Rethinking Trade with Lori Wallach Rethink Trade

In our latest breaking news segment for Rethinking Trade, Lori Wallach discusses the latest developments on Capitol Hill.

De minimis is a trade loophole that we've discussed often on the podcast, and why it's important to close it. But what happened in the House Ways and Means markup, and to Rep. Blumenauer's bipartisan de minimis bill?

Lori gives the blow-by-blow.

BREAKING NEWS: China's WTO Complaint Against the U.S. on Electric-Vehicle Subsidies.



Lori gives background, and tells you what it means.

In our latest episode of Rethinking Trade, we’re talking about the major trade event of the year -- the 13th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO).It’s a major global biennial meeting where cabinet-level officials, like U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, get together to set the agenda for the international  trade and commerce body.Rethink Trade Research Director Daniel Rangel was on the scene in Abu Dhabi. In this episode he dissects the outcomes (or lack thereof!) at the conference. Lori and Daniel explore the implications for the WTO itself as well as fisheries stocks, anti-hunger programs, and much more. You also don’t want to miss how the WTO Director-General’s agenda-setting efforts impacted the negotiations.

Tariffs are in the news again! Why does that term generate such vitriol from some quarters and joy from others?! This week, we explore that question with Scott Paul, the President of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.  Scott and host Lori Wallach discuss how increasingly Democrats and Republicans alike now view tariffs as just another policy tool. For most of U.S. history, this was the American perspective. Tariffs - charges collected at the border on imported goods - were the main source of government revenue when the country was founded.   It seemed useful to unpack what tariffs are and who is generating the negative hype about them given the recent wave of news stories attacking the very concept. Spoiler alert: Tariffs are not a scary, dangerous thing lurking in your economy in the middle of the night!

Our latest episode of the Rethinking Trade podcast offers an urgent update about the de minimis loophole that we first discussed in 2022. It has gotten much worse.

E-commerce sites like Amazon, Shein and Temu use this loophole to skirt U.S. Customs and safety inspections and dodge all taxes and trade-cheating enforcement sanctions. Uyghur forced-labor products slip in and fake and dangerous goods too. The loophole is also increasingly being used by criminals to deliver illegal drugs with tragic consequences wracking families nationwide.

Our special guest this week is one of the nation’s leading experts on this dangerous scam. Kim Glas, a fighter for fair trade for decades from her roles in Congress, the Obama administration and a labor-environmental group is now president of the National Council of Textile Organization. She has all of the inside information and a strategy of how we can end the de minimis scam once and for all.

In our latest episode, we have two very special guests - voices you will know - talking about a corporate trade power tool that definitely should be on the “out with the old” list!

We’re talking about Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) and its implications for our economies and democracies. First, a quick refresher:

 

What is ISDS? 

ISDS grants foreign investors special rights and privileges, allowing them to sue governments outside of domestic courts. These suits often result in staggering compensations for corporations, all while undermining public policies.

 

ISDS has to go. 

 

That’s why we teamed up with Nobel-winning economist Prof. Joseph Stiglitz and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), our guests on this podcast, to release a paper that we co authored with experts from Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment and the Center for the Advancement of the Rule of Law in the Americas at Georgetown University Law Center, about how we can exit out of ISDS in the Americas.