Podcast on FTAs, China Currency and Trade Policy/Politics

The folks at RedState's "Coffee & Markets" had me on this morning to talk FTAs, China currency and US trade policy/politics.  Unsurprisingly, I lack the technical expertise to download the podcast and post it here, but you can just click over to RedState to listen there or download it to your iPod.

Enjoy!

New Op-Ed: "One Cheer (At Most) for Our New Free Trade Agreements"

The Daily Caller today published a new (and somewhat depressing) op-ed of mine.  Here's the tease:

The recent congressional passage of U.S. free trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia has elicited an outbreak of Beltway backslapping. Some congratulations are certainly warranted, but a closer look at just how these FTAs arrived on the president’s desk reveals serious problems with not only the agreements themselves, but also the current state of U.S. trade policy.

Uh oh.  Be sure to read the whole thing here.  Your thoughts, as always, are welcome in the comments.

Audio: Talking Trade, Outsourcing and China on the Laura Ingraham Show

After lots of trial and error, I've finally managed to upload yesterday's informative - and frustrating! - segments on international trade from the Laura Ingraham Show.  (Who knew it was so tough to record streaming audio, convert it to a video file and upload it to your blog?  Yet another lesson in specialization and comparative advantage, I guess.)  There's a commercial break in there somewhere, but you can just fast forward through the dead air.

Many thanks to Laura for giving me (and the very smart Matthew Slaughter from CFR) the significant airtime.  It's nice not to try to explain multinational production decisions in a 15-second soundbite.  However, considering that I thought I was just going to be talking about outsourcing, I really want a re-match to talk about China trade with the misguided Ms. Ingraham.   Now, I'm not so sure that even my most-prepared day will ever convince Laura of the error of her ways, but I definitely, definitely want to give it another try.

Talking Trade and Outsourcing on the Laura Ingraham Show Tomorrow Morning

I'll be talking trade and outsourcing with Matt Slaughter tomorrow morning from 10:15a to 10:45a on the Laura Ingraham Show.  In particular, we'll be discussing with Ingraham - a fellow UVA Law grad, by the way - what this new WSJ article does and doesn't mean for the future of the US economy.  That article notes:

U.S. multinational corporations, the big brand-name companies that employ a fifth of all American workers, have been hiring abroad while cutting back at home, sharpening the debate over globalization's effect on the U.S. economy.

The companies cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show. That's a big switch from the 1990s, when they added jobs everywhere: 4.4 million in the U.S. and 2.7 million abroad.

So is this news some sort of disturbing harbinger of future American economic doom?  Or is it a perfectly natural phenomenon that's being exacerbated by some stupid American tax, trade, and regulatory policies?  I think that those of you who read this blog often already know what I'm going to say tomorrow, but you should still tune in to find out!

You can go here to find out where Ingraham's show is broadcasting in your neck of the woods.  I'll try to post a recording of the segment if I can get my hands on one.

"Beyond Exports" Event Video Now Online

As promised, here's the video of last week's Capitol Hill event on Free Trade messaging.  Enjoy:


Feedback welcome (other than to grouse about the sound quality or my gratuitous hand gestures, of course).

Thanks

A big, hearty thank you to all the folks out there who made yesterday's Capitol Hill event a raging success.  The room was packed - literally standing room only - and I don't think we can/should give all the credit for that to the sandwiches and cookies (although Cato's cookies are famously good).  I only wish we could've gone longer, as we left a lot of the attendees' questions unanswered.  (If you attended and had a hand raised, please feel free to email me if you'd still like a response.)

It was especially fun for me to meet a few readers of this little ol' blog.  Their uniformly-kind words will definitely make it easier to sit down after a long day of lawyering and, instead of vegging out on The Jersey Shore The History Channel, yell into the interwebs about US trade policy.  So thanks much for that too.

The video of the event will be posted here soon.  There's typically a 2-3 day lag for that (and I've demanded that an applause track and CGI be added to my sections, so that might take another day), so it should be up sometime early next week.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some more yelling to do.

Reminder: Speaking on Capitol Hill Thursday

For the few stragglers out there who haven't yet registered for this assuredly-riveting event, here's your final reminder.  It should be a goodstupendous discussion, and you get a free lunch!

Beyond Exports: A Better Case for Free Trade

CAPITOL HILL BRIEFING
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Noon (Lunch Included)

Featuring Daniel J. Ikenson, Associate Director, Center for Trade Policy Studies, Cato Institute; Scott Lincicome, International Trade Attorney, White & Case, LLP; and Donald J. Boudreaux, Professor, George Mason University Department of Economics and Adjunct Scholar, Cato Institute; moderated by Brandon Arnold, Director of Government Affairs, Cato Institute.

B-369 Rayburn House Office Building

The 112th Congress begins its term amid renewed optimism about prospects for U.S. trade liberalization. But how long will this window of opportunity remain ajar? Despite trade's benefits, Americans remain skeptical because of the tendency of politicians and media charlatans to blame foreigners for domestic shortcomings. Thus, in addition to securing the immediate goal of concluding and passing trade liberalizing agreements in 2011, advocates of trade should update their arguments and invest in the process of winning the trade debate once and for all. Some of the most compelling arguments for free trade have been only modestly summoned or absent from the discussion for too long. Please join us for a discussion of those compelling arguments that take the case for free trade well beyond the value of exports.

Registration is free, and you can do it at Cato's website anytime before tomorrow (Wednesday) at noon.  From what I'm told, the event is almost full (seriously!).  So you must act now!  Time is running out and space is limited!

(Hope to see you there.)

Attention Hill Staffers and Other DC Residents/Visitors: Free Lunch on March 24th

If you're on or around Capitol Hill on March 24th, and are looking for a free sandwichan enlightening discussion on free trade messaging, I (and two far more interesting guys) will be speaking at the following Cato Institute event:

Beyond Exports: A Better Case for Free Trade

CAPITOL HILL BRIEFING
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Noon (Lunch Included)

Featuring Daniel J. Ikenson, Associate Director, Center for Trade Policy Studies, Cato Institute; Scott Lincicome, International Trade Attorney, White & Case, LLP; and Donald J. Boudreaux, Professor, George Mason University Department of Economics and Adjunct Scholar, Cato Institute; moderated by Brandon Arnold, Director of Government Affairs, Cato Institute.

B-369 Rayburn House Office Building

The 112th Congress begins its term amid renewed optimism about prospects for U.S. trade liberalization. But how long will this window of opportunity remain ajar? Despite trade's benefits, Americans remain skeptical because of the tendency of politicians and media charlatans to blame foreigners for domestic shortcomings. Thus, in addition to securing the immediate goal of concluding and passing trade liberalizing agreements in 2011, advocates of trade should update their arguments and invest in the process of winning the trade debate once and for all. Some of the most compelling arguments for free trade have been only modestly summoned or absent from the discussion for too long. Please join us for a discussion of those compelling arguments that take the case for free trade well beyond the value of exports.

As you can see, we'll be discussing many of the themes that I frequently raise here.  Registration is free, and you can do it at Cato's website.  The new briefing paper that we'll be discussing is available here.  And if you really want to impress the audience with your grasp of modern free trade policy, check our Dan's and my (much longer) 2009 paper on the same subjects.

I hope you can join us.  The cookies alone are worth the price of admission.

New Cato Institute Paper: "Beyond Exports: A Better Case for Free Trade"

Dan Ikenson and I have a new briefing paper out tomorrow -"Beyond Exports: A Better Case for Free Trade."  In it, we argue that it's time for free trade advocates in government and the US business community to ditch their decades-old approach of selling free trade through a singleminded emphasis on exports and to take up a more well-rounded messaging strategy.  Here's the lead-in:

Despite trade’s benefits, American sentiment toward it is lukewarm in the best of times, and always vulnerable to manipulation by politicians and media charlatans looking to blame foreigners for domestic shortcomings. Before the end of this year, the 2012 presidential election campaigns will be in high gear—and trade has been a particularly dirty word in stump speeches and political debates in the past. Indeed, one of the reasons for the energetic trade policy push in 2011 is that the political environment next year is expected to be less hospitable to trade initiatives.

The fact that public opinion about trade is so malleable and arguments for restricting it so resonant at times speaks to a failure of free trade’s proponents to make their compelling message stick. It is sad but true that so many Americans need to be reminded of the benefits of being free to choose how and with whom to conduct commerce. But in an atmosphere where demagogues peddle myths to mislead the public into believing that it is preferable for government to limit their choices and direct their resources to chosen ends, it is crucial that the case for free trade be made more clearly, comprehensively, and consistently than it has been in the past.

Thus, in addition to securing the immediate goal of concluding and passing trade liberalizing agreements in 2011, advocates of trade in Congress, the administration, the business community, think tanks, academia, and among the general public should update their arguments and invest in the process of winning the trade debate once and for all. Some of the most compelling arguments for free trade have been only modestly summoned or absent from the discussion for too long.

Readers of this blog will find a lot of these themes familiar -  for the last two years, I've been regularly complainingblogging about the desperate need for US policymakers to revise their trade sales pitch.  Our new Cato paper crystallizes many of those arguments and backs them up with some good data.  The whole thing will be available here tomorrow morning.

Enjoy.

Grading My 2010 Predictions: A Good, Solid B+

Happy New Year!  With 2011 now upon us, a review of my 2010 predictions is probably a little overdue. (It's like soooo last year!)  Nevertheless, it's important every once in a while for us bloggers - and you normal folk - to stop judging other people's mistakes and look back at our own.  So here we go.

Last January, I provided a laundry list of predictions on several different trade issues, broken down by predictive difficulty into three categories: (1) low hanging fruit (i.e., pretty "easy" predictions based on existing facts and trends); (2) 50/50s; and (3) total shots in the dark.  So how did I do?  Well, I'll let you be the judge of that, but my official scorecard is below.  Correct predictions are in green; incorrect predictions are in red; and so-so predictions are in yellow.  Feel free to mock me in the comments.

Low Hanging Fruit

(1) The WTO's Doha Round won't collapse entirely, but it also won't be any closer to completion. 2011 will become the new target date (for whatever that's worth). This one was probably the easiest of all predictions, but there's good reason for optimism in 2011.  Let's hope the White House is up to the task.

(2) There will be no change to US farm and "green energy" subsidy policies.  With the Obama administration paying off Brazilian cotton farmers instead of modifying the United States' WTO-illegal cotton subsidies, and with the year-end tax deal containing billions of additional taxpayer dollars for the debacle that is American corn ethanol and other green energy policies, we scored a really unfortunate "correct" on this one.


(3) Bilateral and regional FTAs will continue at a furious pace across the world, but (4) new US negotiations under the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Framework will be interminably slow. I can't find any stats on FTAs completed in 2010 (sorry), but I think it's pretty safe to say that (except in the United States, natch) bilateral/regional FTA negotiations continued apace in 2010.  As for TPP, it's still theoretically on schedule to be completed by the end of 2011, but the current members are still stuck on several procedural issues, and membership ain't exactly settled either.  (Oh, and the US appears to already be backing away from that end-2011 goal, although it's unclear whether that's just smart politics/diplomacy.)

(5) There will be no "trade war" between the United States and China.  As I said at the time, "Sure, the WTO cases, strong words, and AD/CVD actions will continue, but that's hardly a 'trade war.'"  I think that's a pretty good summary of what we saw thislast year.  Score one for pragmatism and sanity over media hype and congressional bluster.

50/50s

(1) 2010 will see a significant increase in anti-subsidy actions under domestic trade laws and WTO rules. At the time, I saw two main reasons for this conclusion: "(i) The massive proliferation of government subsidies in 2009 and increased tradeflows in 2010; and (ii) the continuation of all US farm subsidies."  And while there have certainly been new CVD cases and WTO disputes over green subsidies and US biofuels (or biofuels byproducts), I can't grade this one as a true "correct," because I said "significant increase," and there just hasn't been an explosion of new cases.  So I'm giving myself a "so-so" here - mostly because, as any good lawyer knows, I should have given myself more wiggle room by avoiding a strong adjective like "significant."  Silly me.

(2) Congress will approve none of the pending US FTAs.  Pathetic, but correct.  What's funny/sad about this one is that this was actually not such an easy prediction in January of last year.  A lot of well-informed people actually thought that the Colombia and/or Panama deals could squeak through before the election season kicked into high gear.  Silly optimists.

(3) Eco-protectionism will increase around the world.  We didn't see carbon tariffs emerge anywhere, but there were oodles of new green subsidies and onerous "environmental" standards, including those on "food safety" here in the US.  (Heritage's Jim Roberts has a nice mid-year rundown here.)  And because I wisely didn't use the adjective "significant," I'm giving myself an admittedly tepid "correct" here.

Total Shots in the Dark

(1) The failure of Cap and Trade in the Congress will cause the EPA to begin reviewing import regulations on GHGs and GHG-intensive products.  Cap and trade did die in Congress, but, as far as we know, this prediction was incorrect: the EPA didn't start looking at new import regulations based on their GHG content (although those already-planned regs did come online last year).  But with the Obama administration now looking to use the EPA and other regulatory agencies to advance an environmental agenda that it can no longer achieve through Congress, my prediction might've just been off by a year.  We shall see.

 (2) China will not unpeg its currency vs. the US dollar (despite 12 more threatening NYT columns by Paul Krugman).  I was wrong on both counts: (1) since June, the RMB has appreciated about 3.5% against the US dollar and kept moving in that direction even after Congress adjourned for the year (thus killing that silly China currency legislation); and (2) Paul Krugman wrote way, way more than 12 columns on China currency last year.  But hey, betting on Chinese economic policy and/or Paul Krugman's ranting habits can put even Nostradamus in the poor house.  Alas.

Overall, I'd say that this was a pretty good effort.  I nailed the low-hanging fruit, did pretty well on the 50/50s, and missed the total shots in the dark.  Next week, I'll try to match this effort for 2011, but that's not going to be an easy task.  While 2010 was a pretty zany year, 2011 is shaping up to be even zanier.

Thanks for reading and commenting over the past year.  It's be a fun ride.  May you and yours have a truly dominant 2011.

New IBD Op-ed: For Obama, Free Trade Is Key To Success

The great folks at the Investor's Business Daily have just published a new op-ed by me and AEI's Phil Levy.   In it, we argue that President Obama has a fantastic opportunity to do what only a few months ago seemed utterly unthinkable: to finish the WTO's Doha Round by the end of 2011.

Don't laugh!  If Obama takes our advice and puts forth a serious US proposal, combined with a little leadership and diplomacy, he could actually pull it off.  

Granted, that's a rather big "if," but still, the time is right to finally - finally! - conclude the Doha Round.  And the United States needs to go big or go home.  Period.

Here are a few snippets from the new piece:

The last two years of Doha Round stagnation have proved that U.S. leadership is essential. The president could provide that with an ambitious proposal to reduce agricultural subsidies....

The move would be timely. The G-20 leaders in Seoul, South Korea, and the APEC leaders in Yokohama, Japan, recently called for a Doha "end game" in 2011 and publicly directed their trade negotiators to re-engage in across-the-board negotiations to conclude the round.

