As the protectionist supporters of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) desperately try to regroup, it’s entertaining to see how they think that China-bashing is their best hope for success. (Yes, supporters of the TPP are protectionist. A major thrust of the deal is to impose longer and stronger patent and copyright and related protections on the member countries. These are by definition forms of protectionism, even if economists and reporters tend to like them.)
Anyhow, we got an example of the China bashing of a TPP supporter in a Washington Post column by Fareed Zakaria, in which he warned readers that China would be the main beneficiary from a decision by Donald Trump not to pursue the TPP as president. The economists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics are also among those making the argument for the TPP as an obstacle to China’s growing political strength in the region. Many of these same people argued vociferously for allowing China to enter the WTO in 2000 without imposing conditions like respect for human rights or labor rights, which may have fundamentally altered China’s path of political development. It is striking that they now think the U.S. public should now be concerned about the growing power of a country with little respect for these rights.
As the protectionist supporters of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) desperately try to regroup, it’s entertaining to see how they think that China-bashing is their best hope for success. (Yes, supporters of the TPP are protectionist. A major thrust of the deal is to impose longer and stronger patent and copyright and related protections on the member countries. These are by definition forms of protectionism, even if economists and reporters tend to like them.)
Anyhow, we got an example of the China bashing of a TPP supporter in a Washington Post column by Fareed Zakaria, in which he warned readers that China would be the main beneficiary from a decision by Donald Trump not to pursue the TPP as president. The economists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics are also among those making the argument for the TPP as an obstacle to China’s growing political strength in the region. Many of these same people argued vociferously for allowing China to enter the WTO in 2000 without imposing conditions like respect for human rights or labor rights, which may have fundamentally altered China’s path of political development. It is striking that they now think the U.S. public should now be concerned about the growing power of a country with little respect for these rights.
Read More Leer más Join the discussion Participa en la discusión
An NYT article on Robert Lighthizer, Donald Trump’s pick to be trade representative, left out some important background information. It notes that Lighthizer wants to reduce the size of the U.S. trade deficit with China. It then told readers that this could lead to major conflicts with China:
“Exports are important for China. It consistently sells $4 worth of goods to the United States for each $1 of imports. That mismatch has produced a bilateral trade surplus for China equal to about 3 percent of the country’s entire economy, creating tens of millions of jobs.
“The benefits to China from that surplus have been increasing rapidly in the past few years.”
It is worth noting that China has actually sharply reduced its trade surplus in prior years. According to the I.M.F. it peaked at 9.9 percent of GDP in 2007. It then declined sharply to just 1.8 percent of GDP in 2011. It has since edged slightly higher, but it is still less than 3.0 percent of GDP.
Ordinarily, we would expect that a fast growing developing country like China would be running a trade deficit, as capital flows into the country to take advantage of higher returns. This has not happened in China’s case as the government has offset inflows of private capital by buying up trillions of dollars of foreign assets. It now holds more than $3 trillion in reserves in addition to another $1.5 trillion in foreign assets in the form of sovereign wealth funds.
Reportedly China has recently been trying to raise the value of its currency. This would suggest an obvious path of agreement between the U.S. and China under which the two countries could act jointly to raise the value of China’s currency against the dollar, thereby putting downward pressure on the trade deficit.
The piece also notes Lighthizer’s advocacy of the efforts of the Reagan administration to pressure Japanese manufacturers to “voluntarily” limit their exports to the United States. It would have been worth mentioning that these restrictions on exports led the Japanese manufacturers to begin to set up factories in the United States. Today, most of the cars that Japanese auto companies sell in the United States are assembled here, although they still do include a substantial amount of foreign content.
This piece seriously misrepresents a proposal for corporate tax reform advocated by Republicans in Congress as a route to tax imports. In fact, the tax has been developed by economists who are very much conventional free traders. The purpose is to simplify the tax code and eliminate the enormous waste associated with the gaming of our current system. The treatment of imports and exports is intended to make the tax symmetric with the treatment of value-added taxes in many U.S. trading partners. It is not intended as a protectionist measure to reduce the trade deficit.
An NYT article on Robert Lighthizer, Donald Trump’s pick to be trade representative, left out some important background information. It notes that Lighthizer wants to reduce the size of the U.S. trade deficit with China. It then told readers that this could lead to major conflicts with China:
“Exports are important for China. It consistently sells $4 worth of goods to the United States for each $1 of imports. That mismatch has produced a bilateral trade surplus for China equal to about 3 percent of the country’s entire economy, creating tens of millions of jobs.
“The benefits to China from that surplus have been increasing rapidly in the past few years.”
