Trade Adjustment Assistance Coalition

At this year’s Jackson Hole conference for central bankers, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke admitted that the economic recovery so far this year has been “somewhat less vigorous than we expected,” but he expressed hope that the economy would return to a more satisfactory growth rate next year.  Considering that the Fed was already projecting a markedly slower recovery than America experienced after previous deep recessions, the Fed’s economic objectives are far too modest.  Ideally, the US economy should be growing at a 5 percent rate in 2010 and 2011 to recover lost ground and get work

President Obama, his economics team, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve continue to display a curiously detached view of the economy.  Just the other day, the president indicated that “it took nearly a decade to dig the hole that we’re in” as if that provided an excuse for the lassitude he continues to display in regard to the problem of unemployment.

Speaking this past week at the Ex-Im Bank, President Obama laid out his strategy for doubling American exports within five years, a goal he announced in his State of the Union Address. Naming it the National Export Initiative, he described the strategy as “an ambitious effort to marshal the full resources of the United States government behind American businesses that sell their goods and services abroad.” The Initiative calls for the creation of an Export Promotion Cabinet, made up of the Secretaries of State, Treasury, Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor along with the United State

"Any argument that Lehman's collapse served the positive purpose of letting the world financial system participants know there was a risk to be had, that message lasted 24 hours," said Doug Rediker, Director of New America Foundation's Global Strategic Finance Initiative and former Lehman Brothers investment banker. "We may now have the inverse message: There are banks that are too big to fail."... Original Article

Washington, DC -- President-elect Barack Obama has called for an ambitious program of public investment in infrastructure, including but not limited to short-term stimulus spending. Proposals for rebuilding America have received broad bipartisan support.

In 2002, Congress passed the most far-reaching reform and expansion of Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) since the program was established more than 40 years ago. Now, two years later, it is time to ask, how successfully have these changes been implemented and how effective is TAA in addressing the needs of workers and communities facing severe dislocations as a result of changes in international trade and investment?

In 2002, after a nearly decade-long deadlock, Congress passed the most sweeping international trade legislation in 15 years.

By giving the president authority to negotiate new trade agreements, the United States has begun negotiating free-trade agreements with more than a dozen countries. President Bush has already signed free-trade agreements with Chile and Singapore, and he expects to sign at least two more this year.

For more than 40 years, the United States has recognized that -- though international trade and global commerce are certainly in the best interests of the United States -- there are those workers that are hurt by trade and globalization in general. During the Kennedy administration, to respond to the needs of those workers the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program was created.