In The News

Is Larry Summers the Canary in the Mine?

Devesh Kapur May 14, 2008
One-time champions of free trade, economic liberalization and globalization – like Larry Summers, former treasury secretary with the Clinton administration – now unveil their doubts. Globalization presents competition, and perhaps potential threat for the US is how a trio of analysts summarizes Summers’ argument in an opinion essay for the Financial Times. His “apparently nationalist argument is...

A Strategy to Promote Healthy Globalization

Lawrence Summers May 14, 2008
US workers and voters are impatient with globalization – and the highly skilled, productive workers in the West do not want any competition to dent their top wages. “[Workers’] effort is complemented by capital, broadly defined to include equipment, managerial expertise, corporate culture, infrastructure and the capacity for innovation,” writes Lawrence Summers, Harvard professor and former...

Battleground Over Globalization

Robert McMahom April 22, 2008
The presidential candidates repeatedly describe some voters as “real Americans” and “the lifeblood of this country.” Even for those voters, American” issues are international issues. Debates over NAFTA take center stage in industrial hotspots like Pennsylvania and Ohio, where steelworkers and other blue-collar communities harbor justifiable fears over how the trade deal has affected the US...

Democrats Threaten NAFTA, But Pact Is Here to Stay

Andrew C. Schneider April 7, 2008
Candidates promise to re-open a free-trade agreement like NAFTA – to attract voters from states with high unemployment rate, where concern about the loss of high-paying manufacturing jobs is rampant. “Renegotiation would cause more problems than it would solve,” explains Andrew Schneider, associate editor of the Kiplinger Letter. In reopening the agreement, the US would not be alone in demanding...

No Break for Globalization

Nayan Chanda March 25, 2008
With unemployment and foreclosures skyrocketing, trade deficit woes, more and more Americans are becoming protectionist. Most Americans agree that foreign trade is reducing the demand for American-made goods, resulting in numerous job losses. While there is no question that trade has played a role in shrinking manufacturing jobs, Nayan Chanda points out that "it is only a minor part of the...

The Lure of Protectionism in Ohio

Susan Froetschel, Morgan Robinson March 3, 2008
Ohio, part of the country’s Rust Belt, was a swing state in the 2004 US presidential election, and the state’s voters will play a big role deciding the 2008 Democratic nominee and probably the next president of the United States. Their choice might set the US agenda for global economy. As one of the country’s leading manufacturing states, Ohio suffers as companies shift factory jobs to low-wage...

Promise of US Jobs Lures Migrants Who Vowed to Stay in Mexico

Alfredo Corchado February 25, 2008
Immigrants who resent harsh treatment in the US, particularly those who lack documentation, often return to Mexico. But the Mexican economy offers little in the way of jobs, wages or benefits available in the US. Individuals long to work and hometowns rely on remittances sent from the north. The Mexicans may return home and vow to stay, but many cannot resist pleas from friends in Texas and...