It is worth noting that China has actually sharply reduced its trade surplus in prior years. According to the I.M.F. it peaked at 9.9 percent of GDP in 2007. It then declined sharply to just 1.8 percent of GDP in 2011. It has since edged slightly higher, but it is still less than 3.0 percent of GDP.
Ordinarily, we would expect that a fast growing developing country like China would be running a trade deficit, as capital flows into the country to take advantage of higher returns. This has not happened in China’s case as the government has offset inflows of private capital by buying up trillions of dollars of foreign assets. It now holds more than $3 trillion in reserves in addition to another $1.5 trillion in foreign assets in the form of sovereign wealth funds.
Reportedly China has recently been trying to raise the value of its currency. This would suggest an obvious path of agreement between the U.S. and China under which the two countries could act jointly to raise the value of China’s currency against the dollar, thereby putting downward pressure on the trade deficit.
The piece also notes Lighthizer’s advocacy of the efforts of the Reagan administration to pressure Japanese manufacturers to “voluntarily” limit their exports to the United States. It would have been worth mentioning that these restrictions on exports led the Japanese manufacturers to begin to set up factories in the United States. Today, most of the cars that Japanese auto companies sell in the United States are assembled here, although they still do include a substantial amount of foreign content.
This piece seriously misrepresents a proposal for corporate tax reform advocated by Republicans in Congress as a route to tax imports. In fact, the tax has been developed by economists who are very much conventional free traders. The purpose is to simplify the tax code and eliminate the enormous waste associated with the gaming of our current system. The treatment of imports and exports is intended to make the tax symmetric with the treatment of value-added taxes in many U.S. trading partners. It is not intended as a protectionist measure to reduce the trade deficit.
Read More Leer más Join the discussion Participa en la discusión
Read More Leer más Join the discussion Participa en la discusión
The NYT devoted an article to Amazon’s plans for building out its warehouse network and managed to completely avoid any reference to Amazon’s efforts to avoid having to collect sales tax. For years, Amazon pursued a strategy of trying not to maintain a physical presence in states so that it could argue that it did not have to collect sales tax. This effectively gave Amazon an enormous taxpayer subsidy at the expense of conventional retailers.
Jeff Bezos has effectively been handed millions of years worth of food stamps by government regulations that allowed him to avoid collecting sales tax. The savings from not having to collect sales tax almost certainly exceeds Amazon’s cumulative profits since it was founded.
The NYT devoted an article to Amazon’s plans for building out its warehouse network and managed to completely avoid any reference to Amazon’s efforts to avoid having to collect sales tax. For years, Amazon pursued a strategy of trying not to maintain a physical presence in states so that it could argue that it did not have to collect sales tax. This effectively gave Amazon an enormous taxpayer subsidy at the expense of conventional retailers.
Jeff Bezos has effectively been handed millions of years worth of food stamps by government regulations that allowed him to avoid collecting sales tax. The savings from not having to collect sales tax almost certainly exceeds Amazon’s cumulative profits since it was founded.
Read More Leer más Join the discussion Participa en la discusión
Reporters always complain about not having enough space to give the full story, which makes it a mystery as to why they so frequently add the word “free” to references to trade policy. We got an example of this wasteful wordiness in a NYT article on Donald Trump’s decision to ignore nepotism and conflict-of-interest rules and appoint his son-in-law Jared Kushner as a top adviser.
The piece told readers that Kushner, along with other responsibilities, would work on “matters involving free trade.” The use of “free” in this context is misleading since much of the U.S. trade agenda is about increasing protectionism in the form of longer and stronger patent, copyright, and related protections. These protections are equivalent to tariffs of many thousand percent in the economic distortions they produce. They are 180 degrees at odds with free trade. There also has been little, if any, effort to remove protectionists barriers that benefit highly paid professionals, such as the ban on foreign doctors who have not completed a U.S. residency program.
For these reasons, it is inaccurate to include the word “free” in reference to U.S. trade policy. It is difficult to see why the NYT and other news outlets feel the need to do it.
Reporters always complain about not having enough space to give the full story, which makes it a mystery as to why they so frequently add the word “free” to references to trade policy. We got an example of this wasteful wordiness in a NYT article on Donald Trump’s decision to ignore nepotism and conflict-of-interest rules and appoint his son-in-law Jared Kushner as a top adviser.
The piece told readers that Kushner, along with other responsibilities, would work on “matters involving free trade.” The use of “free” in this context is misleading since much of the U.S. trade agenda is about increasing protectionism in the form of longer and stronger patent, copyright, and related protections. These protections are equivalent to tariffs of many thousand percent in the economic distortions they produce. They are 180 degrees at odds with free trade. There also has been little, if any, effort to remove protectionists barriers that benefit highly paid professionals, such as the ban on foreign doctors who have not completed a U.S. residency program.
