This year's biggest trade battle is the congressional vote over Permanent Normal Trading Relations (PNTR) with China. PNTR is the key US action required to ensure American access to China's market when China joins the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Everyone agrees that the US steel industry is distressed. The disagreement is over the role of imports: to what extent is foreign steel the culprit? Before turning to this critical issue, it is worth recounting the highlights of the steel industry's difficulties. In the past four years, 29 US...

Within a few weeks, the United States will make a pivotal decision--whether to prohibit foreign telecommunications firms that are partly owned by foreign governments from competing in the US market. The decisive case is Deutsche Telecom's bid to acquire the US mobile telephone operator...

Seattle leaves a huge question mark over the U.S. role in world trade policy. Faulty preparation and flawed tactics were abundant--both in the street and between the delegations. The Battle of Seattle may acquire the same instructive value for future diplomats as Pearl Harbor has for military...

Once again the steel industry is distressed. And once again Washington is looking for trade "solutions" when it should be searching elsewhere. There is nothing new about either story. But, can't we do something better this time?

On April 26, 2004, Senator John Kerry released his six-point trade program, "Trade Enforcement: Asleep at the Wheel," and conspicuously targeted China for violating worker rights, dumping, and supporting "illegal currency manipulation" (Kerry 2004). Five days earlier, senior Bush administration...

This Working Paper develops a simple method for calculating welfare benefits when the market structure is made more competitive through the removal of import barriers and investment restrictions. Classic instances where trade and investment restrictions serve to preserve monopolistic monopoly...

In the wake of financial crises in Mexico (1994-95), Asia (1997-98), Russia (1998) and Brazil (1998-99), respected observers have questioned the benefits of wide-open international capital markets (Bhagwati, 1998; Krugman, 1998; Rodrik, 1998; Eichengreen, 1999). Our purpose is to identify true hazards and...

Economic sanctions have resurfaced at the center of public policy debate. After a brief lull following the politically disastrous grain embargo and pipeline sanctions in the early 1980s, sanctions are once again the weapon of choice to enforce a myriad of US foreign policy goals, from countering...

Globalization has affected all facets of the world economy. This includes services, which in most economies are the single largest contributor to economic growth and employment. However, despite its importance to national output, the impact of globalization on services is only recently receiving...