs for American businesses and consumers, or whether to relax those levies in exchange for concessions on economic issues or other fronts, like climate change.

Unlike the Trump tariffs, these controls have a clear goal: to prevent or at least delay Beijing’s attempts to produce advanced semiconductors, which are of crucial military as well as economic importance. If this sounds like a very aggressive move on the part of the United States, that’s because it is.

But it needs to be put in context. Recent events have undermined the sunny view of globalization that long dominated Western policy. It’s now apparent that despite global integration, there are still dangerous bad actors out there — and interdependence sometimes empowers these bad actors. But it also gives good actors ways to limit bad actors’ ability to do harm. And the Biden administration is evidently taking these lessons to heart.

Obviously it didn’t work. Russia is led by a brutal autocrat who invaded Ukraine. China appears to have retrogressed politically, moving back to erratic one-man rule.

Make America Great Again was a brilliant political slogan. Why? Because it could mean different things to different people

For many supporters of Donald Trump, MAGA was basically a promise to return to the good old days of raw racism and sexism. And Trump is delivering on that promise.

But for at least some Trump voters, it was a promise to restore the kind of economy we had 40 or 50 years ago — an economy that still offered lots of manly jobs in manufacturing and mining. Unfortunately for those who trusted Mr. Art of the Deal, Trump never had any idea how to deliver on that promise

President Donald Trump's decision to crack down on Chinese trade practices may seem a world away from the rural roads of Martin County, Minnesota, the self-proclaimed "Bacon Capitol of the USA."

"I think the marketplace is speaking for itself. Hog futures are down. Stock market is down," says David Preisler, the CEO for the Minnesota Pork Board said Wednesday. "There are some pieces in the President's trade policy that we really like, but this is a big piece that we don't."

And tariffs on soybeans, a cash crop for much of the Midwest, could impact key Senate races in North Dakota and Ohio, two states in the top 10 of soybean producing states.

President Trump at the last minute on Monday evening announced he would again postpone imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, Mexico and the European Union, the White House said, pushing off a key economic decision while he tries to prod foreign leaders into making trade-related concessions.

Trump’s strategy with the European Union is more fluid, as he has praised some countries, such as France, but chastised others, such as Germany, which he says needs to allow U.S. companies more access to consumers.

The late announcement — the tariffs would have kicked in at midnight — is the latest unexpected directive in Trump’s four-month effort to upend the United States’ trade relationship with more than a dozen countries. Some countries have received preferential treatment by agreeing to early changes, such as South Korea. Others, such as Japan, have been rebuffed despite repeated overtures from their leaders.

“If the E.U. wants to further increase their already massive tariffs and barriers on U.S. companies doing business there, we will simply apply a Tax on their Cars which freely pour into the U.S.,”

er Mr. Trump said his administration would enact in coming days a law to impose 25% tariffs on imported steel

Some economists are worried tariffs applied unilaterally rather than through the World Trade Organization would generate a series of reprisals that could end in a trade war.

NBC just came out with the story you knew was coming: a detailed accounting of how President Trump launched a trade war Thursday

 Nothing in it is out of character for him, but it does suggest that his tendency to fly off the handle is pretty boundless. It leads to the unmistakable question: If Trump would do this with a trade war, would he also do it with an actual war? That question is not so speculative anymore.

Trump's policy maneuver … was announced without any internal review by government lawyers or his own staff, according to a review of an internal White House document.

s Trump, in Japan, talks tough on the ‘menace’ of North Korea, trade

President Trump continued his tough line on both North Korea and trade Monday, standing alongside Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe and promising to work in solidarity with Japan to confront “the North Korean menace.”

Trump said, “the era of strategic patience is over,” and promised to counter “the dangerous aggressions”

As US Trade Representative-designate, Katherine Tai finds herself in an ironic situation: The most important country she will have to push to open its markets — a core component of USTR's mission — is the United States.

Instead of opening markets, the effect of the trade war has been to restrict market access, reduce economic opportunities and lower living standards

US businesses and consumers have suffered from higher prices and reduced choices for many imported items including solar panels, washing machines, steel, aluminum, olives, whiskey, wine, cheese, yogurt and airplanes, as well as tariffs on hundreds of different products from China.

Evan Osnos explores China’s reluctance to pressure North Korea in a September 2017 New Yorker article.

China’s policy toward its neighbor will critically affect the fate of Asia.

strains in the relationship surfaced when Pyongyang tested a nuclear weapon in October 2006 and Beijing backed UN Security Council Resolution 1718, which imposed sanctions on Pyongyang. With this resolution and subsequent ones, Beijing signaled a shift in tone from diplomatic support to punishment. After North Korea’s missile launch test in November 2017, China called on North Korea to cease actions that increased tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Guild, also spelled gild, an association of craftsmen or merchants formed for mutual aid and protection and for the furtherance of their professional interests.

generally one of two types: merchant guilds or craft guilds. Merchant guilds were associations of all or most of the merchants in a particular town or city; these men might be local or long-distance traders, wholesale or retail sellers, and might deal in various categories of goods. Craft guilds, on the other hand, were occupational associations that usually comprised all the artisans and craftsmen in a particular branch of industry or commerce.

They established a monopoly of trade in their locality or within a particular branch of industry or commerce; they set and maintained standards for the quality of goods and the integrity of trading practices in that industry; they worked to maintain stable prices for their goods and commodities; and they sought to control town or city governments in order to further the interests of the guild members and achieve their economic objectives.