Competition is the bulwark of a market system. It plays the lead role in the U.S. political economy by promoting fair prices and wages, and the choice, quality, and innovation that benefits consumers and workers. As referees on the playing field of markets, antitrust enforcers and the courts call “balls and strikes” on what mergers or business practices are likely to harm competition. This oversight is essential for protecting markets and the democratic principles on which they rest.
Much like other pro-competition administrations, more aggressive merger enforcement is a leg of the Biden administration’s platform. But the Biden strategy is different. It features antitrust agency leadership sourced from the Neo-Brandeisian, anti-monopoly movement that emphasizes concern with bigness. This has spurred debate over assessing the legality of mergers based on “bright-line” tests for bigness versus the existing consumer welfare standard. The latter asks if, and how, the merged firm could wield its greater market power to raise prices, lower wages and benefits, or reduce quality, choice, and innovation.
This Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) report unpacks the Biden merger enforcement record based on data across three decades and five political administrations. The analysis finds that the Biden enforcers have made progress in invigorating merger enforcement in some areas but may be lagging behind in others. PPI’s analysis does not address hard-to-measure indicators of more aggressive enforcement, such as deterring harmful consolidation proposals that, as former Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer noted, “never should have made it out of the boardroom.”
PPI’s analysis reveals three major takeaways from the Biden merger enforcement record so far. One, the Biden enforcers are forcing companies to abandon anticompetitive mergers at the highest rate in 30 years. Two, the rate at which the agencies attempt to block mergers by litigating preliminary injunctions before federal court or administrative judges is also at its highest level. The Biden agencies’ “win” rate in court, however, is below the historical average, reflecting an intense effort that has not yet fully paid off. Third, the Biden enforcers have not been as aggressive as their Obama counterparts in invigorating enforcement in the wake of the Republican administrations they immediately succeeded.
PPI’s findings regarding the Biden administration’s merger control program prompt key policy questions that have wide-ranging implications for enforcement, competition, and consumers. For example, how can success in promoting more aggressive enforcement can be carried forward? What is the impact of the cases lost by the Biden enforcers on legal precedent and will it work against stronger enforcement in the future? What are the implications of the Biden policy of disfavoring merger settlements on advancing policy on stronger, more effective merger remedies?
PPI’s analysis suggests that now is a good time for the Biden administration to take stock of its policy objectives for merger enforcement by performing a mid-course assessment. This will provide a basis for the administration to assess goals and expectations, agency leadership, and resources for a second term. For a deeper dive into this important topic, please continue reading the full report.
FACT: Half of the world’s 3.51 billion workers don’t have regular pay or labor law protections.
THE NUMBERS: World labor force, 2024* –
Total labor force
3.70 billion
Employed
3.51 billion
Working for wages and salaries
1,780 million
“Self-employed”*
1,625 million
“Formal sector” workers with wage, inspection, & other rules:
1,660 million
“Informal” sector workers without these protections:
2,030 million
* Estimates from International Labour Organization, World Employment and Social Outlook 2024.
* The ILO’s term “self-employed” includes business owners, but also includes “own-account” workers such as day laborers, and “contributing family workers” working in small family businesses or farms without pay. The ILO views these two latter groups as comprised of workers who are “least likely to have formal work arrangements, [and] least likely to have social protection and safety nets to guard against economic shocks.”
WHAT THEY MEAN:
The International Labour Organization’s “World Employment and Social Outlook 2024,” out last January, says the world’s workforce has grown by 26 million this year and now totals 3.70 billion people. Subtracting the 191 million people currently unemployed, this means 3.51 billion people go to work daily in factories, on farms, in labs and offices, at home, in restaurants and hotels, and so forth. One perspective on them all, drawn from the ILO’s data, raises some uneasy questions about an ambitious new American “global labor” policy.
The ILO figures divide the world’s employed workers pretty clearly into two groups of about equal size. Those in the first group, about 1.7 billion people, work at “okay-to-good jobs” which feature regularly paid wages or salaries, and legal protections for health and safety, labor rights at work, minimum wages, and holidays. Those in the second group have “pretty-bad-to-terrible jobs.” They earn money essentially through paid piecework rather than regular wages or salaries, and as workers holding “informal sector” jobs lack their peers’ legal protection for wages, health, and rights. (For a sense of where they work, earlier ILO research – 2019 – reports the highest rates of “informality” at 92% of all farm workers, 84% of domestic service workers such as maids and nannies, 74% of construction workers, 61% of accommodation and food service workers, and 60% of repair shops employees.) This second tier also features the vast majority of the world’s very worst jobs — that is, those involving abuses such as the world’s 160 million child laborers, and the 241 million extreme-working-poverty jobs paying $2.15 a day or less.
A “global labor” policy meant to fundamentally improve working life should try to help people in the “pretty-bad-to-terrible” second group get into the “okay-to-good” group. The most likely way to do this on a large scale is to help low- and middle-income countries improve labor laws and develop the professional civil services needed to implement these laws throughout their economies, and so change working life for very large numbers of people.
Now to the new policy: Last November, the White House launched a global labor standards strategy, explained in a 3,444-word “Memorandum on Advancing Worker Empowerment, Rights, and High Labor Standards Globally” along with supporting speeches and press releases. The Memorandum sets out a many-tiered array of policies and agency responsibilities to support worker rights abroad, fight child labor and forced labor, improve health and safety standards, and so forth. In principle its policies cover the entire 3.7 billion world labor force. But in practice the Memo’s content — and even more so the releases describing implementation plans — seem (a) to place workers in global “supply chains” employed by large international businesses at the center of policy, and (b) to focus on enforcement against ill-doers rather than on efforts to help workers move from bad to better jobs. Here for example is Julie Su, Acting Secretary of Labor, describing the DoL’s view of its responsibilities at the Memorandum’s November launch event:
“[C]orporations are global. So workers, and worker power, and the way we think about workers have to be global, as well. … When global actors are allowed to evade labor laws in one country by exploiting workers in another part of the world, this undermines workers’ rights everywhere. And when workers are harassed, discriminated against, and attacked as they produce things that are sold all around the world, we cannot simply look away and ignore the ways that our global economy brings with it global responsibility. … The Department of Labor is also expanding its work to combat forced labor and improve transparency and accountability from the top to the bottom of global supply chains.”
