While the public was transfixed by the Trump administration's policies alleging that imports were a threat to America's national security during 2017–20, there was a concomitant and more quiet US policy shift on the export side. Addressing the national security threat presented by exports...

On December 10, 2019, the WTO's 25-year-old system of resolving disputes broke down. This paper explains why. It describes the dysfunctional system that preceded the WTO, when the United States dealt with politically troublesome imports by using voluntary export restraints and increasingly...

This paper examines how trade protection is affected by changes in the value-added content of production arising through global value chains (GVCs). Exploiting a new set of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules adopted in 1995 that impose an exogenously timed requirement for countries to...

US labor force participation has been weak in recent decades, especially during the recovery of the financial crisis of 2007–09. This paper examines several programs that governments in other advanced industrial countries have established to help jobless workers continue to seek employment,...

Despite more robust growth than many advanced economies in Europe and Asia, labor force participation in the United States between 1995 and 2017 was weak. In other countries, job loss has manifested itself as increased unemployment as opposed to labor force exit. For men, the decline in labor...

In 2018, the United States suddenly increased tariffs on nearly 50 percent of its imports from China. China immediately retaliated with tariffs on more than 70 percent of imports from the United States. This paper assesses what happened in 2018 and attempts to explain why. It first constructs a...

The United States, European Union, and Japan have begun a trilateral process to confront the Chinese economic model, including its use of industrial subsidies and deployment of state-owned enterprises. This paper seeks to identify the main areas of tension and to assess the legal-economic...

Many months after COVID-19 vaccines were first authorized for public use, still limited supplies could only partially reduce the devastating loss of life and economic costs caused by the pandemic. Could additional vaccine doses have been manufactured more quickly some other way? Would...

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, a global shortage of hospital gowns, gloves, surgical masks, and respirators caused policymakers around the world to panic. This paper examines international trade in this personal protective equipment (PPE) during the crisis, with a focus on China, the European...

The Trump administration changed US trade policy toward China in ways that will take years for researchers to sort out. This paper makes four specific contributions to that research agenda. First, it carefully marks the timing, definitions, and scale of the products subject to the tariff changes...