The WTO's director general, Pascal Lamy, just offered an intensified work plan, endorsed by almost all 153 WTO members, that would complete the round by December 2011....

But a bold proposal alone would not suffice.

There is no possibility of selling a Doha deal on Capitol Hill without new access to the major emerging markets. India and China's reluctance to offer such access helped crash the talks in 2008.

The U.S. therefore needs a developing country partner with heft and influence....

Intrigued?  Good.  Now go read the whole thing here.  C'mon, you know you want to.

Me on Fox Business (Again) Talking China Currency

On Monday, I taped a segment with FOX Business discussing China currency and the potential effects of the currency legislation that passed the House of Representatives last week.  

The clip is short, but I've made the points raised therein many, many times on this blog.  The legal stuff that reporter Rich Edson mentions is handled here, and the economics are pretty straightforward: revaluation could very well hurt, rather than help, the US economy because--

(i) since very few Chinese imports are directly competitive with stuff made in the United States, a significant appreciation in the yuan won't help many US companies and will lead to higher prices in the US; and 

(ii) almost half of all Chinese imports are capital goods and equipment used by American manufacturers to stay globally competitive, so higher priced Chinese goods would hurt many manufacturers.  

For more on these points, I highly recommend this must-read op-ed by Warren Meyer, who asks "Why Are Democrats Promising to Raise Prices?":

Apparently Democrats are facing an odd problem in this election. For all the gnashing of teeth about gridlock and obstructionism, they actually have a pretty full basket of legislative accomplishments: The stimulus bill, cash-for-clunkers, Obamacare, financial regulation, and expiration of the Bush tax cuts. The only problem is that no Democrat seems to want to run on this record (and rightly so given how poorly much of this legislation polls).

So, despite having a fairly activist domestic legislative record, Democrats have chosen to seek out a new issue for this election: China-bashing. In particular, Democrats claim the American manufacturing base is declining in the face of unfair competition from a Chinese government that is unfairly helping its own manufacturers through currency manipulation and export subsidization.

To which I say: So what?

We should be thrilled that the Chinese government and its people see fit to spend their own money to subsidize lower prices for American businesses and consumers. Last week, President Obama put substantial pressure on the Chinese prime minister to revalue Chinese currency, a revaluation that would have the effect of raising prices of all Chinese goods in the United States. What possible sense does such a move make, particularly in a recession?

Indeed.  Meyer uses lots and lots of great data to prove his points, most of which I've also mentioned here.  But be sure to read the whole op-ed here.   It's well worth your time.

New Op-Ed: "G-20 Summit: Fresh Winds of Economic Leadership from the North"

I have a new op-ed on FoxNews.com today.  Here's the tease:

Leaders from 19 countries and the European Union will gather for the G-20 summit in Toronto beginning June 26 to discuss how to stem the global recession and get the world back on the path to strong, stable economic growth. They picked a good spot, as the assembled leaders could learn a lot from their host country.

Since the global recession hit two years ago, Canada has implemented a broad array of free market tax and trade policies. As a result, our neighbor to the north has surpassed an increasingly statist, mercantilist United States in The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom. More importantly, Canada is emerging from the “Great Recession” much more rapidly than the U.S. and virtually every other G-20 participant as well.

Read the whole thing here.  Go ahead.  You know you want to.

Me on Fox Business Talking China Currency (and Sporting Way Too Much Makeup)

Enjoy:



And kudos to FoxBiz journalist Rich Edson who covered the story like a pro (no, not because he interviewed me, although that's not all bad either). He discusses both the benefits (to exporters) and costs (to importers) that any RMB appreciation might have here in the US, and even cites a CRS report that I've long been promoting, which says that any appreciation won't have a significant impact on total US employment. Very well done.

(And no Oompa-Loompa jokes, ok?)

New Op-Ed: On Trade, It's Put Up Or Shut Up

I have a new op-ed in The Daily Caller today.  I hope you like it; as always, your feedback is welcome.

On trade, it’s put up or shut up

With his signature health care legislation now law, President Obama has a little under three months to prove that he actually supports free trade. After that, all bets are off.

By almost any metric, the Obama administration’s trade policy has been a disappointment. Inaction pervades, and our trading partners have gone from mildly annoyed to downright hostile. But the American trade agenda didn’t always look to be headed this way. In Spring 2009, the White House dramatically reversed the protectionist campaign rhetoric of then-Senator Obama. U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk launched an aggressive campaign advocating free trade and denouncing protectionism. The White House’s first Trade Policy Agenda called for ratification of the pending U.S.-Panama Free Trade Agreement “relatively quickly,” and sought to advance other completed FTAs with Colombia and South Korea. The Agenda also unequivocally supported the World Trade Organization and NAFTA, and anticipated congressional renewal of the President’s “fast track” trade negotiating authority.

Then political reality set in.

Immediately following the shift in White House trade rhetoric, congressional protectionists, almost all within Obama’s own Party, launched a stifling counter-offensive. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), for example, expressed disappointment with USTR’s pro-NAFTA rhetoric and pledged to make it clear to President Obama that “our trade policy is not working and that it needs fixing.” Such comments proved effective. The White House abandoned overt free trade actions and speeches in order to secure needed health care votes from anti-trade Democrats – a move that Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) apologetically confirmed at June 2009 Cato Institute event.

As the health care debate stagnated, so did US trade policy, and it remains that way today. Signed FTAs remain shelved, despite the fact that the EU, China and others have negotiated preferential deals with the same FTA partners, each to the competitive disadvantage of American companies. The WTO’s Doha Round negotiations are comatose, even though an ambitious Doha deal would provide billions in benefits to US economy. And US exporters endure superfluous pains because the White House has failed to resolve several bilateral trade disputes, including $2.4 billion in Mexican tariffs resulting from the United States’ NAFTA-illegal ban on Mexican trucking, and the threat of almost $900 million in Brazilian sanctions based on US non-compliance with WTO rulings against American cotton subsidies.

Despite these problems, some might argue that the National Export Initiative and the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations are concrete evidence that the Obama administration is dedicated to free trade. But real free trade policies – like the pending FTAs – involve immediate market liberalization at home and abroad. The NEI, by contrast, is a one-sided, non-controversial program which seeks to expand US exports through a timid combination of margin-tweaks that most economists believe will have little effect on US trade flows. Thus, calling the NEI “free trade” is like calling onanism “free love.”

The TPP Agreement, on the other hand, could yield significant trade gains, but would take years complete. Indeed, USTR Kirk lauded the TPP negotiations precisely because they won’t be completed for years. Of course, this is the same USTR whose 2010 Trade Agenda mentioned the word “import” only five times, and never once in terms of domestic market access. So Kirk’s statements about the TPP and the administration’s advancement of the NEI are hardly surprising. They’re just par for the cowardly course.

Throughout all of this, administration officials and the few free trade Democrats in Congress have quietly reassured the US business community that America’s free trade legacy will re-emerge once the contentious health care debate is over. In September 2009, Transportation Department officials told a concerned group of affected exporters that the White House would not resolve the Mexican trucking dispute because the President needed Teamster support for ObamaCare. And at an October 2009 event, Reps. Cuellar and John Tanner (D-TN) assured their audience that the FTAs would progress once the health care debate ended.

Well, folks, health care’s over. Time to put up or shut up.

Most of the United States’ current trade irritants are within the White House’s control to fix, as long as the President willing to expend an iota of political will to get things done. Signed U.S. FTAs have already been ratified by the partners countries and now only require the President to send their respective implementing legislation to Congress for ratification. While many congressional Democrats will resist such legislation, Obama can expect significant support from Republicans, many of whom, like House Trade Subcommittee Ranking Member Kevin Brady (R-TX), have routinely called on the President to submit the trade deals. Other issues show similar potential for bi-partisan resolution. All they require is an end to the White House’s politically-motivated ambivalence.

