11/20/2009
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Americans are rightfully dissatisfied with the high cost of health care and the rough treatment they receive from private insurers, but the reforms Democrats in Congress are cooking up will only make things worse.
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11/18/2009
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Like Rome, just before the barbarians, America needs smarter and braver leaders.
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11/16/2009
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If China and others ceased subverting currency markets, the yuan would rise at least 40 percent, other Asian currencies would appreciate too, the U.S. trade deficit would shrink dramatically, and the new demand for American goods would rocket the U.S. economy.
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More Opinion
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11/13/2009
The Obama administration seems to think that there are two mains ways to obtains money: you tax the rich or turn on the printing presses. The idea of wealth creation through entrepreneurship is a completely foreign concept. The historical trinity of wealth creation -- mining, manufacturing, and resource extraction -- are not remotely on the Obama radar screen. He may not even know they exist. Thus the stimulus package is built on printed money. That newly minted stash plus cash-for-clunkers produced economic growth in the last quarter. But that growth will be shortlived unless the president tackles foreign trade cheating and years of ill-advised trade policies -- policies that have helped to deindustrialize America and thus remove one of our main pillars of wealth creation.
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11/9/2009
Washington in general and President Obama in particular have put very expensive band aids over economic cancerous lesions. The manufacturing crisis (aka the wealth creation crisis), the unemployment crisis, the banking crisis, the lending crisis, the mortgage crisis, the bankruptcy crisis, the commercial real estate crisis, and the credit card interest rate crisis have been masked by the application of huge amounts of government funds. The Obama administration issues Treasury bonds, the Fed prints money and keeps interest rates artificially low, Congress gives car-buuyers cash, and presto, the economy appears to be growing. But the dollar is tanking because, although we continue to fool ourselves, foreigners aren't fooled. Double dipsie doodle, here we come.
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Alan Tonelson, 9/18/2009
Think that Obama's decision to impose tariffs on Chinese tires is a grave error of protectionism or a courageous act of industrial self defense? Think again. It's neither, but instead a half-hearted attempt to win additional union support for his embattled health care plan. As such, it has very little to do with trade policy or economics. It's all politics and hardly makes a dent in the administration's otherwise staunch free trade thinking, carefully guarded by the accolytes Summers, Emanuel, Romer, Tyson, Furman, Goolsby, Locke, Geithner, Kirk and a host of others.
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Alan Tonelson, 6/30/2009
President Obama, in a recent interview, demonstrated that he is as "green" as can be when talking about the environment, emissions limits, international trade, and the rest of the world's mercantilism. Naivete must not be mistaken for change we can believe in.
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Kevin L. Kearns, 6/17/2009
FedEx has begun an all out political and public relations campaign to defeat a provision in a recently House-passed bill that would change the classification of its Express division drivers, taking them from under the Railway Labor Act and placing them (correctly) under the National Labor Relations Act. This very expensive and very negative campaign is prima facie evidence that FedEx derives an unfair competitive advantage from the driver misclassification. Otherwise, why all the threats, bluster, and negativity?
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Kevin L. Kearns, 6/10/2009
As a business organization, USBIC has since its founding in 1933 spoken out on a wide range of economic issues. But the Council has always been deeply concerned about U.S. national security. This focus reflects the nature of our membership, which is mainly comprised of small and medium-sized manufacturers with deep roots in their communities, strongly held Main Street values, and a fundamental awareness that the country’s safety depends heavily on a strong productive, innovation, and wealth-creating industrial base at home. Manufacturing has long dominated this base quantitatively, and it will remain dominant for the foreseeable future.
As President Obama and so many others have said, the economic crisis represents a genuine crossroads for our country. Washington’s responses will greatly determine whether America will emerge at least as safe and prosperous as it has been since the end of World War II, or much weaker, much poorer, much less politically independent, and much less influential.
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Kevin L. Kearns and Alan Tonelson, 6/2/2009
With a full-pager in this morning’s Washington Post, the U.S. Business and Industry Council continued its major ad campaign to spotlight the devastating, economy-wide effects of the intertwined and worsening trade policy and manufacturing crises.
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Kevin L. Kearns and Alan Tonelson, 6/2/2009
DOMESTIC MANUFACTURERS CONTINUE ISSUE AD CAMPAIGN WITH OPEN LETTER TO OBAMA ON NEGLECT OF DOMESTIC MANUFACTURING IN FIRST 100 DAYS
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Alan Tonelson, 6/2/2009
President Obama's new Economic Recovery Advisory Board (ERAB) could become a invaluable source of policy advice, especially with the recession still deepening, and therefore the need for fresh thinking still growing. But none of the president's efforts to seek outside economic counsel can reach their potential without filling at least one big gap in the administration's advisory circles - the absence of domestic manufacturers.
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Alan Tonelson, 5/15/2009
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