ShareThe Canadian daily National Post has a good piece out today that highlights how the ‘Buy American’ provision is being seen in Canada.  Many see it as an affront that America could and would favor domestic firms over those of its largest trading partner and next-door neighbor despite the North American Free Trade Agreement.
For the [...]

ShareChina on Friday accused the US of protectionist and biased trade policies less than a week before president Barack Obama’s first visit to Beijing.
In a stinging rebuke to Washington, China’s commerce ministry promised to take measures to protect its domestic industry after the US slapped anti-dumping duties on $2.6bn of Chinese steel pipe imports. [...]

ShareI have been reading press accounts of the GM decision to back out of the Opel/Vauxhall sale to the Magna/Sberbank consortium from various countries. There are a lot of different perspectives on this event in the U.S., Belgium, Spain, Germany, Russia, the U.K and elsewhere, because a lot of players are involved.
The conclusion I [...]

ShareMarshall Auerback here. You saw Ed’s last post on China, quoting from Peter Tasker, one of the top analysts in Japan when I lived there. I take Peter’s insights very seriously. His analysis implies something a lot more in regards to currencies, trade and credit.
China’s bank credit expansion is so great that even if [...]

ShareChina has sent yet another public signal that it is unhappy with the U.S. and its trade policy by prepping an investigation into alleged illegal auto subsidies by the U.S. government.  The timing of this announcement puts a spotlight on the bailout of GMAC, the auto financial company which effectively has been nationalized the firm. [...]

ShareIn what looks to be a central line of attack in the quest to re-balance the global economy, the Treasury Department has ratcheted up the rhetoric against China’s currency peg. The Treasury’s semiannual report to Congress slammed the Chinese for their lack of exchange rate ‘flexibility,’ but stopped well short of accusing the Chinese of [...]

ShareI have to admit to hyping the debate now swirling about protectionism. I believe that tariffs are not a very good solution to a trade problem as they are likely to result in retaliation and/or escalation. Moreover, they end up protecting small groups at the expense of higher prices for everyone else.  That is why [...]

ShareNow that President Obama has signalled his willingness to punish the Chinese for dumping on tires, a whole host of other industries are likely to file their own ‘copy-cat’ complaints.
Reuters says:
President Barack Obama’s decision to restrict tire imports from China after union workers complained of a surge could lead to copycat cases in areas such [...]

ShareIn 2002, the global economy was weak and equity markets around the world were at multi-year lows following the greatest equity bubble and bust in world history. Many policy makers including Alan Greenspan, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, feared a deflationary spiral of Great Depression proportions resulting from the stock market collapse.
To prevent such [...]

ShareWhen the stimulus bill was being crafted, I wrote three posts lamenting the protectionist Buy American provision attached to the bill.

‘Buy American’ will translate into a 21st century Smoot-Hawley
The U.S. is exporting unemployment with ‘Buy America’
Canada is furious about U.S. protectonism

The last of these three demonstrated that the provision was needlessly creating lots of ill [...]