A blog by Jonathan Conning of the Economics Department at Hunter College of the City University of New York. This blog comes back to life when I happen to be teaching a course on trade and/or development but at other times may lay dormant.
The US Trade Deficit is half oil
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We are a very oil dependent country, as Matt Yglesias points out. Note also on the graph how much the US trade deficit improved with the recession: when consumption falls, so does import consumption.
Help the World’s Poor: Buy Some New Clothes : "Back to school shopping leads many people to buy apparel that was made in sweatshops. Rather than feel guilty for “exploiting” poor workers, shoppers should rejoice. Their spending is some of the best aid we can give to people in poorer countries." So says Benjamin Powell on the always provocative AidWatch blog. Liberal New York Times columnist and Economics Nobel Prize international economist Paul Krugman wrote an earlier and now often cited statement along similar lines titled " In Praise of Cheap Labor: Bad jobs at bad wages are better than no jobs at all ." Do you agree with these arguments?
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman writes about US tariffs on Brazilian sugar ethanol and calls them "dumb": Thanks to pressure from Midwest farmers and agribusinesses, who want to protect the U.S. corn ethanol industry from competition from Brazilian sugar ethanol, we have imposed a stiff tariff to keep it out. We do this even though Brazilian sugar ethanol provides eight times the energy of the fossil fuel used to make it, while American corn ethanol provides only 1.3 times the energy of the fossil fuel used to make it. We do this even though sugar ethanol reduces greenhouses gases more than corn ethanol. And we do this even though sugar cane ethanol can easily be grown in poor tropical countries in Africa or the Caribbean, and could actually help alleviate their poverty. Yes, you read all this right. We tax imported sugar ethanol, which could finance our poor friends, but we don’t tax imported crude oil, which definitely finances our rich enemies. We’d rather power ant
From the BBC Mr Bush met bosses from DaimlerChrysler Ford and GM, all struggling against Asian rivals, to discuss concerns over growing imports and health costs. The companies, which spend more on health costs than on steel, want action to combat the weak Japanese yen. The Financial Times adds: Toyota's report last week of record third-quarter profits has fuelled the Detroit carmakers' accusations that Japanese and South Korean exporters are benefiting from currency manipulation by their governments. The three companies' chief economists met senior US Treasury officials recently to underline their concern. UPDATE : George in 740 writes with some further reporting from the Wall Street Journal indicating the nature of the financial crises this firms are beginning to face: GM and Ford, Hungry for Cash, Pledge Assets to Secure Loans By JEFFREY C. MCCRACKEN, JOHN D. STOLL and JOHN D. MCKINNON November 15, 2006; Page A1 Facing a deep financial crisis, Detroit 's two top auto
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