by Sallie James
RealClearMarkets.com, October 8, 2009

If summitry was a sure predictor of activity, then climate change would be heading towards a golden era. The UN climate summit on Tuesday and the G-20 summit that just wrapped up in Pittsburgh both attempted to relight the dying embers of hope that the December climate meeting in Copenhagen can lead to a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012.

If the G-20 leaders really want to demonstrate commitment to action on climate change, they would do well to be more careful about sticking to their commitments when it comes to open international trade. [read more]

by Daniel Griswold
The Washington Times, September 29, 2009

President Obama and the other Group of 20 leaders delivered their obligatory warning against protectionism at last week's summit in Pittsburgh. But at home the U.S. president continues to conduct his own trade war, not only against imports from China and other developing countries, but against the most vulnerable of American consumers.

America's highest remaining trade barriers are aimed at products mostly grown and made by poor people abroad and disproportionately consumed by poor people at home. While industrial goods and luxury products typically enter under low or zero tariffs, the U.S. government imposes duties of 30 percent or more on food and lower-end clothing and shoes - staple goods that loom large in the budgets of poor families.

To win favor with organized labor and other opponents of trade liberalization, Mr. Obama has either defended or actually raised barriers on precisely those products of most interest to poor households. [read more]

Reviewed by William H. Peterson
The Washinton Times , September 21, 2009

MAD ABOUT TRADE: WHY MAIN STREET AMERICA SHOULD EMBRACE GLOBALIZATION

by Daniel Griswold

Advised Ludwig von Mises in 1922: "The slogan 'Away With Foreign Goods!' would lead us, if we accepted all its implications, to abolish the division of labor altogether. For the principle that makes 'international' division of labor seem advantageous is precisely the principle which recommends division of labor in any case."

Rising trade, division of labor and globalization are advancing Main Street America, writes Daniel Griswold of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington. He hails the advance and presses for still more growth-oriented, peaceful trade via competitive imports. This despite some persistent American push for protectionism, including demands to "Buy American."

Case in point of the latter is the Lou Dobbs 2004 book "Exporting America," in which CNN-TV host Mr. Dobbs dismisses worries for consumers, saying, "I don't think helping consumers save a few cents on trinkets and T-shirts is worth the loss of American jobs." Too, then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2007 echoed this very fear before a cheering union audience that people "don't want a cheaper T-shirt if they're losing a job in the process." [read more]