by Dan Mitchell | Dec 31, 2019 | Big Government, Blogs, Europe, Government Spending, Trade
Time for my annual column highlighting the “Best” and “Worst” policy developments of the year, a tradition I sort of started in 2012 and definitely did in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. I’m trying to be a glass-half-full kind of guy, so we’ll start with the...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 16, 2019 | Blogs, Trade
One of my big 2018 worries was that Trump would wreck NAFTA. We dodged that bullet, but my two cents is that the new deal is underwhelming. The bottom line is that his revisions to the pact – which is now called USMCA – create some new barriers to trade. But there...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 13, 2019 | Blogs, Trade
Because of Trump’s poor grasp of trade issues, I warned at the end of July that trade negotiations with China might yield “something gimmicky (like purchasing X tons of soybeans or importing Y number of cars).” Well, Trump announced an agreement yesterday and I can...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 8, 2019 | Blogs, Trade
Earlier this year, I shared a short video about the benefits of the World Trade Organization. Here’s a more substantive version (though still only four minutes). I wanted to keep the video short, so I focused primarily on how the United States disproportionately...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 24, 2019 | Blogs, Economics, Trade
According to the most-recent edition of Economic Freedom of the World, Brazil is only ranked #120, which is lower than nations such as Greece, Haiti, and China. Brazil gets a horrible grade on regulation, and it’s also in the bottom half of all nations when looking...
