NDN Blog

From the New York Times:

A World Trade Organization panel ruled on Wednesday that China had violated international free trade rules by limiting imports of books and movies, in a decision that buttresses growing complaints from the United States and Europe about Chinese trade policies.

The W.T.O. decision in Geneva is a victory for the United States at a time when a growing number of business executives and politicians perceive China as becoming increasingly nationalistic in its trade policies.

The restrictions also required foreign financial news services to operate through a government-designated distributor.

Ron Kirk, the United States trade representative, praised the panel’s legal finding. “This decision promises to level the playing field for American companies working to distribute high-quality entertainment products in China,” Mr. Kirk said, “so that legitimate American products can get to market and beat out the pirates.”

The W.T.O. ruling can be found here.

President Obama, President Calderon of Mexico, and Prime Minister Harper of Canada met in Guadalajara, Mexico, and, as is the standard procedure, yesterday released a joint statement. The leaders affirmed their commitments to trade, intellectual property, and a solution to climate change:

On IP:

We will cooperate in the protection of intellectual property rights to facilitate the development of innovative economies. We commend the progress achieved on reducing unnecessary regulatory differences and have instructed our respective Ministers to continue this work by building on the previous efforts, developing focused priorities and a specific timeline.

On trade:

North American trade is a vital component of our economic well-being and we pledge to abide by our international responsibilities and avoid protectionist measures. We reiterate our commitment to reinvigorate our trading relationship and to ensure that the benefits of our economic relationship are widely shared and sustainable. We will seek to promote respect for labour rights and protection of the environment with a continuing dialogue to address the functioning of the Labor and Environmental side agreements. This dialogue must result in mutually agreeable and cooperative activities with the aim to enhance the well-being and prosperity of our citizens and the economic recovery of our countries.

On Climate Change:

We recognize climate change as one of the most daunting and pressing challenges of our time and a solution requires ambitious and coordinated efforts by all nations. Building on our respective national efforts, we will show leadership by working swiftly and responsibly to combat climate change as a region and to achieve a successful outcome at the 15th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. We also recognize that the competitiveness of our region and our sustainable growth requires a greater reliance on clean energy technologies and secure and reliable energy supplies across North America. Today, in agreeing to the "North American Leaders’ Declaration on Climate Change and Clean Energy", we reaffirm our political commitment to work collaboratively to combat climate change.

The aforementioned agreement on climate can be found here. For more on trade policy, take a look at yesterday's GAO report on recent Free Trade Agreements.

U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (NY) yesterday introduced a companion bill to one sponsored by U.S. Rep. John Larson (CT-01), Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, that taps the resources of the nation's approximately 1,200 community colleges to offer free computer training to workers and others seeking to improve their IT skills.

The Community College Technology Access Act of 2009 – S. 1614 and H.R. 2060 - is based on a paper written in 2007 by NDN Globalization Initiative Chair Dr. Robert Shapiro, Tapping the Resources of America’s Community Colleges: A Modest Proposal to Provide Universal Computer Training. During the presidential campaign, then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama endorsed the idea as part of his platform and, as President, recently announced the American Graduation Initiative, which includes a massive investment in the nation’s community college system.

As Shapiro wrote in his 2007 paper:

The typical community college computer lab is open and used by students 66.5 hours per week. These hours are highly concentrated in the daytime of weekdays, when most working people are on their jobs. Under our proposal, the federal government would provide grants to defray the costs of keeping these labs open and staffed by community college instructors an additional 30 hours each week, on evenings and weekends when these labs are generally closed or little-used. During those hours, any person would be able to walk in and receive instruction in computer-related skills, at no cost. We estimate that if two-thirds of community colleges participate, and each provides three instructors for 30 hours a week, 48 weeks a year, Congress could provide every worker in America access to IT training for about $125 million a year.

Said Schumer, the Vice-Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, "Anytime that we can increase opportunities for our workers to gain access to computers and IT training, we are investing in the future of our job market and our economy. Our community colleges play a critical role in workforce training, and this program will enable workers and students to access community college computer labs for free during times when they would otherwise go unused. I am proud to have introduced this legislation in the Senate to help brighten the future of our workers and our community colleges."

"In joining with Chairman Larson to sponsor this legislation, Senator Schumer has again shown that he understands the need to move aggressively to provide America's workers with the skills to succeed in the competitive U.S. and global economies, particularly during tough economic times," said Shapiro, a former Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs. "The Community College Technology Access Act presents the country with a vision for helping every worker who wants to get ahead. Tens of millions of Americans entered our workforce before computers and the Internet became ubiquitous. Many of them now are in what could be their most productive and highest- earning years. Without access to information technology skills, however, many of them will never fulfill their potential or may find themselves trapped in dead-end jobs.  As non-wired employment becomes increasingly rare, Americans without solid IT skills will find themselves economically marginalized. This program can help millions more American workers thrive in our idea-based economy."

For more on NDN's efforts on worker skills and facility with the global communications network, visit our 21st century skills page.

With the Senate considering refilling (sorry) the funds for "Cash for Clunkers," here's a video of clean-tech entreprenuer Jack Hidary speaking about such a program last year at an NDN Green Project event on "Energy and the American Way of Life." Jack calls the proposal "Jack's Jalopy Law," but it's the same idea.

In yesterday's New York Times, conservative columnist Ross Douthat accuses President Obama of "pushing a blue-state agenda during a recession that’s exposed some of the blue-state model’s weaknesses, and some of the red-state model’s strengths."

Asking readers to consider California, which he places against the stellar conservative governance of Texas, Douthat notes:

California, always liberalism's favorite laboratory, was passing global-warming legislation, pouring billions into stem-cell research, and seemed to be negotiating its way toward universal health care.

(his link points to a Time article about Arnold Schwarzenegger's work in this area, who, last I checked, has an R and a 28 percent in state approval rating next to his name)

While California is undoubtedly a national leader in trends of all stripes, understanding the legacy of California governance as being "liberalism's favorite laboratory," couldn't be more wrong. The reasons for California's epic struggles lie, not in the "always liberalism" that Douthat sees, but instead in the Ronald Reagan conservative tax revolt coming home to roost.

In contrast to, say, California's efforts on energy policy, which research shows have created prosperity in the state over the last generation, the tax revolt defining Proposition 13 destroyed a top notch public schools system and, more recently, rendered the state bankrupt. The 1978 ballot initiative, which capped property taxes and mandated a 2/3 rule for the state legislature to pass a budget, has created a structural shortfall in the state budget and a political inability for legislators to craft a solution -- but Douthat doesn't see fit to mention it.

Conservatives love to argue that California has incredibly high tax rates, and, in the case of some specific taxes, that's true. But that's only because Proposition 13 so drastically lowered property taxes as to necessitate raising taxes to compensate for lost revenue. As Ezra Klein, in discussing Robert Samuelson's op-ed on California (which, like Douthat's piece, conspicuously fails to mention Prop 13), notes this morning:

Total state and local taxes take up 11.73 percent of the average Californian's income. The national average is 11.23 percent. And it's been like that for many years:

Far from being "always" liberal, California's electoral votes were supposed to be safe for Reagan's Republicans, giving them a generational lock on the White House. Here again, California was ahead of the nation, this time in discovering that conservatives couldn't govern and is now as deep blue as the Pacific Ocean.

Now that the nation has learned its lesson from eight years of red-state governance under Douthat's vaunted Texas leadership, America followed California, this time for the better, in overwhelmingly rejecting failed conservative governance. Blue-staters (a lot of folks these days) have only had six months on the job after eight years of botched "red-state" governance. It will be a lot longer than that if conservatives like Douthat can't even figure out where they went wrong; Proposition 13 was certainly one of the first places.

Update: Ezra Klein just blogged on Douthat's column as well. He does a nice job taking down the argument that Texas is a good model for anything and the broader red-blue frame that Douthat tries to use.

In his weekly address, President Obama discusses the impact of the Recovery Act on recent GDP numbers and the New Foundation. He sees innovation as a key piece of that New Foundation. Here's what the President had to say about employment, a lagging economic indicator:

But history shows that you need to have economic growth before you have job growth.  And the report yesterday on our economy is an important sign that we’re headed in the right direction.  Business investment, which had been plummeting in the past few months, is showing signs of stabilizing.  This means that eventually, businesses will start growing and hiring again.  And that’s when it will really feel like a recovery to the American people.

And innovation:

Innovation has been essential to our prosperity in the past, and it will be essential to our prosperity in the future. But it is only by building a new foundation that we will once again harness that incredible generative capacity of the American people. All it takes are the policies to tap that potential – to ignite that spark of creativity and ingenuity – which has always been at the heart of who we are and how we succeed. At a time when folks are experiencing real hardship, after years in which we have seen so many fail to take responsibility for our collective future, it’s important to keep our eyes fixed on that horizon.

Watch the whole thing for yourself:

Michael Pettis, a Peking University professor who I had the good fortune to meet as part of a college program in Beijing, writes in the Financial Times that it's time to get ready for lower Chinese growth. Pettis spells out the change that is likely to occur and hints at ramifications for policymaking in China and beyond:

For 20 years, and especially in the past decade, rapidly rising debt has allowed America’s consumption growth to exceed economic growth, with a concomitant rise in the country’s trade deficit. One consequence of this too-rapid growth in American consumption has been that the non-US global economy was able to grow faster than non-US global consumption. This was especially true for Asia, the main beneficiary of the US consumption boom, and for China in particular.

While Chinese consumption was growing at an impressive 9 per cent a year over the past few years, Chinese gross domestic product growth substantially outpaced it, clocking in at 10 per cent to 13 per cent annually. China was able to do this in large part because as it poured resources and cheap financing into manufacturing, and in so doing produced many more goods than Chinese households and businesses were able to consume, the balance was exported abroad, where much of it was absorbed by US consumers.

But everything has changed. Whether America likes it or not, US debt levels will decline over the next several years. As a result American consumption will grow substantially slower than the US economy, and so the trade deficit will decline. For the rest of the world, even ignoring the possibility of a decline in global investment, a contraction in the US trade deficit will bring with it a period in which economic growth will be less than consumption growth.
...

Over the next five years or more Chinese economic growth will necessarily be lower than growth in Chinese consumption. The massive but unsustainable investment in infrastructure and new production facilities that characterises the Chinese fiscal stimulus package will not be able to change this fact. From its dizzying heights during the past two decades, the world needs to prepare itself for a decade during which, if all goes well, China grows at a still respectable but much lower rate of 5-7 per cent. If the current fiscal stimulus package retards China’s adjustment process, as many analysts argue that it does, growth rates may be much lower.

The Council of Economic Advisors, the National Economic Council, and many others have told us that the American economic recovery will export driven. It seems that, for the sake of the economic future of both the U.S. and China, policymakers need to thing about getting as many of China's 1.3 billion people into the (low-carbon, sustainable) consumption game as possible. For more on China and the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, take a look at pieces from Michael Moynihan and Robert Shapiro this week.

Oh, and you should certainly buy the newly released, paperback version of Shapiro's Futurecast, which focuses a great deal on China.

The New Republic's Michael Crowley has a piece up today on the Obama foreign policy process. It's an insight into the President’s emphasis on process and inclusion as well as how hands on he really is on foreign policy. It's worth reading the whole thing, but here's an excerpt:

In the normal course of Washington events, the creation of talking points often involves several aides, who bicker and rewrite for hours until they've come up with a simple message for their boss. In the Bush administration, that process might have been perverted so that the vice president was telling his nominal boss what to say. But the Obama administration apparently operates differently. Rather than calling in his top foreign policy aides or formulating a stance that advanced his own agenda, Biden turned directly to Barack Obama. "The vice president said, 'What do you want me to say?' And the president and the vice president sat down and did them together," explains a senior White House aide. "And then they presented them to us."

Crowley covers Gitmo, Iran, General Jones, and more.

NDN Globalization Initiative Chair Dr. Robert Shapiro's important book Futurecast: How Superpowers, Populations, and Globalization Will Change Your World by the Year 2020 has been released in paperback. It's a great book, but don't take my word for it, read it for yourself. Some other strong references:

"[Shapiro’s book] is a storm warning at a time when food shortages, higher energy prices and a credit crunch are forcing our heads out of the sand: if readers turn to Futurecast, they will find an argument that gives us a measure of what we should expect from our political leaders - and from ourselves - if we are to continue our civilization on the high plateau we have managed to reach." --The Financial Times

"Rob Shapiro's prescient and insightful book probes the confluence of challenges that society will face in the coming years. He argues that our world has become increasingly interdependent, and we must foster global cooperation to achieve a sustainable existence with equal opportunity for all. Futurecast is a vital resource for anyone seeking to understand the world our children will inherit." -- President Bill Clinton