In late June, Washington will turn its attention to the November mid-term elections, and controversial legislation will become untouchable. If President Obama and his free trade supporters really mean what they’ve said over the past year about the President’s commitment to free trade, the White House will move on one or more of the unresolved trade issues before this “silly season” begins.

If, on the other hand, June comes and goes, and these issues are still unsettled because of the administration’s political calculations, then the die will have been cast. And no amount of excuses will be able to convince American businesses and consumers that this President really cares about free trade.

*     *     *

Bloomberg's Al Hunt strikes a similar note in his op-ed today.  I highly recommend giving it a look.

New Briefer re: Impending Brazilian Retaliation Against US Exports

As I recently mentioned here, Brazil is preparing to impose about $300 million in retaliatory sanctions on US exports because the US government refuses to comply with multiple WTO rulings against American cotton subsidies.  I've teamed with Daniella Markheim of the Heritage Foundation to write a web memo on the longstanding dispute and the implications of US recalcitrance at the WTO.  We outline the dispute and the repeated US attempts to shirk its WTO obligations, and conclude that, while $300 million in retaliation hurts American exports and White House efforts to boost them, US non-compliance in this case and others is very problematic even if Brazil ultimately decides not to impose the sanctions:

The U.S. has brought 94 trade disputes to the WTO in the trade body's 15-year history. When the WTO has ruled in America's favor, the U.S. government is quick to laud the decision and demand that the offending party immediately comply. Yet when the WTO rules against the U.S., as it did in Upland Cotton, American officials denounce the ruling, question the WTO's authority, and make every effort to delay or skirt required reforms.

Such hypocrisy undermines U.S. credibility and the WTO's efficacy.

To find out why, read the whole thing here.

New Op-ed in The Daily Caller: "Exporting Nonsense"

For those of you who read this blog religiously (ha!), some of the stuff in my new op-ed ("Exporting Nonsense") in The Daily Caller will sound a bit familiar - it cobbles together several of my musings on the administration's new National Export Initiative.

For the rest of you, enjoy!

Given constraints on the op-ed's length, I had to omit some key data referenced in the piece.  All of that is available in various postings here, if you're interested.

(And for those of you who have yet to discover TDC, check it out.  It's a great new website for straight news, great conservative/libertarian commentary, and good ol' fashioned beltway gossip.)

New Year, New Media

Happy New Year!

Although 2009 was a pretty depressing year for US trade policy (more on that later), it was pretty fruitful for your faithful correspondent.  On the personal side, I celebrated yet another year (my 33rd) of health, happiness and prosperity - the third with my awesome wife Elizabeth.  My family's doing great, and I have more friends today than I did a year ago.  All good things.

On the professional side, I was blessed to stay gainfully employed during an epically wretched year for lawyers.  I also co-authored a well-received policy paper for the Cato Institute, penned several op-eds for "old" and "new" media outlets, and, of course, started this little blog.  If 2010 ends up being anywhere near as successful as 2009, I'll be thrilled.

Speaking of the new year, I've resolved for 2010 to further integrate myself (read: sell-out) into the world of new media.  So I've finally gotten a facebook page and a twitter account, and each of these media will re-publish entries from this blog as they're released (it's magic!).  So if you've read this blog or any of my other stuff and, for some bizarre reason, longed to become my "friend" on Facebook or to "follow me" on Twitter, well, now you can.

Lucky you.

I've also tweaked a few things on the blog itself to make it more "web-friendly."  Beyond the Facebook and Twitter stuff, I've added a "ShareThis" button at the bottom of every blog entry that will let readers share the entry on Facebook, Twitter, Digg or pretty much any other whizbang site out there.  All at the click of a button.  (Like I said, magic.)

Anyway, thanks for reading, and here's hoping that 2010 is your best year yet.

-Scott