Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Trans Pacific Partnership Bad for the Middle Class, but How Bad? UPDATED

What you don’t know can hurt you. I think that’s a clear lesson of some so-called trade agreements the United States has signed over the last 20 years, and illustrated further by the few that have been defeated, most notably the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, negotiated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development from1995 […]

Courts and intellectual property rights

Caught from the Washington Post…and also interesting knowing theTrans Pacific agreements allowing multinational CEOs and firms to sue in domestic courts: Apple patents were violated by Samsung, jury rulesApple won a sweeping victory in its landmark patent dispute against Samsung when a Silicon Valley jury ruled Friday that a series of popular smartphone and tablet […]

U.S. Trade Deficit Largely Due to "Intra-Firm" Trade

by Kenneth Thomas U.S. Trade Deficit Largely Due to “Intra-Firm” Trade The vast majority of the U.S. $727 billion trade deficit in goods for 2011 is due to “intra-firm” or “related party” trade, that is, trade between two units of the same corporation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This is significant because such trade […]

Trans Pacific Partnership

The US Trade Representative website posts: The next negotiating round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership will take place in Leesburg, Virginia from September 6-15, 2012. As in the past, USTR will be hosting a Direct Stakeholder Engagement event to provide stakeholders the opportunity to speak directly and one-on-one with negotiators, raise questions, and share their views […]