While this speech is mostly hogwash, I am surprised and delighted to be able to find one thing to praise in it:
Later this week, I will work with my colleagues at the G20 to phase out fossil fuel subsidies so that we can better address our climate challenge
This is the right thing to do, for reasons I explained in my recent paper co-written with Sterling Burnett of NCPA (extract follows jump).
While many governments of developed nations argue for a worldwide reduction…
Today, Wall Street Journal reports that a Miami court has set meeting Friday between the IRS and UBS to look at where they are in settlement negotiations over the case of the IRS demanding that the Swiss bank turn over the names of more then 50,000 U.S. citizens alleged to be tax evaders.
As I have said in past posts on this issue (in which I have been admittedly hard on UBS-but with a purpose), and as UBS seems to now be reiterating, turning…
I revoke my previous apology to the Swiss, and reiterate my previous disapproval. As evidenced by the latest outcome in the U.S. tax case involving UBS, we have moved beyond troubling and into something much worse.
...the world’s largest wealth manager in terms of assets, agreed to pay a $780 million fine and disclose information about some of its clients to settle a landmark U.S. tax case.
As I said in my older post: “In direct contradiction to their own legal view of tax evasion. …
As President-elect Obama fills his Cabinet and top-advisor positions, he has not yet named a U.S. Trade Representative, but, as CEI noted, he purportedly has offered the job to Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA). Becerra had joined the chorus to redo the North America Free Trade Agreement, even though he did vote for the trade pact in 1993.
To revisit NAFTA and try to include protectionist measures would be a huge mistake. What many NAFTA critics may not realize is that the trade agreement benefits…
During the presidential primaries and in the campaigns, there was a lot of rhetoric about the need for “fair” trade instead of free trade. Candidates were in a populist mode, catering to critical manufacturing states that have lost jobs and serving up trade as the villain.
Now that Senator Barack Obama is the President-elect, there is renewed speculation on what path his administration will take on international trade. Will he make good on his campaign rhetoric that echoed the Democratic platform’s call for renegotiation…
If goods do not cross borders, then soldiers will.
It’s an old saying. Maybe even a cliché. But there is some truth to it. What wonderful news, then, that India and Pakistan have re-opened a trade route through the Kashmir region.
Soldiers have been crossing that border for 60 years. Replacing those soldiers with spices, apples, and other, ahem, non-fatal goods will have two positive effects. First, those goods will become cheaper and more abundant in India and Pakistan.
Second, the new trade route…
Chevron has plastered a series of posters all over the Washington, D.C. metro system as part of an advertising campaign titled, “will-you-join-us?” Join Chevron how? By becoming an employee and helping Chevron produce the petroleum products consumers need? Nope. By buying Chevron stock and becoming a shareholder? No again. By joining the fight against anti-consumer policies like oil drilling bans and carbon cap-and-trade schemes? Not a chance.
Each poster features an earnest-looking adult who vows to consume less energy—or at…
As yesterday’s New York Times reports. Lost in the universal focus on the credit crisis, we have seen a somewhat troubling change taking place in Switzerland’s longtime bank secrecy laws.
Switzerland’s tax authorities, under pressure from a growing United States investigation into the Swiss bank giant UBS, are expected to hand over confidential data on wealthy American clients of UBS to the Justice Department, two people briefed on the matter said Tuesday.
The move would represent a significant shift in Switzerland’s banking…
Some thoughts on why our side is losing in its efforts to promote and defend free trade:
From the time of the GATT onward, the primary approach to trade liberalization has been based on mercantilistic arguments. What will another nation sacrifice to gain the right to benefit our consumers? That approach — always based on real-politics - not intellectual considerations arguably worked in a world where rent-seeking was limited, where the trade negotiation entity (the GATT) was weak, when the focus…
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