Twelve years ago, Congress approved, and President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law. And what started as a small program that provided health coverage to people on cash assistance was cemented as the most impactful health insurance program: Medicaid.
Medicaid was first approved in 1965 as a part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s great society. While Medicare provided health coverage to seniors, Medicaid was envisioned as a more limited program for low-income pregnant women and people with disabilities. But over the forthcoming decades, it’s been expanded and reformed to become the largest health insurance program in the country: covering 80 million lives, paying for nearly half of all births, and protecting 10 million people with disabilities in addition to millions more who need long-term care.
During the pandemic, Medicaid and the ACA served as a safety net as many people lost jobs. Though the pandemic led to huge economic and employment downturns, the number of uninsured people actually fell by 0.6 million, or 1.9%. This was in stark contrast to the Great Recession of 2008-2009 when 9.3 million people lost their jobs and, subsequently, their health insurance — roughly 9.5% of children were uninsured. This time, safety net programs like Medicaid and subsidies available through the ACA kept people from losing health care coverage. Medicaid and CHIP enrollment increased to 83.2 million, up nearly 18% since February of 2020 and enrollment in Marketplace plans increased from 11.4 million in 2020 to 14.5 million in 2022. This was largely in part to the expanded subsidies pushed by the Biden administration and approved through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).
But all this progress is now in jeopardy. Throughout the pandemic, states have been obligated to keep people covered through Medicaid in exchange for higher payments from the federal government. But when the national declaration of a Public Health Emergency expires, states will lose the enhanced Medicaid funding and be required to conduct eligibility determination on all 83.2 million enrollees.
The risk is that the administrative process of chasing down enrollees and making them mail in the proper documentation will inadvertently kick-off millions of eligible people — putting them at risk for economic and physical harm.
The Biden administration has been working to streamline the redetermination process, saying that it can take up to 12 months to complete the renewals. States are also being asked to outline how the process will work, and how they will connect ineligible people with other forms of coverage, such as through the ACA exchanges.
Many states lost workers during the pandemic. That compounded with poor technology, outdated addresses, and the heavy lift of determining eligibility could leave many people left uninsured — intentionally or unintentionally. Red states, particularly those who resisted Medicaid expansion, could use it as an opportunity to “purge” Medicaid roles for political reasons. There are still 14 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid to cover all low-income residents and others that only expanded begrudgingly under state referendum.
The Urban Institute estimates roughly 16 million people who currently have coverage will be found ineligible. Of the adults, roughly a third should be eligible for federal tax credits for ACA private plans — if they enroll during the so called “special enrollment period.” But millions could slip through the cracks without a concerted effort to connect them to available resources, undoing the successes of the ACA right after it proved its utmost utility during the worst pandemic in modern history. States should take advantage of new flexibilities put in place by the Biden administration to simplify the redetermination process for beneficiaries and make the transition between Medicaid and private insurance as smooth as possible and Congress should make the enhanced ARPA subsidies permanent.
Gallup 2022 poll: International trade “is an opportunity for growth through exports”*
All respondents 61%
Self-declared Democrats 72%
*The alternative, international trade is more “a threat to the economy through foreign imports,” gets 35% support among the general public; Gallup’s writeup does not cite Democratic support for this proposition.
WHAT THEY MEAN:
Gallup’s February trade poll asks, for the 22nd time since 1992, whether we are more inclined to see “exports as an opportunity for growth” or “foreign” imports as a “threat to the economy.” Lamentably off on the economics! But faced with this choice, 61% of respondents choose “opportunity” and 35% “threat.” This result is on the “optimistic” side of the poll’s average, which over the full 30 years comes out at 53%-33%. Its partisan filter, meanwhile, finds self-identified Democrats more “pro-trade” than average at 72%; Republicans are for now more pessimistic, with 44% choosing “opportunity” and 52% “threat.” Independents, at 65% “opportunity,” are closer to the Democratic view.
The second very recent trade poll, released last November by the Chicago Council for Global Affairs, asks about two specific trade agreements — the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (previously the more concise TPP), and U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (before its renegotiation, the North American Free Trade Agreement) and whether in general “globalization” and “international trade” are good for the United States. Though the questions are different, the Council’s results are similar to Gallup’s: an overall positive view, with a noticeable partisan divergence. Asked about a hypothetical decision by the U.S. to rejoin the CPTPP, 62% of Council respondents favored the idea while 33% opposed. Among Democrats, the split was a decisive 75% yes and 19% no; Republicans were also positive but less emphatic, at 50%-38%. Likewise, asked whether “international trade” is good for the U.S. economy in general, 86% of Democrats concurred as against 66% of Republicans; and asked whether trade is good for “creating jobs,” 68% of Democrats and 51% of Republicans agreed.
