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Bringing Back Manufacturing Jobs Would Be Harder Than It Sounds : NPR

It's not, if you do this one thing, manufacturing is going to come back to the United States. You have to do a little bit of a lot of things.

The Democrats’ Meaningless Trade Revolt - Zachary Karabell - POLITICO Magazine

What does matter is how central the United States will be in setting the rules of engagement. Here, the pact matters, not because of its specifics but because of its symbolism. If over time the cost of doing business with the United States is too high because of barriers, then countries will do as they already have begun to do: find alternatives. That will happen anyway to some degree, but by retreating into a fairy tale that we can halt this tide, the United States will hasten its relative decline. There is much to be done addressing our domestic issues of equity and fairness. There is much to be done investing in a new generation of jobs and middle-class prosperity. Fighting against trade will accomplish precisely none of those goals.

This Is Elizabeth Warren's Party Now

The reason there is no deal on trade is that Warren, like many progressives, is a protectionist. And now Senate Democrats are also protectionists.

Bring Back American Enterprise - Bloomberg View

Congress should grant more visas to skilled immigrant entrepreneurs. They are twice as likely to start companies as native-born Americans. The politics of immigration are thorny, to say the least, but visas for entrepreneurs who come to the U.S. with money to invest shouldn't be controversial.

CBO: Deficit is Down, But Debt Remains High - Hit & Run : Reason.com

The Obama administration has tended to treat the recent decline in annual deficits as a kind of problem solved. It’s not. The problem is a little smaller, but it hasn’t gone away so much as been postponed. That’s a good thing, but it’s not enough.

Today, there are about 12 percent more people working part-time than before the recession and about 2 percent fewer people working full-time hours.

The steady rise in U.S. corporations buying foreign companies and then moving their headquarters abroad is not personal, it’s just business. It reflects the increasingly obvious fact that America’s high corporate tax rates put our companies at a competitive disadvantage against foreign companies, especially when competing for global markets.

To encourage investment, the U.S. needs to lower its corporate rates by at least 10 percentage points and reduce the incentive to escape the out-of-line and unreasonably high corporate tax rate. Ideally, since young firms generally reinvest their profits in production and jobs, such taxes should fall only on business income after it is paid out to individuals. As long as business income is being reinvested it is growing new income for all. There are no quick fixes. What we can do is reduce bureaucratic and tax barriers to the emergence and growth of new economic enterprises, which hold the keys to a real economic recovery.

Coupled with constraints on growth in housing and autos, those factors may keep GDP growth pinned below 3% and jobs creation close to 200,000 per month, instead of the 350,000 needed to lower unemployment to pre-financial-crisis levels.