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The paper explores incentives of national trade representatives (TRs) in international negotiations when trade policy basically follows a non-cooperative track with countries imposing tariffs on each other's exports due to "terms of trade cum international political economy" considerations. The paper shows that negotiations might get stuck even if a limited form of mutual trade liberalization Pareto-dominates the initial Nash-equilibrium in trade policies. The dilemma is rooted in a second-mover advantage, which adds considerable inertia to the Nash equilibrium of protectionism. The second-mover advantage arises whenever the countries' tariffs are strategic complements, with the latter, in turn, conditional on the traded goods being complements in final demand.

The United States and the European Union have generated dozens of bilateral Regional Trading Agreements (RTA) across the globe. All of these trading arrangements have detailed agreements on rules of origin (ROOs). Those rules are required in order to ensure that the perceived benefits of the Free Trade Agreements (FTA) are not subverted or deflected. These rules have their greatest impact on a firm's cost structure when applied to the trade of intermediate goods. Determination of the origin of final goods becomes more complicated where imported intermediates are used and the WTO 'substantial transformation' rules are implemented.There is relatively little literature on the impact of these rules of origin on trade. (Cadot et al., 2006; Duttagupta and Panagariya, 2002; and Falvey and Reed, 1998, 2002). The existing literature hypothesizes that these rules can easily be used to restrict or suppress trade between countries, or to divert trade away from more efficient suppliers to less efficient ones. The empirical evidence to support the trade distortions is based on the number and complexity of the rules of origin. In order to determine the degree to which the post-RTA trade flows are indeed affected by ROO requires a micro-based review of increased transaction costs, rather than the number of rules.The intent of this paper is to suggest a formal methodology, which relies on the literature about tariff-equivalents, to evaluate rules of origin requirements. The suggested approach, applied at the 5-digit HS level will provide a more robust evaluation of ROOs. The suggested methodology could also be used to investigate the oft-asserted hypothesis that with time and reduced tariff barriers, the costs associated with ROOs will diminish.

This study demonstrates that the HO model proves useful for assessing the competitive factors in the delivery of services. However, further analysis that draws on the modeling framework of microeconomics and industrial organization is required.

Despite his promise of "change," President Obama's trade policies during his first year took a backseat to other administration priorities. There were few notable achievements, as Obama deferred action on Bush-era bilateral agreements and chose not to push forward on multilateral negotiations. However, in trade administration there were victories in WTO dispute-resolution cases and some evidence of greater determination to enforce U.S. trade remedy laws.

Every new U.S. administration brings renewed hope and vigor to the World regarding unrealized dreams and aspirations as well as unfinished and not realized agendas. The U.S. has not neglected Latin America, even according to some the region has probably benefited from U.S. involvement in the Middle East and Afghanistan.A New Partnership for the Americas is the name that the Obama group used during the election campaign. The common thread is a preference to develop cooperation through converging national interests as articulated by the U.S. and Latin American Caribbean governments.The U.S. and Cuban government officials are talking for the first time in years raising hopes for a thaw in long-icy relations. President Obama has granted Cuban-Americans the right to travel freely to Cuba and to send remittances there, and to give U.S. telecommunications companies the right to pursue business there represents a first step in trying for better relations.If the new Obama administration thought that a change in the rhetoric and tone would make the likes of Castro, Chavez and others see things the U.S. way, a new lesson was learned in that sometimes countries disagree simply because their goals are mutually exclusive.A year after Barack Obama became U.S. president, pledging "a new beginning" in relations with Cuba and wining praise from Fidel Castro, bitter rhetoric is once more flying between the two states.At the outset it has to be recognized that the U.S. government actually understands what is happening in Latin America. The U.S. policy is highly sophisticated and often seems more drastic on its understanding of what is happening than some or most of its critics.Looking at some people's history of the hemisphere it is remarkable and transformative that for the first time in many years, the U.S. does not seem to care much what happens in Latin America. In an interconnected world, power does not need to be a zero sum game, and nations need not fear the success of another. Cultivating spheres of cooperation--not competing spheres of influence--will lead to progress in the Caribbean and Latin America. Engagement meaning expanded cooperation with and the need to broaden policy efforts with the group of leftists rules countries such as Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Peru and Venezuela beyond the previous administration focus on regional economic integration through competitive liberalization.

There has been tremendous pressure on the Obama Administration to justify the actions taken with regards to the U.S. financial crisis which has managed to eliminate, overnight, over a quarter of the middle class wealth and leave one in six adults without a job or underemployed, while generating a bailout debt that was unimaginable in scale and scope only five years ago. In response to this public pressure, in mid-June 2009, the Obama Administration issued a white paper titled “Financial Regulatory Reform - A New Foundation: Rebuilding Financial Supervision and Regulation" (published by the U.S. Department of Treasury) covering a wide range of areas of financial regulation that proposed a new architecture for financial supervision. Although the White Paper touches upon many of the Administration's promised responses to the crisis with regards to new financial regulations and supervisory changes, it has been criticized as being too narrow in the scope and breath needed to manage the sheer size and scale of the impact of the U.S. financial crisis. This paper focuses on ten concerns and issues of note with the Obama Administration's actions and responses to date with regards to the U.S. financial/banking crisis and its 2009 White Paper on “Financial Regulatory Reform." They are as follows: (1) No Discussion and Minimal Attempt by the Administration to Relay Their Understanding of and Global Transmission of This Financial Crisis, (2) Proposed Financial Oversight Council, (3) Increased Powers for the Federal Reserve, (4) Most Recommendations Do Not Follow the Trend Toward Supervision Consolidation, (5) Macroeconomic vs. Microeconomic Supervision, (6) Government in the Financial Markets and Industry, (7) No Significant International Standard Setting or Coordination to Date, (8) Issue of Too Big to Fail Still at Large, (9) Obama Administration's PR Debacle, and (10) Something to Show after Spending $1.4 Trillion Plus.

Coming out of the global recession, it has been suggested that certain United States’ trading partners that have relied on exchange rates policy should switch to the industrial policy, particularly, government subsidies for private sector research and development. The present paper argues that the recession itself is sufficient bad news. The prospect of our trading partners instigating an R&D subsidy game in the interests of an export-led growth strategy is even more sobering—especially if the U.S. fails to respond with its own R&D subsidy program. Whatever your view of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, one could make the case that the U.S. economy would have been better served investing in new technologies leading to new factories producing innovative products rather than simply paving a road to, at best, business as usual.