Both results are pretty typical of the last decade’s trade polling, showing a generally positive public view of trade but with Democrats more enthusiastic. A trawl back through earlier Gallup and Chicago Council polls, along with more by Pew Research, NBC/Wall Street Journal, Monmouth and others, finds at least three different demographic axes of divergence, suggesting that the partisan gap has a stronger foundation than simple reactions to a current administration:
1. Youth and Age: Young people generally seem more positive about trade than their elders. As an example, Pew’s 2018 poll found 18-29-year-olds most likely to agree in a general sense that “trade is good” (84%), and also most likely to agree that trade creates jobs, lowers prices, and raises wages.
2. Race and Ethnicity: Monmouth University asked in 2019 (during the Trump administration’s burst of tariffing) whether “tariffs on products imported from our trading partners” would help or harm the U.S. economy. This poll divides the public a little simply, contrasting the views of non-Hispanic whites with those of all other races and ethnicities combined. It found non-Hispanic white Americans tilting against tariffs (28% help the U.S. economy, 41% harm); among Hispanic, Asian Americans, and African Americans, by contrast, the split was a decisive 19% “help” and 57% “harm.”
3. Education: The same Monmouth poll, found differences on tariffs to be modest among the public as a whole, but with less-educated white Americans noticeably less likely than other demographics to see tariffs as harmful to the economy. Among all Americans with college degrees, 23% predicted that tariffs would help the economy while 56% predicted harm; for all those without degrees, the split was a similar though less emphatic 25% “help” and 43% “harm”. Among non-Hispanic white Americans, specifically though, views diverged sharply by education level: respondents with college degrees viewed tariffs as likely to harm the economy by 54%-23%, while respondents without degrees split nearly evenly, at 31% “help” and 35% “harm.”
The Chicago Council on Global Affairs has the longest continuous record of trade polling, spanning 42 years from last November’s report to the March 1979 American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy release. Forty-three years ago, the U.S. public’s top international economic concerns were inflation and the declining value of the dollar, and the public at large appears to have been more inclined to keep tariffs while national leaders mostly favored abolishing them. The Chicago Council archive.
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools (RAS)Project has partnered with The 74 Millionto tape a new podcast series on the “Future of Teaching” recorded at the SXSW Education conference in Austin, Texas. In the final episode of our four-part series, RAS co-director Curtis Valentine sits down with Sarah Johnson. Sarah Johnson serves as CEO of Teaching Lab, a non-profit dedicated to shifting the paradigm of teacher professional learning for educational equity. In this wide-ranging discussion, Curtis and Sarah discuss how she came to lead Teaching Lab and why teacher development is critical to putting effective teachers in classrooms across America. Curtis asks Sarah to offer her insight on what trainers can do to better prepare educators for the future of learning and discuss what changes to the educational landscape can be expected over the next year.
PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools (RAS) Project has partnered with The74Million to tape a new podcast series on the “Future of Teaching” recorded at the SXSW Education conference in Austin, Texas. In the third episode of our four-part series, RAS co-director Curtis Valentine continues the conversation from the previous episode about reshaping school leadership for the future as he sits down with Atlanta Superintendent Dr. Lisa Herring. In this intriguing conversation, Dr. Herring discusses her path to becoming superintendent of Atlanta’s Public School system and details why empowering teachers is critical toward ensuring the success of students both in the classroom and in their future careers. Finally, Curtis and Dr. Herring look ahead to next year’s conference and discuss what changes to the educational landscape can be expected over the next year.
PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools (RAS) Project has partnered with The 74 Million to tape a new podcast series on “The Future of Teaching” recorded at the SXSW Education conference in Austin, Texas.
In the second episode of our four-part series, RAS co-director Curtis Valentine sits down with Jean Desravines. Jean Desravines serves as the CEO of New Leaders, a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to ensure high academic achievement for all children, especially students in poverty and students of color, by developing transformational school leaders and advancing the policies and practices that allow great leaders to succeed. In this engaging discussion, Curtis and Jean discuss the current state of school leadership in the U.S. and its direct impacts on teachers. Additionally, Jean offers a preview of what he will be presenting at the conference and offers advice for school leaders intent on preparing teachers for the future of learning. Curtis and Jean look ahead to next year’s conference and discuss what changes to the educational landscape can be expected over the next year.
