President Franklin Roosevelt created the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) in 1934 to promote US trade in the midst of the Great Depression. At the outset, the Ex-Im Bank was instructed to supplement, not compete with, private sources of export finance. Historically, the Ex-Im...

While the US steel industry has been in distress for decades, the "steel crisis" of 1999-2001 was particularly acute. More than 30 steel producing and steel processing firms fell into bankruptcy between 1997 and 2001, and most of the failures occurred after President Bush took office. During his...

The US Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) celebrated its 65th birthday in 1999. While congratulations were in order, this venerable institution needs an overhaul. Renewal of the Bank's charter in 2001 offers Congress an excellent opportunity to go to work. This policy brief offers recommendations based...

In November 2002, the United States proposed that members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) eliminate their tariffs on nonagricultural products. World exports of nonagricultural goods, which were $5.4 trillion in 2001 (WTO 2002), would substantially expand if the US proposal were adopted. In...

The tax-driven expatriation of US corporations is a troubling phenomenon. In a "corporate inversion," a new foreign corporation, typically located in a low-tax or no-tax country, replaces the existing US parent corporation of a multinational enterprise (MNE). The US corporation then becomes a...

In May 2003, the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute panel ruled that US steel safeguards imposed in March 2002 are illegal. The WTO Appellate Body is all but certain to confirm the panel's judgment, probably by December 2003. Then the Bush administration will face an important choice. It can...

Senator John Kerry has proposed a major overhaul in corporate taxation, with the goal of persuading multinational companies (MNCs) to employ more workers at home and fewer abroad. Kerry has correctly emphasized that domestic production is often taxed at a higher rate than production abroad, but...

Following the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, President Bush prepared the country for a "war on terrorism". As outlined in his speech before the joint session of Congress on September 20, the war on terrorism will be fought on many fronts: diplomatic, intelligence,...

The House and Senate will soon meet in conference to decide whether to enact unprecedented sanctions that would deny access to US capital markets to foreign companies that do business with a sanctioned nation. The narrow objective of the Sudan Peace Act--the House version of which includes these...

Some trade disputes--like long Russian novels--never seem to end. The United States, Europe, and other trading nations have disputed the taxation of export earnings since the 1970s. To understand why the Foreign Sales Corporation (FSC) dispute is so hard to resolve, we must start with a...