My colleague Dan Griswold pointed out yesterday some unfortunate editing in the Washington Post. Here are a couple of other trade-related items in the news recently:

  • Sen. Max Baucus (D, MT and Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee) has seemingly thrown his weight behind the idea of “border measures” (i.e., carbon tariffs). After paying the semi-obligatory lip service to the United States’ obligations under international trade law — and I say only “semi-obligatory” because some U.S. lawmakers appear not to care about it at all — Baucus goes on to deliver this rhetorical gem:

    I think often the United States has to lead,” Baucus said, noting that what lawmakers come up could be used as a model for other countries to copy.

    So the U.S. would saddle its consumers with higher prices in exchange for little benefit environmentally and in the process risk retaliation and alienating countries who it insists are necessary for global cooperation on climate change?


    Some leadership.


    And it may well be that the Chinese have the jump on the United States here, in any case. They’re proposing to introduce a carbon tax of their own, to prevent double-taxation in the form of carbon tariffs by the developed countries (banned under WTO rules) and to keep the carbon tax revenue — collected, remember, from U.S. consumers! — for themselves, all while seeming to play nice on climate change. I bet those who proposed carbon tariffs are sorry they spoke out now. (HT: Scott Lincicome)

  • Brazil has published a list of over 200 mostly consumer and agricultural goods that would be subject to retaliatory tariffs as part of the on-going dispute over U.S. cotton subsidies (an excellent backgrounder to that dispute is available here).


    I note with sorrow that the list also contains intermediate goods, which of course would mean saddling Brazilian manufacturers with higher prices. Even if the Brazilian government isn’t too concerned about burdening its consumers with extra taxes, rarely a concern of politicians apparently, you’d think they would hesitate to impose higher costs on manufacturers, who employ people.


    Again, it is important to draw a distinction here between the mercantalist political logic of retaliatory tariffs and the economic insanity of increasing costs to your own people in “retaliation” for the harm another country’s policies have done to you. (And no, I don’t count the “game-theory” argument as an “economic” one here. That is a fancy way of saying that in an international relations, i.e. political, sense, retaliation can bring about the desired change. I’m talking about the fact that costs to consumers from tariffs — whatever their rationale — far outweighing the benefits that producers derive from protection). But this latest development is a sign that Brazil is serious about getting the U.S. to reform its agricultural policies, something it should be doing anyway.


    Brazil was, it should be noted, given permission from the WTO to suspend intellectual property rights protections as a form of retaliation, a new but increasingly attractive way of exacting retribution, but only after a certain amount of damages had been collected the usual way.