President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address last week highlighted two of the greatest foreign and domestic challenges facing the United States. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has undermined decades of peace in Europe, causing a humanitarian and geopolitical crisis while sending energy prices soaring. At home, inflation is rising at the fastest pace in 40 years and outstripping wage gains for many workers.
A new proposal offered by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) shortly after Biden’s address gives Democrats a strong approach for tackling both of these challenges — one that even has support from many progressives in the House with whom Manchin has often clashed. Manchin suggests Democrats pursue changes to the tax code and prescription drug pricing that would raise revenue without hurting our international competitiveness. He also recommends that this revenue be split evenly between deficit reduction and funding investments to expand domestic clean energy production, so America is less vulnerable to swings in energy costs.
A new report by the Progressive Policy Institute’s Reinventing America’s Schools (RAS) Project provides a deep dive look into a promising, innovative education initiative in Texas. The Leadership Academy Network (LAN) is a novel partnership between the Fort Worth Independent School District (FWISD) and Texas Wesleyan University (TXWES). Through a performance contract, TXWES is responsible for the governance and day-to-day operations of six of the district’s most challenged schools. Supported with additional funding from the state, pursuant to Texas’ 2019 statute commonly referred to as “Senate Bill 1882,” the LAN operates autonomously from the district’s central office, with the deliverable of earning an Texas Education Agency “A” rating for each of the six campuses by 2024.
During this high-tension time for educators, school administrators, and parents, report author and Co-Director of the Reinventing America’s Schools Project Tressa Pankovits covers how and why the school district leaned in on this partnership, the state policy that authorized and sustains the partnership, how it works, and how it’s currently working.
“It appears we have reached a moment in time when there seems to be a broad public consensus that yesterday’s bureaucratic and highly centralized K-12 school model is not ‘the one true way’ to deliver public education for all times,” writes Tressa Pankovits in the report. “Instead of letting our public school districts continue to shrink, why not reinvent them using autonomous partnerships like the Leadership Academy Network to increase choice, transparency, and a diversity of models? In Fort Worth and other places, it appears to be a sound way to feed the public’s post-pandemic hunger for sweeping changes in their K-12 schools.”
“All children deserve quality schools and a chance to rebound from the disruption the last two years caused in their attainment of the knowledge and skills they need to live productive lives. Not just in the time of a pandemic, but especially in the wake of one, it’s time to acknowledge that new school models like the LAN aren’t a threat to the public education ideal. Rather, they could be the way to save it,” Pankovits concludes.
In addition to explaining the inner workings of this innovation education partnership, Pankovits also offers exclusive interviews with teachers and administrators, who provide candid assessments of the challenges and successes of strengthening the Leadership Academy Network. Her ‘on the ground’ reporting connects those in the halls of the LAN to the readers, and lifts up the voices of these innovative leaders in education.
Read the report:
The Reinventing America’s Schools Project inspires a 21st century model of public education geared to the knowledge economy. Two models, public charter schools and public innovation schools, are showing the way by providing autonomy for schools, accountability for results, and parental choice among schools tailored to the diverse learning styles of children. The project is co-led by Curtis Valentine and Tressa Pankovits.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
The pandemic put both a microscope and a wide-angle lens on America’s education systems. Under the microscope, parents had a window into individual classrooms as never before, as their children struggled to learn through laptops. Many didn’t like what they observed. Through the wide angled lens, the country was jolted by evidence that school districts everywhere were failing to adapt. Failing to meet the moment. Failing to stem learning loss. Many recognized that perhaps 150 years were more than enough of centralized, bureaucratic school systems. What we at Progressive Policy Institute have been saying for many years — that it is time for something different — began resonating with parents across the country. What that “something” is will likely be different in different places to meet differing needs. But for large school districts, it is painfully obvious that top-heavy central administrations that push a standardized, one-size fits all school experience are as antiquated as paper road maps. We believe that everyone — except perhaps overstaffed central bureaucracies and the teachers unions — would benefit from more decentralized and more accountable school systems.
One auspicious approach is the partnership model. The model in a nutshell: a school district partners with a qualified nonprofit to operate a school or a subset of its schools, usually using a performance contract to define the terms of the relationship. Even before the pandemic disrupted the education of a generation of students, an increasing number of urban districts around the country were experimenting with the partnership model. As with anything new, some early adopters are doing better at it than others. This report tells the story of one promising effort: the Leadership Academy Network (LAN) in Fort Worth, Texas. LAN is a partnership between the Fort Worth Independent School District (FWISD) and Texas Wesleyan University (TXWES). LAN is unique because it is effectively a “homegrown” initiative, meaning the district did not simply bring in a proven charter school operator to manage its failing schools; it launched the turnaround on its own prior to its partnership with Texas Wesleyan University. It is a modern partnership adopted by a district willing to venture out of its bureaucratic comfort zone in order to sustain improvements in what had been some of its lowest performing elementary and middle schools.
This report will cover how and why the FWISD went the partnership route, how the LAN got up and running, how it works, and how it is working. It will also take the reader inside LAN’s schools, which will hopefully inspire pragmatic thinkers to encourage more places to consider its data-driven instructional model. At the center of LAN’s model is the practice of providing students support to master the skill or topic being taught before they move on to the next lesson. Now is the moment to embrace innovation in America’s public K-12 school systems. Millions of students who were already academically behind prior to the pandemic are suffering from significant learning loss. Therefore, it is imperative that we accelerate and scale efforts like Fort Worth’s LAN partnership to improve and modernize our education systems.
INTRODUCTION
In 2017, bitter and protracted fights over sanctuary cities and transgender bathrooms dominated both the Texas legislative session and media headlines. There was at least one shoving match on the House floor and, after a particularly contentious debate, a couple of legislators threatened to shoot each other dead in the Capitol’s parking lot.
Amidst that chaos, Texas’ lawmakers did manage to pass Senate Bill 1882, which provides financial incentives for school districts to partner with carefully vetted nonprofits to operate district schools. SB 1882 is similar — but not identical — to partnership statutes in a growing number of other states, including Colorado, Indiana, New Jersey, Tennessee, and others. Los Angeles, Memphis, Indianapolis, Charleston, S.C., Springfield, Mass., Chicago, and several other cities are also trying partnership schools. Partnering has become a new model of how large urban districts can reinvent themselves, shifting from centralized, rule-driven, and bureaucratic to decentralized, mission-driven, and innovative.
In each state, the bills’ architects wanted to prompt traditional districts to proactively improve the delivery of education services. In the case of perennially failing schools, the goal is for the district to bring in a qualified organizations to improve schools the district itself had been unable to turnaround. In cases where a school was limping along but not necessarily failing, the bills’ sponsors hoped offering the partnership model would inspire district leaders to give a partner the autonomy to turn mediocre schools into great schools. In some places — Indianapolis and Denver, for example — if a school’s leader and enough teachers want to, they can vote to become an autonomous school.
While some districts grant more autonomy than others, in almost all cases, the nonprofit’s contract with the district is a performance contract that articulates specific success metrics for improved student outcomes. If the school meets the deliverable, the contract is renewed. Sometimes, the successful school is allowed to expand or replicate on another campus. If the school fails to meet its performance goals, the district replaces the operator or returns the school to district governance. By replacing the low performers, replicating the best, and developing new models to meet new needs, the district almost guarantees continuous improvement. This new formula — autonomy, accountability, diversity of school designs, and parental choice — is simply more effective than the centralized, bureaucratic approach we inherited from the 20th century.
Because governance is decentralized to the local school level, these schools are also nimbler when challenges like those wrought by the pandemic arise. Decisions can be made with increased parental input and without central office bureaucratic red tape.
In some places, the partner-operated school remains in the same school building, with the same neighborhood students. If there are empty seats after all zoned students enroll, the schools may enroll students from outside the zone using random lotteries. In other places, they are purely schools of choice. For example, three rural Texas counties have banded together to create a regional Rural Schools Innovation Zone of specialized high school academies. Students from all three counties can choose to attend any academy in the zone.
No matter how they enroll their student body, all nonprofit school partners must follow all state and federal laws while operating the school — anti-discrimination protections, the Americans with Disabilities Act, procurement procedures, workplace safety regulations, and so on — but they are exempted from most school district policies and in some places, collective bargaining agreements. Each partner has its own board of directors or trustees that oversees the school or schools, with various degrees of independence from the school district board. Our research finds that the more independence the partner’s board has, the better the model works.
In Texas, the 1882 statute spells out certain autonomies districts are required to give their partner-operator in order for the state’s department of education, the Texas Education Agency (TEA), to grant the extra funding. The required autonomies include freedom to make staffing, budget, and curriculum decisions. As Fort Worth Independent School District’s Chief Officer of Innovation David Saenz put it, “The state must be able to see (in the proposed partnership contract) that there has been no negotiation of terms on those issues between the district and the partner.” Other autonomies can be — and should be — negotiated before the performance contract is signed.
