The Custom-House

Following the Democrats

The contributors to the Trade Birddog Log pose loaded trade questions to Democratic Presidential Candidates and summarize the answers. Looks like the blog was started in early September.  Each post deals with a specific statement or response to a question by a specific candidate.  Archives are organized by candidate.  The perspective is economic populist.  The weekly summaries would be useful, but haven't been kept up to date.  The point is to keep pressure on the candidates, not to simply reporte.

Here's how the contributors describe themselves.

The Fading U.S. Embargo on Exports to Cuba

We may already export more to Cuba than many people think we do.  The figure below summarizes the value of U.S. exports since 1989.  Over 90% of this since 2002 is agricutural products; exports peaked in 2004 at about $400 million and fell off somewhat thereafter.

 

According to the Wikipedia article on the United States embargo against Cuba:

The Customs House at Barnstable

The Customs-House in Barnstable on Cape Cod was new when Willliam Wall came up from New Bedford and painted it 1857.

You can see it, it's the red building just to the lower left of the enormous flag hanging over the road.

The National Park Service website says,

The U.S. Customshouse in Barnstable is architecturally and historically significant for its role in the maritime commerce of Cape Cod in the late 19th century. The Seventh United States Customs District was established in 1789 with the Town of Barnstable as its administrative center. Customs activities took place in the collector's home until the mid-19th century when collector Sylvanus B. Phinney secured congressional funding to erect a fireproof, brick and cast iron customshouse/post office in 1855. Ammi Burnham Young, Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department, designed the two-story, Renaissance Revival style building with an advanced cast-iron structural system by 1856.

The customshouse occupied the second level until 1913, while the first level served as a post office until 1958. The County Extension Service replaced the customhouse on the second level from 1924 to 1957. The Federal government deeded the building and grounds to the Town of Barnstable in 1960 for use as a historical museum...

The NPS web site has a couple of nice, more recent photos: U.S. Customshouse (Barnstable)

Here are some photo's I took a couple of year's ago.  This is from the spot Wall stood when he painted.  Most of the buildings are still there, you just can't see them for the trees.  There are far more trees on the Cape now than there were in the 19th Century, but that's a story for another post on another blog:

 

A little closer:

Here's the architect's Wikipedia entry: Ammi B. Young.  The Boston Custom House was his first customs house effort:

Entering the 1837 competition to design the Boston Custom House, Young submitted another cruciform scheme combining a Greek Doric portico with a Roman dome. Planned on a large scale at what was then the waterfront, the building reflected the strength and confidence of the young, growing nation. It won, defeating several other entries, including one by Asher Benjamin. Young was appointed supervisor of construction, which took from 1837 until 1847. In 1838, he established a Boston drafting room. The building's 32 columns were each carved from a single piece from Quincy granite. They measured 5 foot 4 inches in diameter, stood 32 feet high, and weighed 42 tons. Purists decried the Roman dome on a Greek form. Far less sympathetic to the building's Greek form, however, would be the soaring Custom House Tower which replaced the dome in 1913-1915. Boston's first skyscraper, it was designed by Peabody & Stearns to add both office space and presence to a building obscured by later others.

If the Wiki entry is correct, the Barnstable building was his first custom house design after his appointment as the first Supervising Architect of the Treasury in 1852.  In this position (until 1862) Young

... produced designs and specifications for federal buildings ordered by the government to facilitate its various functions throughout the nation. Mandated to be fire-proof, the custom houses, post offices, courthouses and hospitals he built featured masonry foundations, walls and vaulting, with cast iron interior structural and decorative elements, including columns, stairways and railings. Heavy iron shutters were mounted on the inside of windows. Floors and treads were marble, and roofs were galvanized metal. Column capitols, fascia and pediments on the exterior, when not stone, were cast iron painted to look like stone -- which drew criticism of parsimony by the federal architect. Cast iron components were manufactured to Young's specifications in New York state, then shipped to building sites.

Sources: Wikipedia, National Park web site.  A print of William Wall's painting is available from allposters.com, the source of the picture above.

