The numbers don't lie. Find the new Index here.

This good news for human progress is documented in the 2007 Heritage Foundation/The Wall Street Journal 2007 Index of Economic Freedom, released today. Neither another year of Islamic terrorism, nor record high oil prices, nor fear mongering on Capitol Hill about the China peril have been able to reverse a gradual global shift that reflects the basic human longing for individual liberty. While not all of mankind is participating in this advance, in those places where freedom has increased, people are becoming decidedly better off.

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Posted at 9:55 AM in Trade by Andrew Grossman [?] | Permalink

Good news, but is it really a good time to be optimistic about the potential for trade deals in the new Congress?

With their rhetoric about helping the world's poor, Democrats should consider trade deals a no-brainer. But try telling that to the labor unions...

But Chavez aside, things are not as bleak as they might seem. Particularly telling is the behavior of Ecuador and Bolivia. Although both of their new leaders are seen as Chavez's closest South American allies and like to talk his game, neither is about to sever trade relations with the United States.

With the election behind him, Correa says he hopes to negotiate a long-term extension of trade preferences with the United States. Last week, Bolivian Economic Minister Luis Arce, in Washington to lobby Congress to extend trade preferences to Bolivia, told reporters that his government would consider signing a free trade agreement with the United States some day. Before such an accord could be considered, he said he would prefer an interim arrangement that would take into consideration Bolivia's disadvantages and inability to compete with a much richer nation.

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Posted at 2:35 PM in Trade by Andrew Grossman [?] | Permalink

Don Boudreaux doing what he does best.

These activities employ workers here at home and raise their wages. Mountains of empirical evidence show that protectionism is economically destructive. The facts also show that protectionism is inconsistent with a desire for peace - a desire admirably expressed by many Democrats during the recent campaigns.

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Posted at 10:19 AM in Trade by Andrew Grossman [?] | Permalink

Why do we choose to import cocoa, coffee and spices rather than produce them ourselves? The answer is that it is cheaper to do so. That means we enjoy a higher standard of living than if we tried to produce them ourselves. If we can enjoy, say, coffee, at a cheaper price than producing it ourselves, we have more money left over to buy other goods. That principle not only applies to cocoa, coffee and spices. It's a general principle: If a good can be purchased more cheaply abroad, we enjoy a higher standard of living by trading than we would by producing it ourselves.

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Posted at 12:02 PM in Trade by Andrew Grossman [?] | Permalink

But he said that protectionist sentiment was preventing China from doing more to open itself up to competition, and was in turn breeding protectionist sentiment in America.

?Ironically,? he said, ?this protectionist sentiment comes from many quarters in those nations ? including in the United States and China ? which have benefited the most from the economic growth generated by global competition.?

Mr. Paulson said the United States would not ?heed the siren songs of protectionism and isolationism,? but that China had to do its part by changing its heavily subsidized industries and farms, allowing capital to flow freely and guiding Chinese to spend more and save less ? a step that economists say would increase imports.

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Posted at 11:16 AM in Trade by J. Lawrence Scholer [?] | Permalink

Then, of course, there's the environment. Subsidies wreak havoc on the ecosystem. One small example: There's a 6,000-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, larger than Connecticut. It's so depleted of oxygen because of algae blooms caused by fertilizer runoff that shrimp and crabs at the Louisiana shore literally try to leap from the water to breathe. This is endangering the profitable Gulf fishing industry. Most of the fertilizer comes from a few Midwestern counties that receive billions in subsidies (more than $30 billion from 1997 to 2002, according to the Environmental Working Group).

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Posted at 1:59 PM in Federal Spending, Environment, Trade by Andrew Grossman [?] | Permalink

The U.S. Trade Representative is pleased to announce an important step toward free trade in lumber, if by "free trade" you mean "trade governed with an byzantine system of taxes and regulations."

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Posted at 1:58 PM in Trade by Andrew Grossman [?] | Permalink

Economists have determined over and over again that the more ambitious the opening of trade flows, the greater the results. The data also make it clear that the most effective way for developed countries to assist developing countries through trade is to lower agricultural tariffs, says U.S. trade representative Susan Schwab.

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Posted at 2:58 PM in Trade by Andrew Grossman [?] | Permalink

In other words, success in the Doha round of international trade talks would give the world more every year than what Buffett can give once after a lifetime of being the world's most successful investor.

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Posted at 5:13 PM in Trade by Andrew Grossman [?] | Permalink

A great column by Nicholas Kristoff on the benefits of sweatshops to their workers. Lots of angry letters will be forthcoming, I predict.

Africa desperately needs Western help in the form of schools, clinics and sweatshops.

Oops, don't spill your coffee. We in the West mostly despise sweatshops as exploiters of the poor, while the poor themselves tend to see sweatshops as opportunities.

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Posted at 11:27 AM in Africa, Trade by Andrew Grossman [?] | Permalink

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