For these reasons, it is inaccurate to include the word “free” in reference to U.S. trade policy. It is difficult to see why the NYT and other news outlets feel the need to do it.
Read More Leer más Join the discussion Participa en la discusión
Politico badly misled readers this morning in an article that said Trump “can’t simply divest from his businesses.” The article cited a number of experts who explained how difficult and complicated it would be for Trump to sell off his various businesses, many of which have complex ownership arrangements, along with debts and other legal obligations.
While selling Trump’s business enterprises in short order would be complicated, as I explained shortly after the election, this is not what is necessary for Donald Trump to avoid conflicts of interest. The key to the process I outline in that piece is that Trump arrange to get independent teams of auditors to provide assessments of the property. I suggested he go with the middle assessment provided by three teams of auditors. This would limit the likelihood of a major error in the assessment.
Trump would then buy an insurance policy that would guarantee him the estimate from this middle audit. The enterprises would then be turned over to an executor who would run and offload the businesses with the goal of maximizing the value. When the businesses are sold off the proceeds would be placed in a blind trust. If the cumulative value from the sales exceeds the estimate, then the proceeds go to a charity of Trump’s choosing, but not under his control. If the proceeds from the sales are less than the value of the estimate he collects on the insurance policy.
This is a process that should be fair to Donald Trump and can be done quickly. It eliminates his conflicts of interest as soon he buys the insurance policy. Trump should have been going in this direction the day after the election, in which case he surely would have an insurance policy in force by now. However, if he were to take steps to come clean now, he should still be able to end his conflicts in the first weeks of his presidency.
Politico badly misled readers this morning in an article that said Trump “can’t simply divest from his businesses.” The article cited a number of experts who explained how difficult and complicated it would be for Trump to sell off his various businesses, many of which have complex ownership arrangements, along with debts and other legal obligations.
While selling Trump’s business enterprises in short order would be complicated, as I explained shortly after the election, this is not what is necessary for Donald Trump to avoid conflicts of interest. The key to the process I outline in that piece is that Trump arrange to get independent teams of auditors to provide assessments of the property. I suggested he go with the middle assessment provided by three teams of auditors. This would limit the likelihood of a major error in the assessment.
Trump would then buy an insurance policy that would guarantee him the estimate from this middle audit. The enterprises would then be turned over to an executor who would run and offload the businesses with the goal of maximizing the value. When the businesses are sold off the proceeds would be placed in a blind trust. If the cumulative value from the sales exceeds the estimate, then the proceeds go to a charity of Trump’s choosing, but not under his control. If the proceeds from the sales are less than the value of the estimate he collects on the insurance policy.
This is a process that should be fair to Donald Trump and can be done quickly. It eliminates his conflicts of interest as soon he buys the insurance policy. Trump should have been going in this direction the day after the election, in which case he surely would have an insurance policy in force by now. However, if he were to take steps to come clean now, he should still be able to end his conflicts in the first weeks of his presidency.
Read More Leer más Join the discussion Participa en la discusión
Read More Leer más Join the discussion Participa en la discusión
December’s employment report showed that the average hourly wage has risen by 2.9 percent over the last year. This was widely reported as evidence that wage growth was accelerating. While the pace of wage growth may have picked up somewhat in recent months, it is not necessarily the case that the pace of compensation growth has risen to the same extent.
In recent years, the pace of benefit growth has been trailing the rate of wage growth, as employers cut back on the amount they pay for their workers’ health insurance. As a result, at least through the third quarter of the 2016 (4th quarter data are not yet available), the acceleration in compensation growth was less noticeable than the acceleration recently reported in wage growth. The year-over-year increase for the third quarter was 2.4 percent. This is up by roughly a percentage point from the lows hit in 2009, but down from 2.6 percent year-over-year pace in the fourth quarter of 2014.
December’s employment report showed that the average hourly wage has risen by 2.9 percent over the last year. This was widely reported as evidence that wage growth was accelerating. While the pace of wage growth may have picked up somewhat in recent months, it is not necessarily the case that the pace of compensation growth has risen to the same extent.
In recent years, the pace of benefit growth has been trailing the rate of wage growth, as employers cut back on the amount they pay for their workers’ health insurance. As a result, at least through the third quarter of the 2016 (4th quarter data are not yet available), the acceleration in compensation growth was less noticeable than the acceleration recently reported in wage growth. The year-over-year increase for the third quarter was 2.4 percent. This is up by roughly a percentage point from the lows hit in 2009, but down from 2.6 percent year-over-year pace in the fourth quarter of 2014.
Read More Leer más Join the discussion Participa en la discusión
Neil Irwin gave a reasonable assessment of the Obama administration’s record on job creation and wage growth, but there is one item that could use clarification. He notes the decline in prime-age male labor force participation, but then dismisses it as part of a long-term trend.