Down to the Sea in Dirty Ships

The ships that carry 90% of world trade (by volume) are a major source of air pollution:

Ships release more sulfur dioxide, a sooty pollutant associated with acid rain, than all of the world's cars, trucks and buses combined, according to a March study by the International Council on Clean Transportation. That study also found that ships produced an estimated 27% of the world's smog-causing nitrogen-oxide emissions in 2005. Only six countries in the world emitted more greenhouse gases -- which trap heat in the atmosphere, warming the globe -- than was produced collectively in 2001 by all ships larger than 100 tons, according to the study and United Nations statistics....

At current rates of growth, oceangoing ships will generate 53% of the particulates, 46% of the nitrogen oxides and more than 94% of the sulfur oxides emitted by all forms of transportation in the U.S. by 2030, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates. That compares with levels for the same pollutants in 2001 of 17%, 12% and 49%, respectively, according to the EPA.

Bruce Stanley reports on the issue in tomorrow's Wall Street Journal: Danger at Sea.  Ships Draw Fire for Rising Role in Air Pollution (Nov 27).

Why Are Trade Agreements So Important to Smaller Firms?

Leon Trammel of Witchita-based Tramco (a conveyor-belt manufacturer) explains (Smaller Companies Grab Bigger Share of Surging U.S. Exports , Courtney Schlisserman, Bloomberg, Nov 23):

How the Presidential Candidates Are Addressing Trade-Angst in Iowa

Wednesday's Wall Street Journal has an article on Iowa voter unease about foreign competition and the different ways the Presidential candidates are responding: A Globalization Winner Joins in Trade Backlash (Deborah Solomon and Gregg Hitt, November 21).  The title refers to the irony of trade-angst in a state that's done relatively well by globalization.  No new poll results.

Here's the discussion of candidate positions (note the commentary by Robert Reich, Clinton's Secretary of Labor):

Environmentalists Petition EPA to Reduce Air Pollution from Shipping

Oceana, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and EarthJustice have petitioned the EPA to regulate marine shipping so as to reduce emissions.  Here's the petition: Petition for Rulemaking Under the Clean Air Act to Reduce the Emission of Air Pollutants from Marine Shipping Vessels that Contribute to Global Climate Change (October 3, 2007). 

Here's the Oceana website on the petition: No More Free Ride: Global Warming Pollution from Ships Must be Regulated.  Oceana notes:

• This fleet releases between 600 and 900 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, an amount equivalent to emissions from at least 130 million cars -- about the number of cars operated in the United States.
• A single container ship emits more global warming pollution than 2,000 diesel trucks.
• By 2020, these emissions could double 2002 levels, and they could be triple those levels by 2030.
• Ships also are major releasers of nitrogen oxides – contributing nearly 30% of the world’s releases. This amount too is expected to triple by 2030.

Pollution from marine shipping

The November Bridges Trade BioRes reports on a new study documenting adverse health effects of marine shipping:

U.S. FTAs and the WTO Declaration on Access to Medicines

When Congress passed the Trade Act of 2002 it gave the United States Trade Representative (USTR) potentially conflicting instructions for negotiating agreements governing drug patents. 

The USTR was to negotiate strong drug patent rules and facilitate access to foreign markets for firms that depended on patent protection (to be done for intellectual property in general, but my interest here is in medical drugs).

But the USTR was also supposed to respect the objectives of the WTO's 2001 Declaration on Access to Medicines, which recognized problems drug patents could sometimes pose when cheap drugs were needed in a public health emergency.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has just taken a look at how the USTR responded to the potential conflict: Intellectual Property: U.S. Trade Policy Guidance on WTO Declaration on Access to Medicines May Need Clarification (September 2007)

Mitt Romney's Trade Views

Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts, believes that America must aggressively pursue trade agreements with other countries.

He recently traveled to South Carolina to outline his trade program: Romney Agenda: A New Vision To Open Markets And Help U.S. Workers To Succeed.  Key points: