Progressive Incrementalism: U.S Foreign Economic Policy Over the Next Four Years

As we look ahead following last year’s U.S. presidential and congressional elections, Canadians — and Canadian business in particular — will want to have a better sense of the economic prospects, as well as the context, of U.S. foreign economic policy over the coming half-decade or so. For, notwithstanding all the talk, debates, op-ed articles, thinktank-pieces and even books in recent years suggesting or asserting the decline of American economic power, Canada’s ever-present integration and interdependence with our southern neighbour is both a reality and now, again, an important, medium-term asset. Over the coming four years and likely beyond, and once it has completed sorting out its “fiscal cliff” matter, the U.S. is positioned to be the source of increasing economic growth. The American economy has strengths: its high productivity and innovation compared to most other countries, massive piles of private sector cash leading to all sorts of investment potential, a devalued currency, and a relatively young workforce compared to the European Union, Japan, and even Canada. Therefore, although the U.S. economy continues to face large challenges related to fiscal imbalances, there are reasons to expect increasing economic growth over the medium term. Volum

The Canadian RMB Trading Centre: A Small Step in the Long Road of China’s Peaceful Rise in International Financial Markets

China is on the road to becoming a powerful force in global financial markets; statistics suggest that already some 20 per cent of the world’s trade finance is currently conducted in the country’s currency — the yuan, or renminbi (RMB). That is a twentyfold increase in just five years. Canada has shrewdly connected its own financial system to that of China’s, well before many other countries, in securing permission from China to host one of the world’s few renminbi trading hubs. The creation of these trading hubs is an important milestone for China in the long process of the internationalization of its currency. Hosting such a hub is an important milestone for Canada, in that it can help further the increase in bilateral trade and investment, the expanding exchange of businesspeople and students, and the official presence on the ground on the part of both countries’ governments. A key benefit of the creation of an RMB trading centre in Canada is that it will enable Canadian financial institutions to develop a capacity to trade, and an expertise in trading, Chinese currency for non-Chinese financial instruments (such as stocks, bonds, etc.), and converting Canadian currency into Chinese investments. While this may seem straightforward, given the fact that so many different currencies are exchanged freely on global markets each day, the renminbi is unique in the fact that it has been a highly controlled, largely inaccessible currency. That has historically hampered its liquidity and added much more risk than is the case with other major currencies. Canada’s RMB trading hub will reduce those difficulties and risks. Just as significant, however, is the symbolism of Canada’s new hub (which, really, is just a virtual hub, comprised of computer systems, rather than a physical office or trading floor). The designation of Canada as host to an RMB centre — one of just nine in the world, and the only one in North America — was the result of several years of co-ordinated and co-operative advocacy on the part of Canadian businesses and governments who recognized its future importance. And it is a more important step forward in Canada-China bilateral relations than it has perhaps been given credit for. As China marches towards internationalization and liberalization, Canada has positioned itself well as an early partner in that progress. The RMB trading centre might be just a small step, but it is a vital one, in ensuring that Canada remains closer to, and more connected to, China as it emerges as a powerful global force in the world’s financial markets

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): An Overview

Canadians may have good reason to feel generally positive about the outcome of the negotiations that resulted in the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement in October. There are, after all, many important sectors that will benefit from the mega-regional trade deal, and in its current form, the agreement will benefit Canada overall. But it would be premature to allow hopes to get too high just yet. There are still a number of things that must go right for Canada to fully enjoy those benefits, and there is no guarantee that they will. One of the major uncertainties is whether the most important TPP country of all, the United States, will even approve and implement to the deal. While the current administration in Washington is obviously a champion of the TPP, Americans are embarking on what will be a heated electoral cycle, both a presidential election and congressional elections. The politics of the TPP are very much unsettled in the U.S. in a way that they are not in all the other TPP countries, including in Canada, and it is not entirely implausible that the TPP as it has been negotiated will never see the light of day. Without U.S. congressional approval, the deal is as good as dead. Even if the TPP is implemented as negotiated, the deal fails yet again to deal with many of the trade irritants between Canada and the U.S. that have existed since before the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, but have yet to be cleared up. Both Canada and Mexico were shrewd enough to realize that once the U.S. entered into TPP negotiations, it was incumbent on them both to join in as well, to preserve their preferential trade status in the American market, which they had already secured through NAFTA, and would not want to lose. But since NAFTA and even for many years before, the U.S. has continued to utilize countervailing tariffs and related measures to interfere with the intended free-flow of trade across North American borders. The TPP does not bring any further discipline to these practices, again leaving Canada to deal with ongoing irritants in its most significant trading relationship. And if Canada is ever to enjoy the TPP’s full potential benefits, there will also need to be a regulatory realignment of standards in our U.S. trading relationship, reducing barriers to entry in areas such as approval for pharmaceuticals. That is not part of the TPP as negotiated. That said, there are provisions in the TPP that have not previously appeared in Canadian trade deals, and could have interesting and possibly important impacts. Specifically, the TPP includes provisions that require state-owned enterprises (SOEs), common in many TPP countries, to operate on a more commercial and transparent basis. Provisions on labour and the environment are integral to the agreement in a way that they are not in NAFTA, and are spelled out clearly. And there are novel chapters on new technologies, including digital trade and e-commerce, which raise interesting questions about privacy, security and the collection and location of data. These are innovative elements and, much more than NAFTA and other current trade agreements, make this agreement a model for future agreements and perhaps even for the World Trade Organization’s global trade framework

EVALUATION OF THE POSSIBLE THREAT OF NAFTA ON U.S. CATFISH INDUSTRY USING A TRADITIONAL IMPORT DEMAND FUNCTION

The effects of increased exports from NAFTA member countries on the U.S. domestic catfish industry were evaluated. Results showed that the quantity of catfish imported will fall if the domestic price of catfish falls relative to the import price. Past imports have no effect on present imports. The income elasticity was negative indicating that imported catfish may be an inferior good. Doubling present levels of imports from NAFTA member countries is not a threat to the U.S. catfish industry.International Relations/Trade,

Cloud fluid models of gas dynamics and star formation in galaxies

The large dynamic range of star formation in galaxies, and the apparently complex environmental influences involved in triggering or suppressing star formation, challenges the understanding. The key to this understanding may be the detailed study of simple physical models for the dominant nonlinear interactions in interstellar cloud systems. One such model is described, a generalized Oort model cloud fluid, and two simple applications of it are explored. The first of these is the relaxation of an isolated volume of cloud fluid following a disturbance. Though very idealized, this closed box study suggests a physical mechanism for starbursts, which is based on the approximate commensurability of massive cloud lifetimes and cloud collisional growth times. The second application is to the modeling of colliding ring galaxies. In this case, the driving processes operating on a dynamical timescale interact with the local cloud processes operating on the above timescale. The results is a variety of interesting nonequilibrium behaviors, including spatial variations of star formation that do not depend monotonically on gas density

Observations and models of star formation in the tidal features of interacting galaxies

Multi-color surface photometry (BVri) is presented for the tidal features in a sample of interacting galaxies. Large color variations are found between the morphological components and within the individual components. The blue colors in the primary and the tidal features are most dramatic in B-V, and not in V-i, indicating that star formation instead of metallicity or age dominates the colors. Color variations between components is larger in systems shortly after interaction begins and diminishes to a very low level in systems which are merged. Photometric models for interacting systems are presented which suggest that a weak burst of star formation in the tidal features could cause the observed color distributions. Dynamical models indicate that compression occurs during the development of tidal features causing an increase in the local density by a factor of between 1.5 and 5. Assuming this density increase can be related to the star formation rate by a Schmidt law, the density increases observed in the dynamical models may be responsible for the variations in color seen in some of the interacting systems. Limitations of the dynamical models are also discussed