Texas’ exchange of extra funding for the mandatory autonomies is a pragmatic bargain for several reasons. School turnaround is difficult and sustaining improved outcomes is expensive. Providing an incentive for high quality school operators to take on a floundering school while giving districts an incentive to relinquish a low-performing school is a win for the students in that school building.
It also increases transparency and accountability. Because the district and partner sign a performance contract, all parties understand the metrics for success or failure from the outset of the partnership. If the partner doesn’t meet the terms of the agreement, at the end of the contract, it loses the right to continue operating the school.
Finally, when a school improves, the district gets to include its higher test scores in its submission to the TEA, thereby raising the entire district’s rating. And, the district is freed from managing a challenged campus, allowing it to redirect its resources to other campuses.
The district-nonprofit partnership model is one that large urban districts everywhere can employ to reinvent themselves. We have seen for ourselves that it can transform schools hamstrung by central-administration bureaucratic whim into mission-driven organizations liberated to innovate.
Progressive Policy Institute’s Reinventing America’s Schools project in 2020 published a comprehensive guide to this school model, complete with model legislation that incorporates the strongest elements of the various state statutes mentioned above. The schools we wrote about are known by different names in different places. In Camden, N.J., they are “renaissance schools.” In Indianapolis they are “innovation network schools,” while in Denver, innovations schools can organize themselves into “zones,” which are then commonly called “iZone schools.” Across Texas, they are nicknamed after the law that created them: “1882 schools.”
In Fort Worth, the nickname is especially appropriate, as the legislature passed SB 1882 in the nick of time for the district. FWISD had started a turnaround initiative in some of its low-performing schools that was making rapid progress, but it was running out of resources to sustain the momentum. SB 1882 created the mechanism that allowed LAN to continue what FWISD started.
Like the White Queen in “Alice in Wonderland,” Republican voters seem capable of believing “as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” In their looking-glass world, Donald Trump trounced Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, the world’s scientists are colluding in a climate change hoax and evil epidemiologists pushed mask mandates to deprive Americans of their liberty, not to protect them from a virus that’s killed more than six million people.
Democrats are wondering how they could possibly be losing to a defiantly delusional GOP in party preference matchups. One answer is that midterm elections are always tough on the party in power. Another is that Democrats have been falling into rabbit holes too.
Their illusions are explored in “The New Politics of Evasion,” a new study by two veteran political analysts, Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck published by the Progressive Policy Institute. It’s a timely and incisive exercise in political reality therapy for President Biden and his party, whose public approval has cratered over the past year.
By ignoring defecting swing voters, the authors warn, Democrats could not only take a beating in November but also reopen the door to Trump’s return, putting our democracy at risk.
PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools (RAS) Project has partnered with The 74 Million to tape a new podcast series on “The Future of Teaching” recorded at the SXSW Education conference in Austin, Texas.
In the debut episode of our four-part series, RAS co-director Curtis Valentine sits down with Tequilla Brownie. Brownie serves as CEO of The New Teacher Project, a non-profit with a mission of ending educational inequality by providing excellent teachers to the students who need them most and by advancing policies and practices that ensure effective teaching in every classroom. In this engaging conversation, Curtis asks Tequilla to discuss what steps need to be taken to disrupt racial inequities in the classroom and what advice she has for school leaders working to ensure their teachers are prepared for the future of learning. In addition, Curtis and Tequilla look ahead to next year’s conference and discuss what changes can be expected to the educational landscape over the next year.
America’s “non-MFN” tariffs on natural resources are usually low.
THE NUMBERS:
Tariff rates on two Russian imports
Palladium, “MFN”: 0%
Palladium, “Column 2”: 0%
King crab, “MFN”: 0%
King crab, “Column 2”: 0%
WHAT THEY MEAN:
The Biden administration’s ban on Russian oil, coal, and gas is a large though not total trade sanction, cutting off about 60% of American imports of Russian goods. (Last year’s import total was $26 billion; energy made up $16 billion.) Congress, meanwhile, is considering a bill to revoke Russia’s “Most Favored Nation” tariff status. Some observations on this more complex measure:
Fundamentally, it means the tariff rates a country applies generally — as an example, the U.S.’ 6.5% “MFN” tariff on umbrellas (tariff line 66019100) applies to European umbrellas, Chinese umbrellas, Brazilian umbrellas, etc. (Following the late Senator Daniel Moynihan’s noble but forlorn hope to make trade policy terms of art more comprehensible, the U.S. also uses the term “permanent Normal Trade Relations or “NTR” to mean the same thing, but others don’t.) MFN tariffs are also a core feature of relationships among WTO members, as membership entails accepting a “non-discrimination” obligation requiring them to give one another equal tariff rates.
What then does “revoking” MFN status mean? In practice, should Congress pass such a law, buyers of Russian goods would no longer pay the current U.S. tariff rate. Instead they would pay the rates created in the 1930 “Smoot-Hawley” Tariff Act during the Hoover presidency. These rates are now listed in “Column 2” of the U.S. Harmonized Tariff Schedule; as an example, an umbrella gets a 40% Column 2 tariff. More broadly, standard estimates of Smoot-Hawley average tariffs are (a) about 20% overall, based on dividing tariff revenue by import value, as opposed to 2.8% in 2021 (or 1.4% excluding the Trump-era tariffs on Chinese goods and metals) or (b) an even higher average of 59% excluding duty-free goods.
As the averages and the umbrella example both suggest, non-MFN tariffs are generally seen as quite punitive, and often are so in reality. However, they are much less punitive in the specific Russian case. This is because Russia is mainly a natural-resource exporter, and Column 2 tariffs on natural resources are actually rarely high and often zero. In 1930, both Congress and Mr. Hoover wanted very high tariffs on manufactured goods and farm products, but avoided them on raw materials to keep costs low for U.S. factories. These sorts of things — energy, specialty metals, chemical inputs for fertilizer — make up most of America’s 21st-century purchases from Russia. A look at MFN and “Column 2” rates on the U.S.’ top 25 Russian imports last year (accounting for $22 billion of a $26 billion total) yields this result:
1. Energy ($16 billion): Eight crude and refined oil, gas, and coal products made up about 60% of all U.S. imports from Russia last year. The Column 2 tariff on crude oil is 21 cents per barrel —twice the “MFN” 10.5 cents per barrel, but still insignificant. So revoking MFN tariffs on energy would be unlikely to change trade flows at all, since the increases basically raise rates from about 0.1% to about 0.2%. If the goal is to impose economic costs, yesterday’s ban will do a lot more.
2.Four specialty metals ($2.1 billion): palladium, rhodium, uranium, and silver in bullion form. Here, revoking MFN changes nothing, as U.S. tariffs are zero on these things at MFN, and also zero in Column 2.
3. Five natural resources and basic chemical products (also $2.1 billion): Diamonds are zero at MFN, and 10.5% in Column 2; likely some impact, but not a huge one. The others — king crab, potassium chloride, urea, and urea/ammonium mixture (the latter two used as fertilizer precursors) — are all zero tariff now and also zero in Column 2.
4.Four industrial metals ($2.5 billion): The largest is pig iron at $1.2 billion, for which rates rise from zero to $1.11 per ton. This was probably a lot in 1930, but is about 0.2% — not significant — at the 2022 market price of about $500 per ton. Increases are higher for the other three: zero to 10.5% for unwrought aluminum alloy, zero to 11.5% for ferrosilicon, and zero to 30% for ferrosilicon.
5. Four value-added manufactured products ($1.5 billion): Here, a shift to Column 2 means a steep tariff increase. For birch-faced plywood, tariffs rise from zero to 30%; for bullets and cartridge shells, zero to 50%; for semi-finished steel products, zero to 20%; and for reaction engines, zero to 35%.
Altogether, then, revoking MFN status for Russia imposes some penalties, but in most cases not very significant ones given Russia’s unusual export pattern. It may nonetheless be an appropriate symbolic and moral gesture, in particular if many WTO members join in it. But as a policy measure meant specifically to impose economic cost, the energy import ban is the one with practical real-world impact.
FURTHER READING
President Biden on blocking Russia energy imports; also summarizes current sanctions, coordination with allies, and measures to ease impacts at home.
Finance Committee Chair Wyden with a similar bill.
A quick PPI table: The top 25 U.S. imports from Russia (at HTS-8 level in tariff lingo, accounting for 87% of the $26 billion in U.S. imports from Russia last year), with import value, tariff code, and MFN/non-MFN rates:
Tariff System Background
The Harmonized Tariff Schedule, from the U.S. International Trade Commission (MFN rates in Column 1, non-MFN in Column 2).
Also from the ITC, the invaluable (though a bit challenging for those not yet initiated into tariff codes) Dataweb allows you to check imports, exports, and balances country-by-country and product-by-product.
And trade policy historian Doug Irwin looks back at the notorious Tariff Act of 1930.
