In The News

As word of a tentative new trade pact between the U.S. and Mexico surfaced Monday, several associations urged the White House to keep Canada in the agreement too.

The Institute for Policy Innovation has said it is "critical" that "any revision of NAFTA includes strong, updated protections for IP goods and services."

If the new North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) doesn’t improve intellectual property protections, then it’s not a better deal, according to the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI).

Abbott says he’s about had it with red-light cameras.

If a new NAFTA doesn’t improve intellectual property protections, it’s not a better deal, says a new publication released today by the Institute for Policy Innovation.

In more recent years federal environmental authorities have worked to keep the proportion of ethanol to gasoline in U.S. supplies at 10%. Generally, the auto and boating industries alike have resisted the use of ethanol, but the Trump administration may be poised to reverse that, according to a commentary on the Institute for Policy Innovation blog by Merrill Mathews, who equates the administration's interest to providing pork barrel offsets to Iowa farmers.

"The primary purpose of the Trump tariffs isn’t necessarily to raise tax revenue, as in centuries past, but to make something more expensive to U.S. consumers so that they will buy less of that item and buy more from domestic manufacturers, who, incidentally, typically raise their domestic prices," says IPI.

Increasing the blend wall to E15 means more demand for corn, which means higher prices and more money in farmers’ pockets — or maybe it just offsets some of their tariff-related losses.

The trick is keeping an eye on potential challenges to the good news. For instance, education — the training of minds, the cultivation of skills. The news here is less celebratory.

If the U.S. and China don’t defuse this conflict, China’s retaliatory tariffs could hammer America’s booming energy industry, wiping out thousands of current or future oil and gas jobs.