The federal government is loosening its restrictions on importing pork rinds from Brazil. Rudolph Foods, Inc., an Ohio company, owns a factory in Brazil, and stands to benefit from the ruling.

Competitors are up in arms. Citing exotic illnesses like foot-and-mouth disease, one competitor told The Wall Street Journal, “It just takes one pig” that is infected to spread a disease… “The risk is low, but the consequences are really high.”

If that is his strongest argument, then the case against liberalization…

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Ancient Roman consuls – equivalent to our presidents – wore togas edged in purple to mark their high status. As Republic became Empire, new emperors were said to “ascend to the purple.”

Purple clothing was a status symbol for most of human history. It was the ancient equivalent of the Mercedes-Benz. Originally discovered in the glands of shellfish (reputedly by Heracles’s dog!), it took 12,000 of the creatures to get just 1.5 grams of dye. Purple garments could be as rare…

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Consumers have been buying a lot of tires made in China lately. Naturally, U.S.-based tire manufacturers are upset at their competitors’ success. Fortunately, there are two ways for the aggrieved American firms to ease their troubled minds:

1: Make better tires for less money. Give consumers a reason to buy American tires rather than Chinese. Compete, in other words.

2: Don’t compete. Too much hard work. Instead, persuade some politicians to place a 35 percent protective tariff on competitors’ tires. Price them…

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The $787,000,000,000 stimulus contains a provision requiring the Department of Homeland Security to buy US-made textiles. Basically, that means TSA uniforms will go up in price.

Let’s look at the logic behind this. If DHS would just pay more money for the same product, leaving less money left over for purchasing other goods, we can stimulate the economy. Jobs will be created or saved.

Amazing that some people still think that restricting trade and voluntarily paying higher prices will increase prosperity.

…

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Your host Richard Morrison brings you Episode 51 of the LibertyWeek podcast, along with special guest co-host Jeremy Lott and Fellow in Regulatory Studies Ryan Young. We start with Judge Sotomayor in the Senate hot seat, a privacy threat from “smart” passports and why Rep. Dan Lipinski has decided your suitcase is too big. The discussion continues with Rep. John Murtha’s expanding corruption scandal, beer news from the Beaver State and the arrival of Wal-Mart in India. We wrap up with…

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At the Bonn, Germany, UN meetings on global warming issues, India urged rich countries not to use “green” protectionism by imposing carbon tariffs on carbon-intensive products from poor countries.  India’s special envoy to the talks, Shyam Saran, was quoted as saying:

“That is simply not acceptable, that is protectionism.”

“We should be very careful that we don’t start going in that direction. We welcome any kind of arrangement … where there can be a sharing of experience or best practices for any of…

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In the wake of the release of the Waxman-Markey energy bill, many commenters have pointed to the drastic restrictions on domestic energy use to address greenhouse gas emissions, while some, like CEI, have pointed to the huge economic costs that would result — costs that would be paid for by consumers and in terms of reduced manufacturing and jobs.  Few have noted a further economic consequence — the possible disruption of the world trading system because of the bill’s endorsement of…

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It seemed like California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t have guts, despite his super-macho screen image.  Yesterday, however, he wrote to  members of the California Congressional Delegation, the country’s most powerful delegation in terms of the key leadership positions they hold, where he urged them to restore the pilot Mexican trucking program to avert trade retaliation.

Schwarzenegger pointed out how Congress’ termination of the program will hurt the economy and jobs, particularly in California:

. . . we must not allow safety to…

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I admire Dan Ikenson’s work on trade issues at Cato. Usually I agree with his views. A notable exception is his post yesterday on Cato’s blog – “Too much hysteria about trade.”

No, Dan wasn’t hitting the current climate of China-bashing or the Teamsters’ on-going campaign against Mexican trucking and NAFTA or the “Buy American” provisions in the stimulus bill. Dan instead was taking to task newspapers like the Washington Post that have been warning readers about the rising tide of protectionism in this world…

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Good article today by Bloomberg columnist Michael Sesit, who lays out the protectionist actions many countries are taking in the midst of the worldwide economic slump and warns that accelerated trade protectionism would plunge the world into a depression.

Unless governments get serious about arresting the trend soon, the chatter about 2009 morphing into a replay of the Great Depression will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. The U.S. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 increased duties on more than 20,000 goods, inviting retaliation by…

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The European Union is threatening a trade war over provisions in the $800 billion “stimulus” package backed by Obama and Congressional leaders. The Great Depression resulted partly from the trade war that followed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff signed into law by Herbert Hoover, which Congressional leaders wrongly thought would help end the recession that followed the 1929 stock market collapse.

The stimulus package also contains tons of red tape and strings attached to the money it showers on state governments, in order to…

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Rhetoric is a noble field — the ability to use language skillfully to clarify and justify a policy. But the political use of language is often used In a far less honest fashion. Consider the language of some policy positions advanced today:

Fair Trade: No one likes to be seen as a protectionist.  Protectionism—the idea that a nation should help its own industries by taxing their foreign competitors—is now widely viewed as a discredited policy.  This is largely due to the…

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It’s timely and needed — a new publication gives leading trade economists’ views on “What world leaders must do to halt the spread of protectionism.” In the publication by VoxEU.org (run by The Centre for Economic Policy Research), all of the experts caution that in times of recession, countries often attempt to fend off competition by trade protectionism; to do so, however, would be a huge mistake and plunge the global economy further downward, particularly hurting developing countries.

Instead, these experts argue, deal…

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