A Note on Platinum-Group Metals
Where does it hurt? Overall, Russia is a modest U.S. trading partner, supplying 1% of U.S. imports and buying 0.3% of exports. Though the largest chunk of this is energy (again, $16 billion of $26 billion in total imports, and of $32 billion in total trade), adjustment for the U.S. might be most challenging in a few specialty metals (e.g. palladium and rhodium, “platinum-group” metals used in automotive engines to absorb pollutants in exhaust, in medical device manufacturing, and so on). The U.S. Geological Survey’s summary of platinum-group metal reserves around the world suggest it isn’t impossible. Russia has a lot, but South Africa has more, and the U.S. and Canada have some, too.
Here’s where it is — Sibanye Stillwater, a South African-owned U.S. mine in Montana, is the principal non-Russian source of palladium.
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
In September 1989, the brand-new Progressive Policy Institute published The Politics of Evasion: Democrats and the Presidency. Nearly 33 years later, this political study maintains more than just historical interest today as the Democratic Party once again must wrestle with basic questions of political outlook and electoral strategy.
Written by political scholars William Galston and Elaine Kamarck, their analysis refuted the principal “myths” that the party’s establishment embraced to explain away recent losses and avoid confronting the fundamental reasons voters were rejecting its candidates. The Politics of Evasion laid the political predicate for the rise of the “New Democrats” and Bill Clinton and their successful efforts to infuse new ideas into a stale governing agenda and snap the string of presidential defeats.
Today, Democrats obviously face a very different political environment and set of electoral challenges. What hasn’t changed, however, is the need for unflinching honesty about the party’s struggles to consolidate a broad and a durable majority — even after four years of Donald Trump’s chaotic, divisive and lawless presidency.
In this episode of the Radically Pragmatic podcast, William and Elaine sit down with PPI President Will Marshall to unpack the contents of their newreportand discuss what changes Democrats need to make in order to stop Republicans from taking back control of Congress this November and the White House in 2024.
On Thursday, March 3, the Innovation Frontier Projectat theProgressive Policy Institute hosted a virtual panel discussion for policymakers, staffers, and journalists titled “How the U.S. Can Better Compete Globally on R&D.”
Between the pandemic, supply chain snarls, and an increased economic competition with China, there is a growing recognition of the role that R&D plays in solving today’s pressing issues and building tomorrow’s economy. Our expert panel discussed how reforms to government procurement can boost R&D spending by U.S. corporations and how the U.S. can focus on manufacturing complex goods to better compete in the global economy.
This panel discussion was moderated by PPI’s Vice President and Chief Economist, Michael Mandel, and included the following experts:
Sharon Belenzon, Professor, Faqua School of Business, Duke University Ashish Arora, Rex D. Adams Professor of Business Administration, Faqua School of Business, Duke University Keith Belton, Senior Director of Policy Analysis, American Chemistry Council
“We need a new social compact to revitalize corporate research,” said Dr. Arora during the event.
“And this is the fundamental point that corporate research is different from university research. It’s different from what startups do. Corporate research is large scale, it’s mission-oriented, multidisciplinary, and has a broad scope. This cannot easily be replicated by other components of the U.S. innovation ecosystem,” Dr. Arora continued.
“Not all corporations that are large and have market power should be treated the same. Companies that are investing in the long-term national interest should be shown greater deference and forbearance. This would be another example of what I mean by how policymakers can support these sorts of investments,” added Dr. Arora.
“To achieve our short term and long term progressive goals, we need to focus policy on accelerating scientific advancement, and technological improvements,” said Dr. Mandel.
“By choosing the problems the government seeks to solve, the government also shapes how much upstream R&D corporations do,” Dr. Belenzon noted during the panel discussion.
“[The government should] incentivize companies to devote their essential resources to work on problems that are important for advancing quality and knowledge,” Dr. Belenzon added.
“[We need to] expand the frontier of knowhow for the United States, and that involves not just R&D but where we make things and how we make things. USICA and the COMPETES Act are a good start,” said Dr. Belton.
Based in Washington, D.C., and housed in the Progressive Policy Institute, the Innovation Frontier Project explores the role of public policy in science, technology and innovation. The project is managed by Jack Karsten. Learn more by visiting innovationfrontier.org.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
The only previous attempt to erase a U.N. member country from the map: 1990.
