Obama Strikes Out on Asian Trade Negotiations
A metaphor for President Obama’s recent trip to Asia was the widely aired game of soccer he had with a Japanese robot. In essence, Japan made Obama kick the impending Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — which unites 12 economies around the Pacific Rim — down the road as trade talks stalled. How important is TPP to American trade? The Peterson Institute for International Economics projects that it could cause American exports to rise by $123.5 billion per year by 2025.... Read More
Trade, Not War, Achieves Better Results
In my book, Conscientious Equity, I discuss that when nations have free trade agreements with each other, they historically have not gone to war. Once the road for negotiations is open to trade, it remains open for other serious considerations. Equally important is that free trade agreements not only benefit businesses, but a country’s entire population as well. Trade leads to economic freedom, which helps reduce poverty and corruption. So it was with great interest... Read More
It’s Not Just World Trade — It’s Human Development
If you think of world trade as the exchange of products for money, its real power is the exchange of ideas to create innovative breakthroughs. In fact, a recent Wall Street Journal story characterized international trade “as the most momentous innovation of the human species; it led to the invention of invention.” The editors suggest that the new buzz word is “collective intelligence.” They define this as the notion that what determines the inventiveness and rate of... Read More
