The Futility and Risk of Balancing US Trade

The Futility and Risk of Balancing US Trade

Author: Herbert Grubel

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 3

ISBN-13:

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US trade policies designed to increase employment by balancing international trade with the rest of the world will fail to reach their objectives as long as the current large fiscal deficit exists and net imports are needed to compensate for the resultant domestic excess of demand over production.While the government's trade policies will fail, they are endangering a profitable business that is based on the world's confidence in the future stability and value of the exchange rate, credit-worthiness of the federal government and the growth and relative size of the US economy in the world.This business involves the literal printing of US currency notes acquired by foreign agents who use it in legal, illegal and underground transactions as well as a store of value. In 2017 the holding of US currency (mostly $100 notes) held outside the United States increased by $200 billion. Foreigners paid for these notes in exchange for goods and services of equal value. Since it costs virtually nothing to produce the notes, the $200 billion is a net addition to US national income.Foreign central banks in 2017 held $6.1 trillion in short-term US Treasury securities requiring the payment of interest much lower than the interest on longer term assets and investments the US Treasure can acquire with the funds received upon the sale of the securities to the foreign central banks. Assuming the difference in earnings on short and long term assets to be four percent, the US Treasury in 2017 earned $244 billion, which is used to reduce the fiscal deficit.


Clashing Over Commerce

Clashing Over Commerce

Author: Douglas A. Irwin

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2017-11-29

Total Pages: 873

ISBN-13: 022639901X

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A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year: “Tells the history of American trade policy . . . [A] grand narrative [that] also debunks trade-policy myths.” —Economist Should the United States be open to commerce with other countries, or should it protect domestic industries from foreign competition? This question has been the source of bitter political conflict throughout American history. Such conflict was inevitable, James Madison argued in the Federalist Papers, because trade policy involves clashing economic interests. The struggle between the winners and losers from trade has always been fierce because dollars and jobs are at stake: depending on what policy is chosen, some industries, farmers, and workers will prosper, while others will suffer. Douglas A. Irwin’s Clashing over Commerce is the most authoritative and comprehensive history of US trade policy to date, offering a clear picture of the various economic and political forces that have shaped it. From the start, trade policy divided the nation—first when Thomas Jefferson declared an embargo on all foreign trade and then when South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union over excessive taxes on imports. The Civil War saw a shift toward protectionism, which then came under constant political attack. Then, controversy over the Smoot-Hawley tariff during the Great Depression led to a policy shift toward freer trade, involving trade agreements that eventually produced the World Trade Organization. Irwin makes sense of this turbulent history by showing how different economic interests tend to be grouped geographically, meaning that every proposed policy change found ready champions and opponents in Congress. Deeply researched and rich with insight and detail, Clashing over Commerce provides valuable and enduring insights into US trade policy past and present. “Combines scholarly analysis with a historian’s eye for trends and colorful details . . . readable and illuminating, for the trade expert and for all Americans wanting a deeper understanding of America’s evolving role in the global economy.” —National Review “Magisterial.” —Foreign Affairs


The Paradox of Power

The Paradox of Power

Author: David C. Gompert

Publisher: Government Printing Office

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9780160915734

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The second half of the 20th century featured a strategic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. That competition avoided World War III in part because during the 1950s, scholars like Henry Kissinger, Thomas Schelling, Herman Kahn, and Albert Wohlstetter analyzed the fundamental nature of nuclear deterrence. Decades of arms control negotiations reinforced these early notions of stability and created a mutual understanding that allowed U.S.-Soviet competition to proceed without armed conflict. The first half of the 21st century will be dominated by the relationship between the United States and China. That relationship is likely to contain elements of both cooperation and competition. Territorial disputes such as those over Taiwan and the South China Sea will be an important feature of this competition, but both are traditional disputes, and traditional solutions suggest themselves. A more difficult set of issues relates to U.S.-Chinese competition and cooperation in three domains in which real strategic harm can be inflicted in the current era: nuclear, space, and cyber. Just as a clearer understanding of the fundamental principles of nuclear deterrence maintained adequate stability during the Cold War, a clearer understanding of the characteristics of these three domains can provide the underpinnings of strategic stability between the United States and China in the decades ahead. That is what this book is about.