There are two points here that are worth noting. The participation rate of prime-age women had been rising prior to the recessions in 2001 and 2008–09. In both cases it was projected to continue to rise. Economists are happy to now say that the lower current rate is simply due to more prime-age women choosing not to work, but it is not obvious to me that economists today are better able to determine the underlying rate of labor force participation for prime-age women than economists working in 2000 or 2006. In other words, I don’t buy that the drop in women’s labor force participation is not the result of weak demand.
The other point is that labor force participation is actually an imperfect measure since the decision of someone to look for work, and therefore be classified as part of the labor force, depends in part on the generosity of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. (To qualify for benefits you have to say you are looking for work.) As requirements for UI have gotten stricter more people give up looking for work and drop out of the labor force.
If we look at prime-age employment rates (EPOP) we get a measure that is not sensitive to this problem. So, while Irwin tells us:
“The proportion of men 25 to 54 who are part of the labor force has fallen by 1.4 percentage points during the last eight years.
“What is less widely understood, though, is that this shift isn’t some new phenomenon of the Obama era. That same measure fell by 1.7 percentage points during the eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency. Even during the boom years of the Clinton administration, it fell by 0.9 percentage points.”
If we look at EPOPs we got a somewhat different picture, most notably during the Clinton years. From January 1993 to January of 2001 the EPOP for prime-age men rose by 2.1 percentage points. Even if we take the more reasonable peak to peak comparison we see little evidence of a downward trend with a peak in February of 1990 of 90.1 percent compared to a peak in January of 1999 of 89.7 percent. In other words, if we look at EPOPs, there is not much evidence of a downward trend in EPOPs in the decade prior to the 2001 recession.
The point is important since there are many people in policy positions who want to say that the current level of unemployment and employment rates is the best we can do and that the Fed should jack up rates to prevent the labor market from tightening further. (The same was true when the unemployment rate fell below 6.0 percent in 1995.)
If in fact there are still millions of people who would work if they saw jobs available, then we are needlessly depriving them of employment. Furthermore, by weakening the labor market, the Fed would be preventing tens of millions of workers from having sufficient bargaining power to secure rate increases and make up the ground loss in the recession.
Neil Irwin gave a reasonable assessment of the Obama administration’s record on job creation and wage growth, but there is one item that could use clarification. He notes the decline in prime-age male labor force participation, but then dismisses it as part of a long-term trend.
There are two points here that are worth noting. The participation rate of prime-age women had been rising prior to the recessions in 2001 and 2008–09. In both cases it was projected to continue to rise. Economists are happy to now say that the lower current rate is simply due to more prime-age women choosing not to work, but it is not obvious to me that economists today are better able to determine the underlying rate of labor force participation for prime-age women than economists working in 2000 or 2006. In other words, I don’t buy that the drop in women’s labor force participation is not the result of weak demand.
The other point is that labor force participation is actually an imperfect measure since the decision of someone to look for work, and therefore be classified as part of the labor force, depends in part on the generosity of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. (To qualify for benefits you have to say you are looking for work.) As requirements for UI have gotten stricter more people give up looking for work and drop out of the labor force.
If we look at prime-age employment rates (EPOP) we get a measure that is not sensitive to this problem. So, while Irwin tells us:
“The proportion of men 25 to 54 who are part of the labor force has fallen by 1.4 percentage points during the last eight years.
“What is less widely understood, though, is that this shift isn’t some new phenomenon of the Obama era. That same measure fell by 1.7 percentage points during the eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency. Even during the boom years of the Clinton administration, it fell by 0.9 percentage points.”
If we look at EPOPs we got a somewhat different picture, most notably during the Clinton years. From January 1993 to January of 2001 the EPOP for prime-age men rose by 2.1 percentage points. Even if we take the more reasonable peak to peak comparison we see little evidence of a downward trend with a peak in February of 1990 of 90.1 percent compared to a peak in January of 1999 of 89.7 percent. In other words, if we look at EPOPs, there is not much evidence of a downward trend in EPOPs in the decade prior to the 2001 recession.
The point is important since there are many people in policy positions who want to say that the current level of unemployment and employment rates is the best we can do and that the Fed should jack up rates to prevent the labor market from tightening further. (The same was true when the unemployment rate fell below 6.0 percent in 1995.)
If in fact there are still millions of people who would work if they saw jobs available, then we are needlessly depriving them of employment. Furthermore, by weakening the labor market, the Fed would be preventing tens of millions of workers from having sufficient bargaining power to secure rate increases and make up the ground loss in the recession.
Read More Leer más Join the discussion Participa en la discusión
Read More Leer más Join the discussion Participa en la discusión