A spliceosomal intron of mitochondrial DNA origin

SummaryThe origin of spliceosomal introns is one of the most enduring mysteries in molecular biology. In nuclear genomes such as our own, the protein-coding regions of genes (exons) can be separated from one another by hundreds of thousands of base pairs (bp) of intronic (non-coding) DNA, and while they are often considered ‘junk’, introns are increasingly ascribed important regulatory functions [1]. Here we present evidence that an intron in a GTPase superfamily gene in the unicellular alga Bigelowiella natans is derived from — and was created by — the insertion of a fragment of mitochondrial DNA. Organelle-to-nucleus DNA transfer is an increasingly well-understood phenomenon, one that has the potential to greatly influence genome structure [2,3]. Our data suggest that such transfers could represent a hitherto underappreciated source of new spliceosomal introns

New-New Trade Policy

When national competitiveness is invoked as a policy objective, trade experts have learned to retort that countries don`t trade, firms do. This focus on the importance of the firm in international trade is consistent with the most recent developments in trade theory, but policy needs to catch up. Recognizing the growing anomalies in observed trade patterns relative to traditional models of trade based on national comparative advantage, the "new trade theory" of the 1980s looked at industries not countries, leading Nobel prize-winner Paul Krugman, a pioneer in this literature, to suggest the need for a new trade policy. Recent work on what some call the "new-new trade theory" focuses on the trading behaviour of individual firms, making a tight link between trade and productivity. In this paper we demonstrate how focusing on firms should be the foundation for a new-new trade policy, one that creates exciting opportunities for trade and investment promotion strategies, along with the need for much more targeted consultation strategies. We also discuss the implications of the new-new theory for regulatory coordination, and on new ways to cooperate with interlocutors in developing countries on the evolution of 21st century trade policy.New-new Trade Theory, Trade Policy

Dissolved Carbohydrates in Seawater. II, A Spectrophotometric Procedure for Total Carbohydrate Analysis and Polysaccharide Estimation

A procedure is described which adds a hydrolysis step to the Johnson and Sieburth 3-methyl-2-benzothiazolinone hydrazone hydrochloride (MBTH) assay for total dissolved monosaccharides. The advantages of the monosaccharide test are retained in the total carbohydrate test, giving nearly equivalent responses for a variety of combined carbohydrates. A total sample of 50 ml is adequate for both total carbohydrate and monosaccharide assays which permit the estimation of polysaccharide by difference. Values for Narragansett Bay and adjacent waters ranged from 452 to 2023 μg l−1 for total dissolved carbohydrate, 272 to 1353 μg l−1 for polysaccharide, and 153 to 814 μg l−1 for monosaccharide, which accounted for 6–18%, 4–13%, and 2–5% of the total dissolved carbon, respectively. We suggest that this is a sensitive and precise procedure which will be useful for investigating the distribution of dissolved carbohydrates in seawater and factors which affect its production, distribution and utilization

Precise and Accurate Determination by Infrared Photometry of CO2 Dynamics in Marine Ecosystems

Preliminary studies with an ampule analyzing unit and infrared (IR) detector showed that procedures for standardization and determination of total carbon dioxide (ΣCO2), while often precise, lacked the accuracy required to estimate the net productivity and respiration of aquatic ecosystems during studies in which sampling over diel cycles was used. Scaling down sample and standard volumes to the µl range and the use of a commercial sodium carbonate standard without dilution before and after replicate sample injections gave accurate results as shown by comparison with indirect (pH-alkalinity) ΣCO2, determinations with a standard error of ±3 µmoles in the laboratory and ±6 µmoles at sea for 8 to 10 replicates. This was sufficient to detect a diurnal consumption and nocturnal production of CO2, which were inversely correlated with O2 variation in a salt marsh, an estuarine mesocosm, and the Caribbean Sea