AFL-CIO, "A NAFTA that Works Must Empower Working People, Not Corporations," 2-page overview, June 12, 2017. [2p] Online
  1. What do they ask of the negotiation process?
  2. Which recommendations address existing aspects of NAFTA?
  3. What aspects seems distinctly beyond existing trade agreements?

AFL-CIO, "NAFTA at 20," March 2014. [19p] Online
  1. What empirical evidence does this report offer to show that NAFTA was a failure?
  2. What feature of the NAFTA is this report most critical of? Does it offer suggestions for improving that feature?
  3. How do "negative list" and "positive list" approaches differ, and why do they prefer the latter?

Arnold, Chris, "China Killed 1 Million U.S. Jobs, But Don't Blame Trade Deals," heard on NPR, All Things Considered, April 18, 2016. [1p] Online
  1. How much lower was US manufacturing employment in 2010 than in 1995? How does this compared to what this source said was the number of manufacturing jobs lost due to trade with China?
  2. How does the example of trade in cars and cheese between the US and France differ from that of US trade with China?
  3. What does it mean that "benefits are diffuse but pain is concentrated" and why does that matter?

Autor, David H., David Dorn, and Gordon H. Hanson, "The China Shock: Learning from Labor Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade," Annual Review of Economics 8, August 8, 2016, pp. 205-240, but omit Section 3 Theory. [31p] Online
  1. Is the decline in manufacturing employment in the US something that has only happened since imports from China began to expand? How have the trade balances of the US and China changed over the last 20-30 years?
  2. Was the rise in China's exports (to the US and others) a result of our reducing our tariffs on Chinese exports? If not, what did cause the increase?
  3. What is the central empirical relationship that this paper cites, expressed in its equation (4)?
  4. To what extent does Trade Adjustment Assistance and other government tranlisfer programs offset the harm to those who are displaced by imports from China?
  5. How quickly do workers displaced by imports find new jobs and do they escape from the adverse effects of imports?

Baldwin, Robert E., "U.S. Trade Policy since 1934: An Uneven Path toward Greater Trade Liberalization," Working Paper #15397, National Bureau of Economic Research, October, 2009. [32p, but read only Section 5, pp. 25-30] Online
  1. What two branches of the US government are the main decision-making centers with respect of U.S. trade policy, and what motivates them? How important is the US President in determining trade policy, and how have presidents in the past tended to favor, trade liberalization or protection?
  2. How do Republicans and Democrats in Congress typically agree or differ on trade, and how has this changed over the period covered here?

Barfield, Claude, "The weekly trade merry-go-round: Trump wants to withdraw from the WTO," AEIdeas, American Enterprise Institute, July 2, 2018. [3p] Online
  1. Does President Trump plan to pull out of the WTO?
  2. What is the US supposed to do, according to the MFN principle of the WTO? How has Peter Navarro suggested violating that?
  3. What has Trump done to "undermine the legitimacy" of the WTO?

Bergsten, C. Fred and Joseph E. Gagnon, "The New US Currency Policy," Realtime Economic Issues Watch, Peterson Institute for International Economics, April 29, 2016. [6p] Online
  1. To what extent do these authors agree that currency manipulation is a problem? Do they agree with the revised criteria that the Treasury Department had stated just prior to this publication?
  2. Does this article explain what "enhanced engagement" is supposed to be, and does it say what actions are to be taken if countries that have been identified as currency manipulators do not change their behavior?
  3. How much emphasis would these authors place on the bilateral trade deficit of a country vis a vis the United States in judging it to be a currency manipulator?

Bernstein, Jared, "Getting straight about the costs of trade," Washington Post, May 12, 2016. [3p] Online
  1. Trade theory has always acknowledged the costs of trade to those who lose their jobs in competition with imports. The cited work by Autor, Dorn, and Hanson (ADH) identifies another group of losers. Who are they?
  2. The author suggests losses also to communities that do not have any industries competing with imports. Why? What does this assume about the nature of the change in trade?
  3. Does the author recommend that countries like the US should limit trade? If so, how? If not, what does he recommend instead?

