The $1 billion Trade Adjustment Assistance program (TAA) will expire at the end of September. The job training program was first adopted in 1962 to help Americans who were losing manufacturing jobs in an increasingly globalized economy. Despite its faulty design and poor track record, some Members of Congress want to expand the program to…

On Wall Street, there is a widening gulf between bulls and bears, and today's GDP report has surprises for both sides. On its face, the overall real growth rate of 3.4 percent in the second quarter of 2007 was higher than expected and higher than the average of 3.2 percent over recent decades. Yet…

The Congressional Budget Office has released a major study[1] of the U.S. military's demographics under an all-volunteer framework versus the draft. The idea of reinstating the draft was a hot-button issue last November when Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY), a leader and committee chairman in the newly elected Democratic majority, vocalized his…

According to the logic of protectionism, Michigan has been stealing jobs from other Midwestern states for years. By stealing automobile production that could be evenly spread around the country, the state has acquired an unfair advantage. One state over which Michigan has acquired such an advantage is Ohio. With the concentration of manufacturing to its…

On May 10, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson led a small panel discussion about the importance of foreign direct investment in the American economy. Just a few hours earlier, a government report was released showing a trade deficit of $63.9 billion in March, nearly 10 percent higher than in February. The trade deficit is a…

The Democratic Party under the leadership of President Bill Clinton was largely pro-trade and pro-globalization. Witness the 102 Democratic votes for NAFTA in November 1993 or the 105 Democratic votes in favor of normalized trade relations with China in July 1999. But after major losses in 2000, the party spent six years completely out of…

The U.S. Congress recently voted to increase the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 over a two-year period-a dramatic 40 percent increase. Final action on the minimum wage increase has not yet been cleared due to differences in the Senate bill and the House bill. Congress should be reminded that a minimum wage…

Wall Street's sell-off on February 27 was triggered by a severe drop in China's equity markets. On that day, all of the major U.S. indices experienced declines of between 3 and 4 percent, including the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and Nasdaq. Though the U.S. bond market rose, Treasury bonds have long…

In mid-December, American representatives led by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson will travel to Beijing to kick off the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue. These talks will be an ongoing, high-level series of meetings which will take place each year, alternating between the U.S. and China. Within the context of these discussions, Paulson and his…