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Twenty years into the foolish experiment of Chinese ascension to the World Trade Organization, America now has a strategic peer whose values and goals in conflict with our own. We have committed to an international system on the assumption that we would set its course, and face a hoisting by our own petard if adversaries gain leverage within its institutions.

After decades of foreign policy debates centered on dealing with states and actors far weaker than ourselves, the United States has lost the “finger tip feel” and grammar for determining how to respond to a nation that is comparable to us in power.

Regulatory skeptics make a fundamental mistake in assuming that the United States can freely choose between greater state intervention in digital markets and a continued laissez-faire approach.

A guide to what is happening in the semiconductor industry and how the U.S. fell behind its competitors in the global race for leadership.

It may come as a surprise to many readers that arguments about radically altering the concept of corporate taxation do not hail exclusively from right-wing libertarian think tanks.

Ambassador Robert E. Lighthizer joins American Compass executive director Oren Cass for a conversation about his work as the U.S. Trade Representative, the overhaul of America’s economic relationship with China, successes achieved and lessons learned, and key challenges facing the Biden administration.

Former U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Robert E. Lighthizer joins American Compass executive director Oren Cass for a conversation about trade policy, in his first interview since leaving the administration.

Immigration expansionists face a difficult challenge: they support high levels of immigration—including many more less-skilled immigrants—for a variety of legitimate reasons, but the less-skilled immigration has detrimental economic effects on Read more…

A funny thing happened in the days after we published “What Happened: The Trump Presidency in Review.” The collection’s emphasis on the success of economic policies that pushed the labor market toward full employment attracted substantial interest from proponents of looser fiscal and monetary policy. But that “strange new respect” came with the mandatory caveat that we were still wrong to suggest increased immigration enforcement and a slower inflow of new workers might be part of the same package.

Although neoliberal globalists are often said to be opposed to industrial policy and strategic trade, that is not necessarily true.  Neoliberals of the kind who have dominated U.S. policy under the two Bushes, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are not orthodox anti-government libertarians.  They support a particular kind of industrial policy, whose emblem is not the American eagle but the Japanese goose.

Much as the Brexit referendum anticipated the rise of the Trump presidency, the current UK Conservative government led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson may now be providing clues as to a possible future path for the post-Trump Republican Party in the United States.

Repatriating supply chains to home shores has become an increasingly fashionable topic in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Part of the rationale is to ensure that adequate redundancy and resiliency are built into our economies, even at the cost of “just in time” inventory accumulation practices (which have prioritized short term profitability at a cost of the kinds of supply shocks we are experiencing today).

Professor Dan Drezner is again illustrating how we ended up with a misbegotten consensus on globalization built upon inadequate assumptions and shallow analysis. A couple of weeks ago, we encountered him badly mischaracterizing a study about the supposed value of trade liberalization. Breezing past that issue, he is back now with a more outlandish claim, that: “a world in which ‘trade were balanced, domestic industry robust, and productivity rising’ is a world that not only does not exist, but very likely cannot exist” (emphasis in original).

It is refreshing to see an increasing number of politicians and pundits from across the political spectrum calling for re-establishing their manufacturing base to address the vulnerabilities exposed in the wake of COVID-19.  The latest is GOP Senator Josh Hawley, calling for the abolition of the World Trade Organization, in a NY Times Op-ed.

Sen. Josh Hawley recently opined in the New York Times about the need for the US to back out of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and engage the global economy with bilateral trade agreements that better reflect American interests.