For more than 50 years the United States has attempted to destabilize and isolate the Castro regime in Cuba with the use of trade and financial sanctions, a policy that has fallen short of its objective. In this Policy Analysis, Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Barbara Kotschwar suggest that the sands of...

Prohibitions or restrictions on US exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) are a bad idea. LNG exports will deliver economic benefits to the US economy. The US Department of Energy should approve pending LNG export applications for projects at an advanced planning stage, in conjunction with...

Services trade continues to be the most dynamic part of world trade, and service sectors have long been the largest destination of foreign direct investment flows. Countries can reap huge potential gains through greater liberalization of services trade and investment, including increased job...

In 2005, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi pushed his landmark bill through the Japanese Diet, aimed at reforming Japan Post, the giant state-owned enterprise that provides postal services and houses two huge financial arms, Japan Post Bank and Japan Post Insurance. The bill envisaged substantial...

Legislation to reform Japan Post is again gathering steam in Tokyo. A new postal bill is taking shape, in the form of amendments to the existing Postal Privatization Law dating from the Koizumi era—all put forward under the larger banner of post-earthquake reconstruction finance and the...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a big deal in the making. With the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations at an impasse, the TPP negotiations have taken center stage as the most significant trade initiative of the 21st century. As of December 2012, negotiators have made extensive...

China's need for vast amounts of minerals to sustain its high economic growth rate has led Chinese investors to acquire stakes in natural resource companies, extend loans to mining and petroleum investors, and write long-term procurement contracts for oil and minerals in Africa, Latin America,...

Trade and investment in services are difficult to measure, and the regulatory barriers that inhibit the free flow of services are hard to quantify. As a result, very little attention has been paid to dismantling barriers to services trade and investment in free trade negotiations. This paper...

The terrain of the world trading system is shifting as countries in Asia, Europe, and North America negotiate new trade agreements. However, none of these talks include both China and the United States, the two biggest economies in the world. In this pathbreaking study, C. Fred Bergsten, Gary...

The Doha Round is not the first multilateral negotiation to collapse under the weight of substantive disputes and tactical blunders, but revival this time requires a greater miracle than in the darkest days of the Tokyo or Uruguay Rounds. After near-death moments, those talks concluded with a...