Anne O. Krueger

WASHINGTON, DC – After nearly 18 months of tit-for-tat tariff increases, the United States and China have reached a “phase one” agreement to start de-escalating their trade war. As part of the deal, US President Donald Trump canceled further tariff increases on Chinese goods that had been scheduled to take effect on December 15, and halved a 15% tariff on $120 billion worth of imports from China. As for China, it shelved its planned retaliatory measures and committed to import some $50 billion worth of US agricultural products in each of the next two years

WASHINGTON, DC – Following America’s disastrous 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, the subsequent international trade war, and eventually World War II, the United States went on to lead the world toward a more open multilateral trading system. In 1947, the international community adopted the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which would later become the World Trade Organization. Under this international body, trade was bound to the rule of law and the principle of non-discrimination among trading partners

WASHINGTON, DC – Imagine a man who has lived too extravagantly and eventually must go to the doctor for treatment of an acute disease, along with several other chronic conditions. The doctor prescribes a ten-day course of antibiotics, and advises his patient to start taking better care of himself. After three days of taking the pills and following the doctor’s orders, the man feels much better. But he finds the quiet life painful, so he forgets the medicine and his doctor’s advice and doubles down on debauchery

WASHINGTON, DC – Decision-making based on evidence rather than superstition was a driving force behind the Industrial Revolution, and the collection of statistics has, accordingly, become a hallmark of the modern age. In the twenty-first century, businesses and governments alike are finding that data are more valuable than ever

WASHINGTON, DC – Webster’s Dictionary defines “emergency” as “a sudden, urgent, usually unexpected occurrence requiring immediate action.” By that standard, US President Donald Trump’s claim that the United States faces an immigration emergency is simply not credible. Immigrants have been coming to the US since its inception, and since 2007 their net numbers have actually been falling. Because this issue is so often framed in a misleading way, it is important to get the facts straight

WASHINGTON, DC – COVID-19 has confronted the world with a horrific crisis. Because developing a vaccine will likely take at least a year, governments need to buy time to keep health-care facilities from being overwhelmed and to minimize the number of people who fall ill and die, not least by reducing the rate of new infections

BALTIMORE – Puerto Rico is once again in crisis, both politically and economically. A United States territory with more than three million people, it has a larger population than many US states. But its population and real (inflation-adjusted) output have been falling since 2006. More than half of native-born Puerto Ricans alive today have left the island, most of them for the US mainland. The territory’s per capita income is around half that of the poorest US state, Mississippi

WASHINGTON, DC – Would you believe the following story if you heard it? Imagine a small, rural town with one general store that sells to, and buys from, the farmers living in the surrounding area

WASHINGTON, DC – Not content with its trade war against China, US President Donald Trump’s administration has also opened bilateral trade negotiations with Japan. Yet whatever Trump hopes to achieve with Japan, it will be far less than what he threw away when he abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in early 2017

WASHINGTON, DC – When you try something for 99 years and the situation keeps getting worse, it is time to try something else. The United States Congress passed the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (also known as the Jones Act) in order to protect America’s shipping industry and strengthen national security. But the law has almost destroyed the industry, and imposed huge costs on America’s businesses, consumers, and the environment. It needs to be sunk

WASHINGTON, DC – The future of the world economy is becoming clearer. At the outset of the pandemic, there were lively disagreements over whether the lockdown and other measures were warranted, or whether the economic costs were too high. Now, it is increasingly evident that economic activity will resume fully only after lockdown restrictions have been given time to work. Otherwise, COVID-19 will continue to spread, making a sustained and rapid economic recovery all but impossible until the arrival of effective, widely available vaccines

WASHINGTON, DC – When you try something for 99 years and the situation keeps getting worse, it is time to try something else. The United States Congress passed the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (also known as the Jones Act) in order to protect America’s shipping industry and strengthen national security. But the law has almost destroyed the industry, and imposed huge costs on America’s businesses, consumers, and the environment. It needs to be sunk

WASHINGTON, DC – Late last month, US President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on imports from Mexico in ten days if it did not halt the flow of migrants from Central America. The tariffs would start at 5% and then increase by five percentage points monthly until reaching 25% in October. The announcement came as a shock, especially given that the United States and Mexico (plus Canada) had reached an agreement on a revised North American Free Trade Agreement just months earlier, at Trump’s insistence. Ratification of the new trade deal, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), is now in jeopardy

Washington, DC – US President Donald Trump’s “trade war” with China has been slogging along for more than a year now, and could escalate further if current talks do not lead to a deal

The world has witnessed many sharp economic declines over the years, but Venezuela’s is surely one of the worst to date. The country has experienced a loss of real (inflation-adjusted) GDP greater than that of most war-ravaged countries during World War II, and its inflation rate is expected to reach 10,000,000% this year. At well over 100 times the black-market rate, the official exchange rate depreciates so rapidly that a quote has lost its meaning by the time it is published

In the nineteenth century, more than 70% of American workers were farmers. By 2017, that figure was under 2%. In 1970, about 32% of private employment was in goods-producing industries. By 2018, that figure was 13.5%. The dynamic sectors of the American economy are in services, though US President Donald Trump, with his fixation on old manufacturing industries, doesn’t seem to have grasped that

WASHINGTON, DC – Not content with its trade war against China, US President Donald Trump’s administration has also opened bilateral trade negotiations with Japan. Yet whatever Trump hopes to achieve with Japan, it will be far less than what he threw away when he abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in early 2017

WASHINGTON, DC – The private sector performs well when firms can compete on a level playing field. But if the state is willing to influence market outcomes for individual firms, politically connected parties can gain an advantage over their more efficient competitors

WASHINGTON, DC – The US federal debt-to-GDP ratio rose sharply during the 2008-09 Great Recession and continued rising thereafter, going from 62% in 2007 to 90% in 2010. By 2019, it had reached 106%, and the Congressional Budget Office was warning that the trust funds for Social Security and Medicare would be exhausted by 2028. Many economists argued that a debt-to-GDP ratio of 100% was already worryingly high, and that the future tax increases needed to reduce it would be massive

WASHINGTON, DC – The global economy was ripe for a recession even before the coronavirus pandemic struck. Many commentators have been warning that stock markets were overheated, that advanced economies were heading for a slowdown, and that US President Donald Trump’s protectionist policies had disrupted supply chains and ushered in an era of heightened uncertainty. Now, the stock market has finally crashed, and a recession has become almost inevitable