Members and Friends:

Hope you are well, signing up for your shots, and following the rules to get us all back safely from the pandemic.

A number of new reports have come out in the past few weeks. To keep things simple, we will divide them between this Update and the next.

A short while back we sent you a timeline for trade-related events released by Inside U.S. Trade. One item on the list was the USTR’s annual “2021 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers.” The report is organized by country and, wherever possible, presents estimates of the impact of specific foreign trade barriers and other trade-distorting practices on U.S. exports, U.S. foreign direct investment, or U.S. electronic commerce. It classifies foreign trade barriers in 11 categories. As an example, the section on Mexico includes a number of non-tariff barriers to trade and technical and sanitary and phytosanitary barriers as well as barriers in the Government Procurement, Intellectual Property Protection, Services, Investment, and Digital Trade areas. The list for China, as can be expected, is much longer.

We have included for discussion in the past reports generated by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which provides valuable and timely information to Congress on a wide variety of issues. A recent report on “U.S. Aluminum Manufacturing: National Security and Tariffs” provides an update on issues in this industry including Section 232 matters.

A very interesting report that the CRS regularly provides to new members of Congress, especially those on committees having to do with trade, is “U.S. Trade Policy Primer: Frequently Asked Questions.” The report is organized into five sections: The Basics of Trade; U.S. Trade Trends; Formulation of U.S. Trade Policy; U.S. Trade Policy Tools; and the Link Between International Investment and Trade. The detailed information contained in the report can be a primer to all of us new to the trade area and is useful in explaining aspects of U.S. trade to others. The CRS site can be found at crsreports.congress.gov.

Late last year, the Chapter had a very interesting session on “The North American Trading Bloc in a World of Globalization.” Since 2011, DHL has been producing an annual report assessing the state of globalization in a “distancing world.” There are two companion volumes released last December, “DHL Global Connectedness Index 2020 Report” and “DHL Global Connectedness Index 2020 Country Book.” The Index measures globalization based on four pillars: international flows of trade, capital, information, and people. Three country characteristics—GDP per capita, population, and distance from foreign markets—explain 73% of the variation across countries’ levels of global connectedness. Internationally, the three pillars of trade, capital. and people have seen modest growth between 2001 and 2019. The pillar of information, however, has seen relatively larger growth. After holding steady in 2019, the world’s level of global connectedness is set to decline in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it is unlikely to fall below levels seen during the 2008-09 global financial crisis. For North America, in terms of rank for all countries, Canada was number 32 in 2019, Mexico was number 65, and the U.S. was number 37. The two countries with the highest rank and scores in 2019 were the Netherlands and Singapore. Detailed information on each of 169 countries is contained in the second volume.

Please don’t forget that, in addition to the links to reports above, all reports from our Breakfast Series and Updates can be found at www.usmcocma.org/resources.

Thanks for your continued support.