Until Jan. 23, 2017, the United States had a major free trade agreement with Japan and 10 other countries called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But on his first day in office, President Donald Trump withdrew from the TPP, which had been signed just a few months earlier by President Barack Obama as his signature piece of trade policy. Trump was fulfilling one of his first campaign promises, having railed against the deal for years. At the signing of his Executive Order pulling the U.S. out of the TPP, Trump declared that it was a “great thing for the American worker, what [...]
As part of his ongoing tirade against immigration, President Donald Trump has threatened to shut down the southern border completely. First, he said he would take action if Mexico doesn’t stop the flow of migrants; later, his demand was Mexico ending drug trafficking. Maybe it is both, though neither is feasible. When there was a hue and cry about the extreme disruption that would ensue from closing the border, Trump retreated, saying he would give the Mexican government a year to meet his demands before taking any action. He also downplayed that threat and raised the specter of imposing a [...]
President Donald Trump likes to claim that the tariffs he has imposed on steel, aluminum, washing machines, solar panels and a variety of other imports are forcing foreigners to pay for the privilege of selling their goods in the American market. But what does the data say? Are American firms and consumers in fact paying the price? Two new empirical studies shed light on the answer, and, unfortunately for the president, neither one supports his position. The authors of these studies have carefully parsed the data and analyzed the distribution of the tariffs’ costs—internationally and among various groups and regions [...]
