All Posts Tagged With: "foreign trade"

The Balance-of-Payments Deficit: Not to Worry

Quick. What’s the trade deficit between California and the rest of the world? Don’t try Googling it because you won’t find an answer. No government agency—or private entity—computes the dollar value of goods that people in the rest of the world sell to or buy from Californians. Why not? Because it doesn’t matter. Yet governments [...]

5Jan2010 | David R. Henderson | 7 comments | Continued

On Trade and Currency Manipulation

Americans are importing more from China. Protectionists abhor this fact. Explaining that American imports from China reflect nothing more sinister than the voluntary choices of American consumers does not satisfy simple-minded protectionists. It is sufficient that these imports take business away from some American producers. In the minds of simple-minded protectionists, international trade is harmful [...]

5Jan2010 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 10 comments | Continued

Globalization: Extending the Market and Human Well-Being

Much of the prosperity of today’s world arises from the division of labor. Globalization, by extending the market’s scope to the entire world, enables the division of labor to become as developed as the current world population allows. However, to be truly in the interests of consumers and a boon to economic prosperity, globalization needs to occur spontaneously through the workings of the unhampered free market. Government attempts to meddle with this process—even with the sincere intent to facilitate or accelerate it—will only undermine its efficacy at benefiting us all.

1Apr2009 | Gennady Stolyarov II | 2 comments | Continued

Dry-Cleaning Economics in One Lesson

Another day, another news story about economic wackiness. Gas prices rise, the dollar sinks, and stores are limiting rice sales. What could be next? Clothes hangers. Yes, clothes hangers. Marie Sledge, co-owner of Rome (Georgia) Cleaners, states, “Hangers last year at this time were $28 a box, where now they are $56.” News reports indicate [...]

1Sep2008 | E. Frank Stephenson | 0 comments | Continued

Adam Smith in China

James Dorn is a China specialist at the Cato Institute and professor of economics at Towson University in Maryland. A shorter version of this article first appeared in the Times of India, January 24, 2007. China’s transition from plan to market since 1978 has not only increased prosperity but also has led to a new [...]

1May2007 | James A. Dorn | 2 comments | Continued

Buying Foreign Goods Saves American Jobs

Roger Simmermaker of Orlando, Florida, is leading a national campaign to encourage Americans to “Buy American.” In 1996 Simmermaker wrote How Americans Can Buy American, which recently was published in a second edition.1 The book, as its title implies, provides guidance on how to identify and buy American products in today’s integrated global marketplace. Simmermaker [...]

1Jun2004 | Robert Carreira | 35 comments | Continued

A Deficit of Understanding II

Writing in the January/February 2004 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Sherle Schwenninger of the New America Foundation joined Warren Buffett and scores of politicians in bewailing America’s trade deficit. Like his intellectual compatriots, Schwenninger simply assumes that the trade deficit is debt and that it’s ominous. It is neither. A trade deficit exists for the [...]

1Jun2004 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 3 comments | Continued

A Race to the Bottom

Barry Loberfeld is a freelance writer. In a letter dated December 2000 and addressed, “Dear Friend of US/LEAP,” Stephen Coats, executive director of the U.S./Labor Education in the Americas Project, spoke of various purported “victories and losses in the struggle for worker justice in the global economy.” Among the “losses” was what he called the [...]

1Jul2001 | Barry Loberfeld | 0 comments | Continued

Economics on Trial

“In the excitement over the unfolding of his scientific and technical powers, modern man has built a system of production that ravishes nature and a type of society that mutilates man.” —E. F. Schumacher[1] The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, Updated In 1956, Ludwig von Mises countered myriad arguments against free enterprise in his insightful book, The Anti-Capitalistic [...]

1Nov2000 | Mark Skousen | 0 comments | Continued

Politics and Foreign Trade

The case for free trade is overwhelming, both theoretically and empirically. My last two columns developed the theoretical case, which is based on the concepts of opportunity costs and comparative advantage. Even if the people of a country have an absolute advantage in producing everything, they still gain from foreign trade because they cannot have [...]

1Dec1999 | Dwight R. Lee | 0 comments | Continued

The Trade Deficit: Much Ado About Nothing

I have a dirty little secret that I want to share with readers of The Freeman. It’s about a nagging problem I have had for a long time. It just never seems to go away. Heretofore, I have not wanted to admit to this problem in public because the newspaper headlines remind me monthly that [...]

1Dec1998 | Lawrence W. Reed | 0 comments | Continued

Jobs and Trade

Unemployment is the great puzzle of our time. It perplexes politicians, confuses officials, and even entangles economists. It persists and continues to grow despite all the government programs that mean to reduce it and the tax dollars spent to alleviate it. Some writers continue to echo the teaching of Karl Marx. For them, capitalism always [...]

1Jul1996 | Hans F. Sennholz | 0 comments | Continued

Japan: Who Governs? The Rise of the Development State

“Trade between the United States and Japan can be fair only if we level the playing field.” So say countless politicians and others who decry the obstacles Japan erects to sales of American products in Japanese markets. Threats last year to impose 100 percent tariffs on Japanese luxury car imports are just one of many [...]

1Feb1996 | Russell Shannon | 0 comments | Continued

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