World trade is likely to fall this year by the largest amount since World War II, Cletus Coughlin writes in a short essay on the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis website. He cites a couple of obvious reasons — the…

An Investor’s Business Daily editorial puts an interesting spin on Caterpillar’s announcement of 20,000 job cuts:

No one has pleaded as earnestly for Congress to pass a Colombia free-trade pact as Caterpillar. Now, with earnings down and 20,000 American jobs to…

This may be stating the obvious, but a federal bailout for the auto industry wouldn’t just affect the three troubled companies in question. It also would affect their competitors, which employ hundreds of thousands of American workers. And, Dartmouth business…

The RCGA has been talking for months about a priority project to make St. Louis a hub for cargo flights from China, and RCGA President Dick Fleming now says the group is doing a study to learn how much “backhaul” traffic…

Most of the nation knows there will be a debate in St. Louis tonight. Fewer people know there was another debate between the McCain and Obama camps in town today over economic policy.

Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago academic, is…

Is all the NAFTA-bashing campaign rhetoric driving public sentiment, or is public sentiment pushing the candidates to be more anti-trade? It’s impossible to tell, but the Pew Research Center finds that public support for free-trade agreements is dropping sharply. Last month,…

As one grocery shopper told a Post-Dispatch reporter recently, “Things have gotten really expensive” at the supermarket. Food prices rose 4.9 percent last year, partly because of our thirst for corn-based ethanol and partly because of rising demand around the…

Russell Roberts, a former St. Louisan who now teaches economics at George Washington University, is worried about a resurgence of mercantilism. He writes in an article on Foreign Policy magazine’s Web site:

But when you hear U.S. presidential candidates start to mouth…

Even in this era  of globalization, the  vast majority of American firms don’t export.   That’s one of the insights from an  analysis  in this month’s  Regional Economist magazine from the St. Louis Fed. Nationwide, only 4 percent of the 5.5…

Bill Poole, president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, said in a speech over the weekend that he is troubled  by the direction of U.S. trade policy.

After mentioning the breakdown in World Trade Organization talks, the expiration of U.S. fast-track…