Bhagwati, Jagdish, "Does the Free Market Corrode Moral Character?" John Templeton Foundation, October 1, 2008. Canvas
  1. How, according to the author, does globalization reduce child labor?
  2. How does globalization benefit women?
  3. Where is there evidence that trade and foreign investment can reduce poverty?

Bown, Chad P. and Melina Kolb, "Trump's Trade War Timeline: An Up-to-Date Guide," Trade and Investment Policy Watch, Peterson Institute of International Economics, August 23, 2018 (but watch for updates). [8p] Online | Online-PDF
  1. With what countries is the US engaged in a trade war, in the sense that we've used tariffs against them, and they've responded with tariffs against us?
  2. What have been the legal bases (within the US) for tariffs on solar panels, washing machines, steel, aluminum, Chinese exports, and cars?
  3. To what extent have the US and other countries used the World Trade Organization in these disputes?

Davis, Bob and Jon Hilsenrath, "How the China Shock, Deep and Swift, Spurred the Rise of Trump," Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2016. [12p] Canvas
  1. What was the "China Shock"? What effect did it have on US jobs?
  2. Why was the China Shock different from the previous rise in imports from Japan?
  3. Were tariffs ever used to reduce the impact of the China Shock? Did they work?

Deardorff, Alan V., "Benefits and Costs of Following Comparative Advantage," the Sweetland Inaugural Lecture, in Department of Economics, The Economic Outlook for 1998, Forty-Fifth Annual Conference on the Economic Outlook, Ann Arbor, MI, November 20, 1997, pp. 174-215. [42p] Canvas
  1. The word “advantage” implies a comparison. Why, then, is the term “comparative advantage” not redundant?
  2. If it is true that the value of the benefits from trade are indeed larger than the value of the costs, then why would anyone be opposed to trade?
  3. Are there any benefits from trade that are not associated also with some costs?

Deardorff, "Introduction to Comparative Advantage," August 27, 2003. Online
  1. Why is comparative advantage a relative concept in two senses simultaneously?
  2. With two goods and two countries, how do you identify the good in which a country has a comparative advantage?
  3. It the wage rate in a country falls due to trade, do workers lose from trade?

Deardorff, "Tariff in Partial Equilibrium," in Terms of Trade: Glossary of International Economics, Part II, Chapter 7, 2014 Online | Canvas
  1. How does it matter whether the country levying the tariff is small or large?
  2. Who loses and who gains in the tariff-levying country when it uses a tariff? Does the answer depend on whether the country is small or large?
  3. Is it possible, in this analysis, for a country to gain by levying a tariff, if you judge that gain by adding up the gains and losses of its suppliers, demanders, and government? If not, why not? If so, why?

Donnan, Shawn, "Trump's top trade adviser accuses Germany of currency exploitation," Financial Times, January 31, 2017. [5p] Canvas
  1. Is the value of the euro low? Does that help German exports? Is this the result of Germany's own policies?
  2. What countries had (as of this writing) Trump accused of devaluing their currencies?
  3. What are the prospects for TTIP (The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership)?

Economist, "Canada joins North America's revised trade deal," The Economist, October 4, 2018. [3p] Canvas
  1. What industry in Canada would have been hardest hit if it had not joined the USMCA?
  2. What does the article mean when it says that USMCA "introduces something like concealed carry"?
  3. What is the purpose of the provision about "non-market economies"?
  4. What was Canada's "main success in the negotiation"? Why might Canada still be vulnerable to US trade actions?

Economist, "China and currency manipulation," The Economist, March 2, 2017. [3p] Canvas
  1. On what basis does the US Treasury Department evaluate whether a currency is being manipulated? On that basis, was the Chinese currency being manipulated to hold down its value, as of this writing?
  2. Why does the Economist not use the bilateral trade imbalance as an indicator of manipulation?
  3. What do they find for the Swiss currency, and why does this indicate how "flawed" these measures are?

Economist, "Economists Argue about the Impact of Chinese Imports on America," The Economist, March 11, 2017. [3p] Canvas
  1. How much of the US fall in manufacturing employment was due to imports from China?
  2. On what bases did Rothwell criticize the results of Autor, Dorn, and Hanson?
  3. Why, according to the research cited by Handley and Limao, did trade with China increase as much as it did? Was it our reduction in tariffs?

Economist, "Keep the Costs of Trade in Perspective," The Economist, December 16, 2016. [5p] Canvas
  1. What did the cited article call "one big policy experiment gone terribly wrong"?
  2. What have been some causes of deindustrialization other than trade with China?
  3. What benefits of trade with China does he say that critics ignore?

Economist, "Why Germany's current-account surplus is bad for the world economy," The Economist, July 9, 2017. [5p] Canvas
  1. Why is Germany’s surplus a problem for the world?
  2. What are the cures for Germany’s surplus recommended here?
  3. Germany attributes its high saving to the need for its aging society to save more. Why does the article say that does not explain it?

Fernaández Campbell, Alexia, "Trump's new trade deal with South Korea, explained," Vox, September 25, 2018. [7p] Online
  1. Does this author view the revised KORUS as having changed very much?
  2. In the doubling of the number of US cars that Korea will accept that meet just US safety standards going to double US car exports to Korea? Why?
  3. What is the "chicken tax" and what role does it play here?

FT View, "Donald Trump beats a retreat over China's currency," Financial Times, April 16, 2017. [3p] Canvas
  1. This editorial in the British Financial Times is very critical of President Trump. Does it say that Trump was wrong to not name China as a currency manipulator?
  2. The US dollar rose in value after the election, something here called the “Trump Trade.” What explanation for the rise did Trump himself give? What explanation does this editorial give?
  3. If Trump had named China a currency manipulator, what would have happened then, according to this?

Krugman, Paul, "The China Shock and the Trump Shock," New York Times, December 25, 2016. [1p] Online
  1. Krugman opposes the policies that Trump might initiate to reverse the growth of trade. Is this because he views the growth of trade as purely beneficial?

Landler, Mark, "Blind Spots in Trump's Trade Tirade Against Germany," New York Times, May 30, 2017. [4p] Canvas
  1. Why does Trump criticize Germany for its trade surplus?
  2. Who owns the company that exports the most cars by value from the United States?
  3. How might Germany change its trade and exchange rate policies to satisfy Trump?

Lankford, James, "The U.S. trade deficit is a good thing. Really," Washington Post, August 14, 2017. [2p] Online
  1. In what sense does the author say that a trade imbalance reflects the incomes of the countries?
  2. How does international investment matter for the trade deficit?
  3. What prompted this Republican senator to make this argument in favor of the US trade deficit?

Legrain, Philippe, "Why China Will Win the Trade War," Foreign Policy, April 13, 2018. [4p] Online

  1. Why would a greater loss of exports by China than the US hurt them less?
  2. Does the US have a bilateral trade surplus with China in anything?
  3. What is "Made in China 2025"?
Mankiw, N. Gregory, "Want to Rev Up the Economy? Don't Worry About the Trade Deficit," New York Times, December 2, 2016. Canvas

  1. Why does Mankiw view the trade deficit as a "sign of success"?
  2. How will deregulation, tax cuts, and increased government spending affect the US trade deficit?
  3. How would an increase in import tariffs affect exports?

Mitchell, Tom, "Trump's tariffs prove tougher obstacle than China expected," Financial Times, August 12, 2018. [5p] Canvas
  1. What tariffs have been levied so far between the US and China? What further tariffs has Trump threatened? How will China respond?
  2. Have the tariffs so far hurt China?
  3. Is there any mention here of the intellectual property dispute that prompted these actions?

Newmyer, Tory, "Trump team ramps up China trade fight on currency claims," Washington Post, August 3, 2018. [2p (of 9)] Canvas
  1. As of this writing, what had happened to the dollar value of the Chinese currency?
  2. How does this affect trade?
  3. Is China deliberately pushing down the value of its currency?

Posen, Adam, "The errors of conservatives obscure the case for trade," Financial Times, July 22, 2014. Canvas
  1. When a US factory moves to Mexico and employs 100 workers there, what -- according to the article -- happens to employment in the US?
  2. How did the unemployment rate in the US compare in the decade following NAFTA to the decade before it?
  3. The article accepts the estimates of critics that NAFTA imports cost 45,000 jobs a year for two decades. Why doesn't he view that as serious?

Premack, Rachel, "What Is KORUS, And Why Is Trump So Mad About It?," Forbes, November 2, 2017. [3p] Online
  1. Under what president was KORUS negotiated?
  2. What does Trump dislike about it? What does this article expect the new negotiations to change?
  3. In what aspects of trade has the US had a surplus with Korea? Does tourism play a role in this? What is the error in the sentence starting "The U.S. enjoys..."?

Schlesinger, Jacob M. and Erin Ailworth, "U.S. Imposes New Tariffs, Ramping Up 'America First' Trade Policy," Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2018. [4p] Canvas
  1. What trade law was the basis for these tariffs? What was required economically to qualify? How often, and how recently has this law been used by the US, and was it successful?
  2. What policies are being used, and for how long? Who objected, and why?
  3. Why did the industries use the safeguards law instead of anti-dumping or countervailing duty laws?

Talley, Ian, "U.S. Treasury Stops Short of Calling China a Currency Manipulator," Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2017. [3p] Canvas
  1. Since the Treasury chose not to name China as a currency manipulator, did this report therefore say positive things about China's exchange rate policies?
  2. Over the last twenty years, how many countries have been named as currency manipulators in these semi-annual Treasury reports?
  3. Was the Treasury report critical of any other countries' exchange rate policies?

Tankersley, Jim, "Trump Just Ripped Up Nafta. Here’s What’s in the New Deal." New York Times, October 1, 2018. [3p] Canvas
  1. What is changed, and what is new, in the USMCA's rules of origin for cars compared to NAFTA?
  2. US wanted Canada to remove its protection on dairy. Did the US get what it wanted?
  3. Did Canada get to keep Chapter 19?

USITC, "U.S. Trade Policy since 1934," Chapter 3 in The Economic Effects of Significant U.S. Import Restraints, United States International Trade Commission, August 2009, pp. 59-123 (read only pp. 59-89). [31p] Online
  1. Explain the meaning and significance of: MFN, GATT, TAA, GSP, VER, Fast Track, TRIPs.
  2. Why have Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) proliferated, and are they beneficial or harmful for the progress of trade liberalization?
  3. Why was the Uruguay Round and WTO considered beneficial for the United States?

USTR, "Summary of Objectives for the NAFTA Renegotiation," Office of the United States Trade Representative, Executive Office of the President, July 17, 2017. [18p] Online
  1. Which of these items, if any, seem to move the US in a protectionist direction?
  2. Which of the changes in the existing NAFTA seem likely to reduce the US trade deficit?
  3. Do any of these provision appear to reverse any of the trade liberalization that was included in the original NAFTA?

Verrill, Charles, Jr, "An Introduction to Trade Remedies Available under U.S. Law," memorandum to clients and friends, Weiey, Rein & Fielding, April 1, 1999. [3p] Canvas
  1. Who has "standing" under the antidumping law? Who determines whether there is dumping?
  2. How do the injury requirements differ for antidumping as compared to safeguards?
  3. What can a U.S. producer do if it believes that its competitors in another country are engaging in anticompetitive conduct that is being tolerated by their government?

Ward, Alex, " 'A semi-truce': Trump makes an EU deal to avoid a trade war," Vox, July 25, 2018. [4p] Online
  1. What do the US and EU each get from the “semi-truce” that Trump and Juncker negotiated?
  2. What will be required to “will work together toward zero tariffs”? Will Trump be happy to do that?
  3. Did the agreement release the EU from the US tariffs on steel and aluminum?

White House, "President Donald J. Trump is Fulfilling His Promise on the United States–Korea Free Trade Agreement and on National Security," US office of the President, September 24, 2018. [4p] Online
  1. What does the document point to as the reason for amending the KORUS agreement? What changes will allow the US to sell more cars in Korea?
  2. What changes will have an effect on US imports from Korea?

WTO, "What is the World Trade Organization?," part of the WTO website Understanding the WTO. [2p] Online
  1. What are the three main components of the WTO?
  2. How does the WTO differ from the GATT that preceded it?
  3. What countries are members of the WTO?