THE NUMBERS:
U.N. member states as of February 2022: 193
WHAT THEY MEAN:
From the transcript of Ukrainian Ambassador Sergei Kyslytsya’s remarks to the U.N. Security Council a week ago Tuesday:
“The internationally recognized borders of Ukraine have been and will remain unchangeable. Ukraine unequivocally qualifies the recent actions by the Russian Federation as violation of sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. … President Putin, who has taken a decision that we discuss today as a threat to the rules-based order, to the U.N. Charter, in particular its Article 2, as well as to international peace and security.”
Particularly relevant in the Ambassador’s reference to the U.N. Charter is Article 2’s Clause 3, on wars of conquest: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
Obviously, the actual U.N. members have frequently fallen short of the Charter’s aspirations over the 78 years since its signature. In the last decade especially, after a long period of peace among great powers, even close allies found it difficult to sustain a sense of common interest. But however far governments have fallen short of the Charter’s goals, they have almost invariably respected its ban on wars of conquest. Only once before last week’s attack on Ukraine (in Saddam Hussein’s 1990 attempt to annex Kuwait to Iraq) has one U.N. member state attempted to erase another from the map. Three thoughts on the events since:
(1) Respect for the ban on wars of conquest is at the foundation of any international aspiration, whether related to peaceful settlement of disputes among countries, scientific and medical progress, common action against environmental threats, prosperity and reduction of poverty, or reduction of the risk of war.
(2) The breach of this principle in the attack on Ukraine last week is very rare in modern history and exceptionally dangerous, in that it was ordered not by the rogue dictator of an isolated minor power but by a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. Should it succeed, we may well expect more such events and a much more dangerous world. Should it fail, the taboo on wars of conquest will be greatly strengthened, and future attempts far less likely.
(3) The Biden administration and partner democracies have responded with a model of muscular, calm, and principled cooperation, first in attempting to dissuade the Russian government from attacking Ukraine, and then in their coordinated response, combining extensive financial and other sanctions with practical and moral support for Ukraine. The contrast between this response and the self-pitying folly of “America First” movements — in the 1940s or the 2020s — is stark, reminding us that isolationism makes the world more dangerous and ultimately Americans themselves less safe; and that when defense of international order and the principles Ambassador Kyslytsya cites prove necessary, the world’s democracies have many and powerful options.
And Paul Bledsoe on ways to undo Europe’s natural gas dependency on Russia.
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
President Biden’s ambitious policy agenda for Building Back Better is missing a key element – bringing America’s outdated public school bureaucracies into the 21st Century. As the politics of education heats up around the country, he needs to fill the vacuum for a progressive vision for modernizing public schools.
Education is mostly a local responsibility, but it’s fast becoming a national issue. Many U.S. parents are dissatisfied with the way their children’s public schools performed during the COVID-19 pandemic. They are frustrated by lengthy shutdowns and learning losses, by political wrangling over vaccines and mask mandates, and by opaque central school bureaucracies that did not seem to listen to their concerns.
Right-wing populists also are trying to make our K-12 schools battlegrounds in America’s culture wars. Controversies are erupting over efforts by conservative state legislators to ban books and discussions of gender, as well as the extent to which parents should control what their children are taught about the nation’s racial history and other fraught subjects. Following last year’s victory in Virginia, Republicans are planning to run campaigns in this year’s midterm elections around the theme of “parent power.”
Conspicuously absent from the Republican cultural offensive is a commitment to raising school quality and student performance. Yet that’s a growing concern for U.S. voters. In a Pew Research Center survey conducted this month, 58% said “improving education” should be a top priority for the President and Congress this year. It was the fourth-most pressing priority, ahead even of concern about crime.
Unfortunately, Democrats seem ill-prepared for the intensifying debate on education. National party leaders in recent years have largely abandoned the fight to give parents better school choices for their children and hold schools accountable for improving the performance of all students. As a result, the public is apt to default to the view that Democrats are defending a status quo urgently in need of change.
We urge President Biden in his State of the Union speech to pick up the discarded mantle of K-12 reform and modernization. Taking up where Barack Obama and Bill Clinton left off, he should offer a radically pragmatic vision for bringing America’s outdated model for organizing public education into the 21st Century.
Despite experiencing record levels of output and job growth during the first year of the Biden presidency, rising prices are casting a shadow over the economy. Inflation over the last 12 months was higher than at any point in the last 40 years and has outstripped wage gains for many workers across the income distribution. Concerns about these trends have left the Build Back Better Act, a sweeping social spending bill containing critical priorities for Democrats, completely stalled for weeks with no clear plan for revival.
As they head into President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address this week, Democrats must pivot towards aggressively tackling inflation head-on to salvage their domestic agenda and restore confidence in the economic recovery they helped stimulate.
