by Dave Johnson | Jun 18, 2014 | Blog, Trade
Last week Treasury Secretary Jack Lew (D-CITI) gave a major address on the economy. (Transcript here, video here.) But the biggest fixable factor affecting jobs and the economy wasn't mentioned at all: the trade deficit. In fact, a Google search of "Jack Lew" and...
by Emily Schwartz Greco | Jun 13, 2014 | Trade
By Emily Schwartz Greco and William A. Collins President Barack Obama is a surprisingly devout disciple of so-called “free trade.” During his first presidential bid he promised to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), indicating some concern...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 6, 2014 | Blog, Trade
Wednesday's trade balance report showed that just two years after signing a "free trade" agreement with South Korea we have reached a record monthly trade deficit of $2.3 billion with that country, up from $1.3 billion the month before. Now South Korea is attacking...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 4, 2014 | Blog, Trade
The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis released the April trade figures this morning. The news is bad. The trade deficit measures how much more we buy from other countries than they buy from us. It is a way to measure loss of jobs, loss of factories,...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 2, 2014 | Blog, Trade
The House of Representatives last week passed H.R. 4660, a bill that includes funding for the office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). This bill included an amendment (Amdt. 761), passed by voice vote, "to prohibit use of funds to negotiate an agreement that...
by Dave Johnson | Jun 2, 2014 | Blog, Trade
Last week 153 Democratic members of Congress – three-fourths of the Democrats in the House – signed a letter to U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Michael Froman demanding that trade negotiators focus first on protecting the rights of working people to organize before...