The Custom-House

Trade in the 2008 Senate Races: Incumbents with safe seats

I've been looking at the impact of the 2008 Senate elections on support for liberal trading rules in the next Congress.  I had hoped to look at trade rhetoric in all this year's Senate races, but I've fallen behind on this project. 

To help catch up, I'll just scoot over incumbents with safe seats.  The first list below shows incumbents with comfortable or big leads.  A "Big" lead is more than 15%, a "Comfortable" lead is 10% to 15%.  Percentages were taken from Pollster.com on October 19, 2008. 

The second list has races where an incumbent will be replaced, or an incumbent doesn't have a comfortable lead.  From now on I'll focus on preparing posts on these latter races.

The financial crisis and U.S. attitudes to globalization

American attitudes toward globalization are changing under the pressure of the financial crisis.  While 64% of adults thought globalization had been mostly good for the U.S. in 2004, only 58% thought so last July, and only 56% (still a majority) felt that way in September. 

Here's the report on these and other results from polling conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in July and September: American Attitudes on Economic Policy. 

Almost two-thirds of survey respondents thought that U.S. income and wealth distribution had become less fair.  Of this two-thirds, about 80% thought that globalization and trade had played either an important or somewhat important role in making the distribution less fair.

Americans don't think all impacts of globalization have been bad.   Majorities thought it had been good for consumers like themselves, for American companies, and for their standard of living.  But - as shown in this figure - almost two-thirds thought it had been bad for job security:

Drezner's "Protectionist Drinking Game"

Debate III: I pity the fools watching this debate. Meant for tonight's debate, but the compendium of trade policy code language will be worthwhile reading tomorrow.

Time to start looking for the next WTO DG?

 

Pascal Lamy, WTO Director-General.  Does he want another term?

The WTO is the most democratic of the world's multilateral economic organizations.  Pascal Lamy, the current Director-General, was selected in a wide-open contest in 2004-2005 (covered on this weblog: WTO DG Race: 2005). 

Now its time to decide who will fill the seat for the next term.  Does Lamy want it again, will there be a fight?  The new Bridges, from the International Centre for trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) reports:

Paul Krugman Wins the Nobel Prize in Economics for His Work on Trade

Paul Krugman of Princeton won the Nobel Prize in Economics this morning.  Here's the Nobel Committee press release:

Patterns of trade and location have always been key issues in the economic debate. What are the effects of free trade and globalization? What are the driving forces behind worldwide urbanization? Paul Krugman has formulated a new theory to answer these questions. He has thereby integrated the previously disparate research fields of international trade and economic geography.

Krugman's approach is based on the premise that many goods and services can be produced more cheaply in long series, a concept generally known as economies of scale. Meanwhile, consumers demand a varied supply of goods. As a result, small-scale production for a local market is replaced by large-scale production for the world market, where firms with similar products compete with one another.

Traditional trade theory assumes that countries are different and explains why some countries export agricultural products whereas others export industrial goods. The new theory clarifies why worldwide trade is in fact dominated by countries which not only have similar conditions, but also trade in similar products – for instance, a country such as Sweden that both exports and imports cars. This kind of trade enables specialization and large-scale production, which result in lower prices and a greater diversity of commodities.

Economies of scale combined with reduced transport costs also help to explain why an increasingly larger share of the world population lives in cities and why similar economic activities are concentrated in the same locations. Lower transport costs can trigger a self-reinforcing process whereby a growing metropolitan population gives rise to increased large-scale production, higher real wages and a more diversified supply of goods. This, in turn, stimulates further migration to cities. Krugman's theories have shown that the outcome of these processes can well be that regions become divided into a high-technology urbanized core and a less developed "periphery".

Tyler Cowen (Paul Krugman wins the Nobel Prize) and Alex Tabarrok (What is New Trade Theory) explain the science and its significance.  Arvind Subramanian's 2006 profile is a very good introduction: Economist as Crusader.  After the announcement, Krugman provided links to an autobiography and a short essay on how he works, at his weblog: A bit of autobiography.  The Economist: Bold Strokes.  A strong economic stylist wins the Nobel prize.

Photo from article on Krugman by Arvind Subramanian in IMF's Finance & Development

Lael Brainard on Obama's trade policies

Lael Brainard at an event a year ago

Lael Brainard of the Brookings Institution debated Philip Levy of the American Enterprise Institute on trade issues last week.  Brainard has been mentioned as a potential Obama USTR: The Cabinet: U.S. Trade Representative. 

Doug Palmer reports for Reuters (McCain, Obama campaigns clash on trade deals), describing Brainard as a representative of the Obama campaign:

Who will be the next USTR?

Who will be the U.S. Trade Representative in the next administration?  Erin McNeill profiles three possibilities for each candidate: The Cabinet: US Trade Representative.

McCain might keep Susan Schwab, or turn to Grant Aldonas or Jim Kolbe.

Obama might turn to Cal Dooley, Daniel Tarullo, or Lael Brainard.

"Now, as the remaining vials of Nordic semen frozen in U.S. sperm banks are running out, a small but desperate number of would-be parents are frantic."

File under non-tariff barriers:

Rob Stein reports (Mad Cow Rules Hit Sperm Banks' Patrons):

Trade in the Idaho Senate Race: Risch, LaRocco and Rammell

Jim Risch, Idaho's Republican Lieutenant Governor (and a former Governor) is running against Democrat Larry LaRocco (a former congressman) and Independent Rex Rammell for the Senate seat of retiring Republican Senator Larry Craig.

Craig was arrested for homosexual lewd conduct in a mens room in the Minneapolis airport in August 2007.

Risch is ahead and he's been expanding his lead (Pollster.com):

Trade in the Delaware Senate Race: Biden v O'Donnell

Joe Biden is running for Vice President and for a U.S. Senate seat from Delaware.  In the Senate race, he's running way ahead of his Republican opposition, conservative commentator Christine O'Donnell.  Polling results at Pollster.com suggest that O'Donnell will get less than a third of the vote.

Biden's overall trade record isn't very good (In this figure, from the Cato Institute, each axis shows the percent of votes  against either trade barriers or trade subsidies. The higher an "X" is along the vertical axis the greater the opposition to subsidies, the further an "X" is to the right the greater the opposition to trade barriers. The votes are from the period 1997 to 2008.):

His record is even somewhat worse than it appears here.  The figure averages all his votes since 1997 and he was more prone to vote against trade barriers in 1997 than he was in 2007: