Jeff Flake: What Is Happening in the White House Is Not Conservatism

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) says the Republican president in the White House is not displaying the conservatism his party should be embrace. In his new book, "Conscience of a Conservative," Flake says populism and protectionism are as threatening to the GOP as the New Deal was in 1960.

Grossbritanniens Premier Brown und Frankreichs Präsident Sarkozy sind nicht zufrieden mit dem Gebahren der USA. Bild: NZZ Online
Brown und Sarkozy werfen den USA Protektionismus vor: Reaktion auf verpassten Rüstungsauftrag für EADS
NZZ ONLINE: Nach dem verpassten Rüstungsgeschäft für die Lieferung von Tankflugzeugen für die US-Luftwaffe durch den EADS-Konzern hat es Vorwürfe aus Frankreich und Grossbritannien gegeben. Der britische Premier Brown und Frankreichs Präsident Sarkozy warfen den USA Protektionismus vor.

Der französische Staatspräsident Nicolas Sarkozy und der britische Regierungschef Gordon Brown haben den USA im Streit um einen verpassten Rüstungsauftrag für den europäischen EADS-Konzern Protektionismus vorgeworfen.

«Nicht die richtige Art»

«Das ist nicht die richtige Art, wie die USA ihre europäischen Verbündeten behandeln sollten», sagte Sarkozy am Freitag nach einem Besuch bei Brown. Der Brite erklärte, er sei wegen der entstandenen Situation enttäuscht. >>> ddp/sda/Reuters | Freitag, 12. März 2010

We Are Entering a New Age of Protectionism
THE TELEGRAPH: The 21st-century form of protectionism is no less deadly than its 1930s predecessor - just less visible, says Edmund Conway.

When Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and their colleagues in the G20 conclude this week's summit in Pittsburgh, at least one item in the final communiqué is a dead cert. As they did in London six months ago, and Washington six months before that – and, indeed, at every major summit in living memory – the leaders will state clearly and firmly that they deplore any attempts by countries to lurch into protectionism, promising to do everything in their power to ensure countries do not erect economic barriers and imploring their trade negotiators to get the Doha Round of trade negotiations back on track.

It is ironic, then, that the one area in which governments have truly failed since the financial crisis began is in resisting the tendency towards economic nationalism. According to Global Trade Alert, an authoritative annual study from the Centre for Economic Policy Research in the US, governments around the world have – despite all their promises – implemented around 70 protectionist measures each quarter this year.

Some are "traditional" measures, familiar from the Depression and elsewhere – subsidies for domestic producers or tariffs on imports, President Obama's move to slap a 35 per cent charge on Chinese tyres being a prime example. Such measures are provoking fury, and with good reason: the protectionist spiral into which the world plunged in the 1930s almost certainly contributed to the war at the end of the decade.

However, such visible signs of protectionism tell a fraction of the story. For the shocking truth is this: over the past year, the costs and obstacles faced by exporters have, according to a study by economists David Jacks, Christopher Meissner and Dennis Novy, increased by almost the same scale as in the early 1930s when the US and others were imposing a range of protectionist laws, including the infamous Smoot-Hawley Act.

Partly this is one of the perverse consequences of the financial crisis, which crippled the system of trade credit that underpinned the international flow of goods, making it impossible for some companies to ship products from one part of the world to another. But, far more worryingly, it is also a product of explicitly protectionist measures imposed by countries such as the UK in an effort to save their domestic banking systems from collapse. Most egregiously, these included so-called financial mercantilism, whereby governments, having rescued a bank, insisted that it had to lend far more to domestic customers than business or individuals overseas businesses.

This new protectionism is a different beast from that of the early 20th century, but the result is the same. According to the Bank for International Settlements, the amount of money flowing across national borders has collapsed in a way never before witnessed. Put simply, financial globalisation, which helped power economic growth in recent years, has gone into reverse over the past year. All the more worrying is that it has done so without people noticing. >>> Edmund Conway | Wednesday, September 23, 2009

US Crackdown Could Tighten Tax Noose on Multinationals
THE TELEGRAPH: American companies may soon have to adapt to a fiscal regime without frontiers.

President Barack Obama has revealed a protectionist streak. Photo courtesy of The Telegraph
THE world is becoming a chillier place for multinationals, and for the owners of capital.

While President Barack Obama's plan to clamp down on the overseas earnings of US corporations has been billed as an attack on offshore havens, it heralds a deeper change in the way the US companies are taxed worldwide.

American citizens must pay US income tax on every dollar, peso, or yuan they earn, whether or not they set foot on US soil that year. Mr Obama is making the first efforts to extend this principle to companies as well.

At the moment, US multinationals can take tax deductions on overseas earnings, but delay tax on profits forever by reinvesting abroad. They can shuffle money from one subsidiary to another through the "check box" loophole. This is why US companies pay just $16bn (£11bn) a year on $700bn of foreign earnings, a tax rate of 2.3pc.

Mr Obama has a fight on his hands trying to stop it. >>> By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard | Tuesday, May 5, 2009