The Custom-House

Keeping Up To Date on American Trade Policy Views

Daniel Ikenson of the Cato Institute read the report on the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll of likely Republican primary voters (59% of whom felt foreign trade had been bad for the U.S.) and found the poll wanting: Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics, and a Media Happy to Abuse Them (Cato Online, Oct 4).  He thinks the questions were badly phrased. Here's a correction that doesn't affect his key point: Correction to Yesterday’s Post, (Lies, Damn Lies,…) (Cato Online, Oct 5). 

Here's my post on those poll results: Republican Primary Voter Trade Views (Ben Muse, Oct 6)

The WSJ/NBC poll results weren't the only ones released last week.  The Pew Research Center also released a set of poll results with some information on U.S. trade attitudes.  Ikenson reported on these as well: How Do Americans Really Feel about Trade? (Cato Online, Oct 5).  Here we find that 64% of Republicans think trade has been a good thing for the U.S.

Republican Primary Voter Trade Views

Republicans likely to vote in their presidential primaries next year tend to favor new restrictions on imports.  John Harwood reports on the results of a new poll conducted by the Well Street Journal and NBC News: Republicans Grow Skeptical On Free Trade (Wall Street Journal, October 5). 

A detailed summary of the poll results is here: NBC/Wall Street Journal GOP Primary Voters Survey.

A Useful Compilation

From the Congressional Research Service: U.S. Trade Statutes: Expiration Dates and Mandated Periodic Reports to Congress (October 2) -  and a lesson on the trade policy relationship between Congress and the President:

New Research Results on U.S. tariff history

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has distributed two new working papers on U.S. tariff history.

Douglas Irwin estimates Trade Restrictiveness and Deadweight Losses from U.S. Tariffs, 1859-1961 and finds:

The Incredible Shrinking Arctic Ice Cap

The Arctic sea ice melt season is over. 

The National Snow and Ice Data Center reports that the arctic ice cap "plummeted to the lowest levels since satellite measurements began in 1979.": Arctic Sea Ice Shatters All Previous Record Lows. Diminished summer sea ice leads to opening of the fabled Northwest Passage . (press release, Oct 1).

Figure 1: This image compares the average sea ice extent for September 2007 to September 2005; the magenta line indicates the long-term median from 1979 to 2000. September 2007 sea ice extent was 4.28, compared to 5.57 in September 2005. This image is from the NSIDC Sea Ice Index.

Figure 2: The updated time series plot puts this summer’s sea ice extent in context with other years. 2007, shown in solid blue, is far below the previous record year of 2005, shown as a dashed line; September 2007 was 36% below where we would expect to be in an average year, shown in solid gray.

Figure 3: September ice extent from 1979 to 2007 shows an obvious decline. The September rate of sea ice decline since 1979 is now approximately 10 percent per decade, or 72,000 square kilometers (28,000 square miles) per year.

Ways and Means Hearing on Import Safety This Week

The House Ways and Means Subcommittee's on Oversight and Trade will be conducting a hearing on Import Safety on Thursday: Joint Hearing on Import Safety :

Is Democracy Gaining as Chinese Incomes Grow?

You'd hope that democracy would make headway as incomes grow in China, but a set of World Bank's governance indicators doesn't show evidence of progress since 1996 - despite awesome growth.

Chinese GDP per capita has grown enormously since 1980 - and especially since the first World Bank governance indicators become available in 1996: