Free Trade Agreements: Impact on U.S. Trade and Implications for U.S. Trade Policy

Free trade areas (FTAs) are arrangements among two or more countries under which they agree to eliminate tariffs and nontariff barriers on trade in goods among themselves. However, each country maintains its own policies, including tariffs, on trade outside the region. In the last few years, the United States has engaged or has proposed to engage in negotiations to establish bilateral and regional free trade arrangements with a number of trading partners. Such arrangements are not new in U.S. trade policy. The United States has had a free trade arrangement with Israel since 1985 and with Canada since 1989, which was expanded to include Mexico and became the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) effective in January 1994. U.S. interest in bilateral and regional free trade arrangements surged, and the Bush Administration accelerated the pace of negotiations after the enactment of the Trade Promotion Authority in August 2002. U.S. participation in free trade agreements can occur only with the concurrence of Congress. In addition, FTAs affect the U.S. economy, with the impact varying across sectors. The 112th Congress and the Obama Administration faced the question of whether and when to act on three FTAs pending from the Bush Administration—with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. Although the Bush Administration signed these agreements, it and the leaders of the 110th Congress could not reach agreement on proceeding to enact them. No action was taken during the 111th Congress either. After discussion with congressional leaders and negotiations with the governments of Colombia, Panama, and South Korea to assuage congressional concerns regarding treatment of union officials (Colombia), taxation regimes (Panama), and trade in autos (South Korea), President Obama submitted draft implementing legislation to Congress on October 3, 2011. The 112th Congress approved each of the bills in successive votes on October 12, along with legislation to renew an aspect of the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program. President Obama signed the bills into law on October 21, 2011. In the meantime, on November 14, 2009, President Obama committed to work with the current and prospective partners in the negotiations to form a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement. The TPP is a free trade agreement that includes nations on both sides of the Pacific. The TPP negotiations emerged from an FTA that included Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore and that entered into force in 2006. Besides the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, and Vietnam have joined the negotiations. Furthermore, the United States has been negotiating with the 28-member European Union to form the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). FTAs raise some important policy issues: Do FTAs serve or impede U.S. long-term national interests and trade policy objectives? Which type of an FTA arrangement meets U.S. national interests? What should U.S. criteria be in choosing FTA partners? Are FTAs a substitute for or a complement to U.S. commitments and interests in promoting a multilateral trading system via the World Trade Organization (WTO)? What effect will the expiration of TPA have on the future of FTAs as a trade policy strategy? FTAs as a trade policy strategy

Class Action Advice in the Form of Questions

Based upon perspectives and concepts from social and historical research on technical systems, this dissertation describes and analyses events and processes relating to the dramatic change in television in Western Europe during the 1980s and early 1990s. In particular, it focuses on how Swedish television, conceived as a large socio-tecnical system, has shifted from a traditional 'public service' system to a more open and mixed system. In addition to traditional public television broadcasting, it has now come to encompass several commercial channels distributed through an expanding combination of technical and market alternatives, including satellite television. The study traces the multiple ways in which socio-historical processes and contingencies have shaped the television system in Sweden. The most detailed historical descriptions and analyses focus on the entrepreneurial activities of the Swedish firm, Industriförvaltning AB Kinnevik, documenting the introduction of the satellite channel TV3 in Sweden and the related expansion of the system. The entrepreneurial actions of Kinnevik in establishing the new satellite channel TV3 are analysed against the background of (1) the characteristics of the traditional Swedish radio and TV broadcasting system, (2) the development of cable television in Sweden, and (3) the broad history of satellite television. Emphasis is placed on how and why it was possible for a new actor to successfully challenge, gain access to, and help transform a well-established system that had remained relatively stable for a long time. This raises attendant questions of timing. How do we account for and explain the relative stability of this system for such a long period? Why did radical change occur at a particular time and not before or after? Whereas the empirical material concerning the activities of Kinnevik in relation to its entrance on the television market covers the period between 1984 and 1991, the study in general addresses developments throughout the twentieth century and, occasionally, even further back in history. The focus is thus on the system as a whole, rather than on only one of its components. A number of conclusions are drawn from the study concerning both the construction of new systems and the reconstruction of established systems. Two major conclusions can be mentioned here. (1) First, the historical material confirms the necessity of collective action in large-scale technology-based entrepreneurial action. (2) Second, the study also shows that there is nothing necessary or inevitable about the development of technologies/technological systems, even though they are subject to a high degree of path-dependence.The electronic version of the printed dissertation is a corrected version where all spelling and grammatical errors are corrected.</p

Timing as Jurisdiction: Federal Civil Appeals in Context

The purpose of these few pages is to show that the calculus of appeal timing is inherently complex. If we are to continue the effort to capture the calculus in rules, the rules will be correspondingly complex. The complex rules will have some virtues; nonetheless, the rules also are likely to generate misunderstanding and may tend to produce undesirable results. It is very tempting to replace the rules with a flexible system that relies largely on discretion to determine the occasions for appeal before a truly final judgment. Whether a flexible system has now become appropriate depends on the same institutional factors that make the calculus so complex. The best answer may be to adopt the framework for discretionary interlocutory appeals without yet abolishing present rules. As the discretionary system becomes more familiar, it should prove possible to discard many of the present rules in a gradual process of attrition