Recently, President Obama announced a strong committment to America's community colleges in the form of the American Graduation Initiative. NDN, a long-time proponent of harnessing the resources of community colleges to upgrade worker skills, has been collaborating with House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson on H.R. 2060, the Community College Technology Access Act of 2009. Here's what Larson had to say about the President's new program and H.R. 2060:

President Obama once again displayed his gift for transformational leadership when he announced this morning an innovative initiative to strengthen community colleges across the country so they can build the American workforce of the future.  I am a strong believer that community colleges can be a hub for technology and job training in our communities if they are given the resources that our schools and students need.

I've introduced The Community College Technology Access Act, developed with the support of the NDN, which will open the doors of community college technology labs and training opportunities to the public in order to provide workers who are lacking key computer skills the opportunity to attain them.  By broadening their mission, community colleges have the potential to be a hub to train our workforce for the jobs of the future. My legislation helps them fulfill their potential and boosts local economies around the country.  I commend the President’s leadership on this issue and look forward to working with him on it.

H.R. 2060 continues to gain support in the House of Representatives, and now has 46 cosponsors:

Rep Miller, Brad [NC-13] - 4/23/2009
Rep Hare, Phil [IL-17] - 4/23/2009
Rep Wu, David [OR-1] - 4/23/2009
Rep Edwards, Donna F. [MD-4] - 4/23/2009
Rep Honda, Michael M. [CA-15] - 4/23/2009
Rep Himes, James A. [CT-4] - 4/23/2009
Rep Murphy, Patrick J. [PA-8] - 4/23/2009
Rep Ehlers, Vernon J. [MI-3] - 4/23/2009
Rep Sestak, Joe [PA-7] - 4/23/2009
Rep Kilpatrick, Carolyn C. [MI-13] - 4/23/2009
Rep Sablan, Gregorio [MP] - 4/23/2009
Rep Napolitano, Grace F. [CA-38] - 4/23/2009
Rep Markey, Betsy [CO-4] - 4/23/2009
Rep Ross, Mike [AR-4] - 4/23/2009
Rep Matsui, Doris O. [CA-5] - 4/23/2009
Rep Bordallo, Madeleine Z. [GU] - 4/23/2009
Rep McGovern, James P. [MA-3] - 4/23/2009
Rep Smith, Adam [WA-9] - 4/23/2009
Rep Grayson, Alan [FL-8] - 4/27/2009
Rep Castle, Michael N. [DE] - 4/27/2009
Rep Costello, Jerry F. [IL-12] - 4/27/2009
Rep Kennedy, Patrick J. [RI-1] - 4/28/2009
Rep Reyes, Silvestre [TX-16] - 5/4/2009
Rep Polis, Jared [CO-2] - 5/6/2009
Rep Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana [FL-18] - 5/18/2009
Rep Grijalva, Raul M. [AZ-7] - 6/2/2009
Rep Pierluisi, Pedro R. [PR] - 6/2/2009
Rep Langevin, James R. [RI-2] - 6/2/2009
Rep Sires, Albio [NJ-13] - 6/3/2009
Rep Schwartz, Allyson Y. [PA-13] - 6/4/2009
Rep McIntyre, Mike [NC-7] - 6/8/2009
Rep Blumenauer, Earl [OR-3] - 6/9/2009
Rep Gutierrez, Luis V. [IL-4] - 6/11/2009
Rep Roybal-Allard, Lucille [CA-34] - 6/11/2009
Rep Lofgren, Zoe [CA-16] - 6/24/2009
Rep Courtney, Joe [CT-2] - 6/25/2009
Rep Ryan, Tim [OH-17] - 7/8/2009
Rep Filner, Bob [CA-51] - 7/8/2009
Rep Conyers, John, Jr. [MI-14] - 7/8/2009
Rep Price, David E. [NC-4] - 7/9/2009
Rep Olver, John W. [MA-1] - 7/10/2009
Rep Tonko, Paul D. [NY-21] - 7/13/2009
Rep Eshoo, Anna G. [CA-14] - 7/15/2009
Rep Cohen, Steve [TN-9] - 7/21/2009
Rep Schauer, Mark H. [MI-7] - 7/21/2009
Rep Wexler, Robert [FL-19] - 7/24/2009