Pain Management and the Opioid Epidemic

Pain Management and the Opioid Epidemic

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2017-09-28

Total Pages: 483

ISBN-13: 0309459575

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Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.


A Question of Balance

A Question of Balance

Author: Thomas Mann

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2010-12-01

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0815705239

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In recent years, a more active and aggressive Congress has often sharply disagreed with the president over the ends and means of American foreign policy. The normal tensions that arise in the U.S. system of separate institutions sharing power have been exacerbated by the contemporary pattern of split-party control of the two branches. The ensuing conflict in areas ranging from Central America to China has stimulated a spirited debate about the constitutional authority and institutional competence of the president and Congress to make foreign policy. In this volume, noted authors, led by Thomas Mann, examine executive-legislative relations in five major policy areas: war powers, intelligence, arms control, diplomacy, and trade. They offer a fresh analysis of the sources and consequences of conflict between the President and Congress as well as constructive suggestions for strengthening each branch's comparative advantages.


Economics and National Security

Economics and National Security

Author: Dick K. Nanto

Publisher: DIANE Publishing

Published: 2011-03

Total Pages: 82

ISBN-13: 1437980805

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Contents: (1) National Security (NS) and the Congressional Interest; 21st Century Challenges to NS; (2) The Role of the Economy in U.S. NS; Macroecon. and Microecon. Issues in NS; (3) Economic Growth and Broad Conceptions of NS: Human Capital; Research, Innovation, Energy, and Space; (4) Globalization, Trade, Finance, and the G-20; Instability in the Global Economy; Savings and Exports; Boosting Domestic Demand Abroad; Open Foreign Markets to U.S. Products and Services; Build Cooperation with International Partners; Deterring Threats to the International Financial System; (5) Democracy, Human Rights, and Development Aid; Sustainable Development. Charts and tables. This is a print on demand publication.


Risk, Uncertainty and Profit

Risk, Uncertainty and Profit

Author: Frank H. Knight

Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.

Published: 2006-11-01

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1602060053

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A timeless classic of economic theory that remains fascinating and pertinent today, this is Frank Knight's famous explanation of why perfect competition cannot eliminate profits, the important differences between "risk" and "uncertainty," and the vital role of the entrepreneur in profitmaking. Based on Knight's PhD dissertation, this 1921 work, balancing theory with fact to come to stunning insights, is a distinct pleasure to read. FRANK H. KNIGHT (1885-1972) is considered by some the greatest American scholar of economics of the 20th century. An economics professor at the University of Chicago from 1927 until 1955, he was one of the founders of the Chicago school of economics, which influenced Milton Friedman and George Stigler.


The Paradox of Power

The Paradox of Power

Author: David C. Gompert

Publisher: Department of the Army

Published: 2011-12-27

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13:

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Looking deeply into the matter of strategic vulnerability, the authors address questions that this vulnerability poses: Do conditions exist for Sino-U.S. mutual deterrence in these realms? Might the two states agree on reciprocal restraint? What practical measures might build confidence in restraint? How would strategic restraint affect Sino-U.S. relations as well as security in and beyond East Asia?


The Globalization Paradox

The Globalization Paradox

Author: Dani Rodrik

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2012-05-17

Total Pages: 442

ISBN-13: 0191634255

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For a century, economists have driven forward the cause of globalization in financial institutions, labour markets, and trade. Yet there have been consistent warning signs that a global economy and free trade might not always be advantageous. Where are the pressure points? What could be done about them? Dani Rodrik examines the back-story from its seventeenth-century origins through the milestones of the gold standard, the Bretton Woods Agreement, and the Washington Consensus, to the present day. Although economic globalization has enabled unprecedented levels of prosperity in advanced countries and has been a boon to hundreds of millions of poor workers in China and elsewhere in Asia, it is a concept that rests on shaky pillars, he contends. Its long-term sustainability is not a given. The heart of Rodrik’s argument is a fundamental 'trilemma': that we cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, national self-determination, and economic globalization. Give too much power to governments, and you have protectionism. Give markets too much freedom, and you have an unstable world economy with little social and political support from those it is supposed to help. Rodrik argues for smart globalization, not maximum globalization.