Class Action Advice in the Form of Questions

The opportunity to offer advice to those who are considering the adoption or modification of class or group action procedures for other legal systems is both welcome and distracting. It is welcome because it forces a change of perspective in the attempt to contemplate adaptation of United States practice to different cultures, political structures, substantive laws, and courts with dissimilar surrounding procedures. It is distracting because there are so many different levels of possible comparison that the choice of perspective must be tailored to the immediate occasion. It is tempting to take on the most important sets of questions-for example, to ask if non-governmental individuals, organizations, or lawyers should replace individual litigants in larger scale litigation so as to facilitate efficiency or remedy wrongs that otherwise would go unredressed. These questions can be addressed only within the framework of a particular society and its political and governmental structures. There is little point in attempting to provide answers good for all settings. At the other end, however, there is no point in attempting to address matters of minute detail. A more suitable middle ground can be found in a series of questions raised by more than eight years of witnessing the work of the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as it has grappled with possible revisions of Civil Rule 23. These questions are more helpful than even provisional answers would be-the questions are much the same for most systems, while the answers often will be different

Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) and the Role of Congress in Trade Policy

On July 1, 2007, Trade Promotion Authority (TPA—previously known as fast track) expired. TPA is the authority that Congress grants to the President to enter into certain reciprocal trade agreements, and to have the requisite implementing legislation considered under expedited legislative procedures. Although the President has the authority under the Constitution to negotiate international agreements, typically a reciprocal trade agreement requires an implementing bill and, therefore, congressional action to bring it into force. Many Members of Congress have advocated for renewal of TPA .On July 30, 2013, President Obama requested that Congress reauthorize TPA. On January 9, 2014, legislation to renew TPA—the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities Act of 2014—was introduced in the House (H.R. 3830) and in the Senate (S. 1900). The legislation would reauthorize TPA for four years with the possibility of a three-year extension. Alternative bills may also be introduced during the second session of the 113th Congress. Although there appears to be support for renewal of TPA in Congress, the details of the legislation are likely to be subject to considerable debate, including the specific treatment of any related TAA program reauthorization. This report presents background and analysis on the development of TPA, a summary of the major provisions under the expired authority, and a discussion of the issues that have arisen in the debate over TPA renewal. It also explores some of the policy options available to Congress

An experimental study of interceptors for drag reduction on high-performance sailing yachts

Interceptors have been widely used in recent years in fast ferries and small high-speed leisure and commercial craft for ride and trim control, and steering. In the context of high-performance sailing yachts, they first appeared in 2008 on the yacht Ecover 3 which was dismasted while leading the Vendee Globe Challenge race. However, in spite of their popularity in power craft, few studies have been published investigating the impact of interceptors on vessel performance, and apparently none in the case of sailing yachts. In the current study, interceptors are compared with an aerodynamic device known as a Gurney flap. It is shown that interceptors are generally substantially smaller than Gurney flaps. A comprehensive experiment programme is presented exploring the impact of interceptors on the performance of an Open 60 yacht hull. Results show a marked reduction in calm-water resistance over a wide speed range, with benefits of 10–18% in the speed range between 8 and 20 knots, accompanied by reduced sinkage and trim. The gains observed are much larger than those observed in powercraft, and also substantially greater than those achievable through trim changes by moving ballast longitudinally. The benefits appear to be largely sustained in small waves

Ligand Substitution Dynamics

Substitution of a ligand in an inner sphere complex by an outside group is the most fundamental reaction in metal ion chemistr

Ligand Substitution Processes

From the preface: The subject of the mechanistic study of ligand substitution reactions is currently undergoing an exciting growth. New fast-reaction techniques have removed the upper limit on rates that can be measured, and extension to less familiar central metal atoms has begun in earnest. This might seem the wrong moment for review of the field. As yet, definitive treatment is possible only for those complexes involving monodentate ligands with cobalt(III) and platinurn(II). But, because information is so extensive for these systems, it is clear that they are functioning as models from which concepts and experiments are generated for application over the fast-growing range of the subject. We believe that this is an important moment to reopen debate on fundamentals so that concepts will be most felicitously formulated to aid growth of understanding. This monograph is centrally concerned with three aspects of those fundamentals. We have attempted to develop an approach to classification of ligand substitution reactions that is adapted to what seem to have emerged as the characteristic features of these reactions and is susceptible to operational tests. (We do recognize that any such scheme of ideas is necessarily obsolescent once it is formulated since new experiments will certainly follow immediately.) We have tried to evaluate the basis for making generalizations about ligand substitution processes and to formulate tests to show whether new reactions fall within familiar patterns. Finally, we have sought to base the models of ligand substitution processes in the language of molecular-orbital theory. We believe that MO theory is most useful, because it may be used to correlate rate data on complexes with the extensive information available from spectral and magnetic studies, yet differs from crystal-field theory in providing a natural place for consideration of the bonding electrons, which must be a principal determinant of reaction processes. To keep this essay within bounds, we assume familiarity with the elements of experimental kinetics, transition-state theory, and the simple molecular-orbital theory of complexes. Introductory physical chemistry, some familiarity with the study of reaction mechanisms, and mastery of one of the qualitative treatments of MO theory as applied to transition-metal complexes should provide sufficient background. Thus, we hope that this book will be useful to students, relatively early in their careers, who wish to explore this field. Our debts to very many workers will be obvious throughout. We want to record here our special personal debt to Professors Ralph G. Pearson and Fred Basolo and to Dr. Martin Tobe. We particularly thank Professor George S. Hammond for his interest and enthusiasm in this project. Professor Hammond carefully read and criticized the entire manuscript in the final drafts. We received many other valuable criticisms at various stages of this project from Professors R. D. Archer, F. Basolo, J. O. Edwards, J. Finholt, P. Haake, J. Halpern, A. Kropf, R. G. Pearson, S. I. Shupack, M. S. Silver, and C. Walling, and Dr. U. Belluco and Dr. L. Cattalini. We very much appreciate their help and probably should have followed their suggestions more closely. We warmly acknowledge expert assistance from Mrs. Madeline deFriesse, Miss Jan Denby, and Mrs. Diane Celeste in preparation of the manuscript. COOPER H. LANGFORD HARRY B. GRAY Amherst, Massachusetts New York, New York October 196