It’s certainly good for people and officials in rich countries to think about the lives of factory and logistics workers, and to find ways to reduce abuses in supply chains. But if these are the core focuses, policy is very likely to miss most of the workers in the “pretty-bad-to-terrible” jobs group. The 2023 edition of the “World Employment and Social Outlook” report, for example, drew on a study of 24 middle-income countries to conclude that workers in “global supply chains” (or at least those supply chains ultimately linked to wealthy countries) are more likely than their peers in purely domestic jobs to work in the “okay-to-good-jobs” group with regular pay and legal protection:
“[S]ectors with higher GSC [“global supply-chain”] integration tend to have a larger share of wage and salaries employment, a lower incidence of informality and a lower proportion of low-paid employment — and hence in principle a higher quality of employment.”
The implication is that while it’s easier for policymakers to focus on supply-chain workers connected to the wealthy world than on the “informal” sector maids, day laborers, and farm workers who are less visible to American eyes, the latter group is (on average, based on ILO’s finding) in worse straits and would often improve their lives by getting supply-chain jobs. Likewise, it’s perhaps natural to think first about ‘enforcement’ on individual cases and only later about less glamorous but more systematic efforts to help improve laws and build professional civil service bureaucracies. But the latter task is the main one, if the goal is to make labor standards meaningful for entire workforces. If the next years’ policies are supply-chain and enforcement issues, then, the Memorandum’s achievements will be limited. In some cases – if enforcement in supply chains is such a priority as to slow the flow of workers from “pretty-bad-to-terrible” work into “okay-to-good” supply-chain jobs, or in some cases even push workers out of these jobs altogether — they could have perverse as well as good effects. (See below for a sad 2014 example.) So: probably time for some rethinking, some revisions, and a broader approach.
FURTHER READING
Policy:
The White House’s “Memorandum on Advancing Worker Empowerment, Rights, and High Labor Standards Globally.”
And November launch comments from Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su.
An in-depth ILO look at informal workers and businesses.
And an IMF perspective on informality and economic development.
Case study:
A cautionary lesson on the difficulty of these issues comes from Swaziland, a small inland country on the South African/Mozambique border. Here, a well-intended U.S. effort in 2014 to improve labor standards in garment production through threats to withdraw special “African Growth and Opportunity Act” tariff benefits didn’t work, and carrying through on the threat left the workers in question much worse off.
And some more data:
Where the workers are: The ILO’s 3.51 billion workers, plus 191 million unemployed, mean a world workforce of 3.70 billion people. This total is up by a third from the 2.75 billion of 2000, by over half a billion from the 3.16 billion workers of 2010, or by 26 million this year, representing a growth of 72,000 new workers daily. By region, ILO finds:
2.08 billion workers in Asia
710 million in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia
500 million in North America, Europe, and the Pacific (the U.S. labor force, per BLS, is 167 million); and
320 million in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Of 2024’s 28 million new workers, meanwhile, 16 million are going to work in sub-Saharan Africa, 7 million in South Asia and the Middle East, and about 3 million each in Latin America and Southeast Asia. In the ILO’s view, employment in the traditionally “wealthy” world — North America, Europe, East Asia (including China), and the Pacific — will be unchanged at 500 million. Taking a longer view, since 2000, the combined shares of North America, Europe, East Asia, and the Pacific have fallen from 50.0% of the world’s workers to 40.6% of the world’s workers; that of Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, meanwhile, is up from 33% to 41%.
Men and women: ILO counts 2.1 billion men and 1.4 billion women with paying jobs. This makes the working world 60% male — a share identical to the one ILO found in 2000 when there were 1.66 billion men and 1.09 billion women. (The U.S. ratio is now 52% men, 48% women, and was 60/40 in 1973.) The largest skew in ILO’s data is the Arab world, with 48 million working men and 9.6 million women. South Asia is next at 559 million men and 210 million women; the Pacific is closest to labor-force gender parity at 11 million men and 10 million women.
The very poor: ILO reports 241 million in “extreme working poverty,” earning $2.15 or less for 8 hours’ work. This total is 13.4 million more than the 227 million in pre-COVID 2019. Extreme working poverty had fallen steadily for a generation — from 713 million and 27.6% of all workers in 2000 to 427 million and 14.4% of all workers in 2010, and then to 228 million and 6.9% by 2019 — before jumping to 7.7% during the COVID pandemic. It has since drifted back down to 6.9%, the same rate as in 2019. (Though very poor workers are differently distributed: extreme working poverty rates are still falling in Asia and Latin America; Africa’s poverty rate is also falling, but its higher current level and especially strong job growth is keeping the global poverty rate up.) If the DoL strategists writing up the implementation of the Memorandum are looking for an appealing goal, the elimination of extreme working poverty would be a good candidate.
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.
Okay, I’ll admit it: Joe Biden surprised me last night.
I didn’t expect it. These major-league speeches are judged on both style and substance, and the presumption, after months of incessant question-raising about his age, was that the President would present like the title character in Weekend at Bernie’s.
But a prizefighter emerged from the door in the House chamber and gave a more electrifying State of the Union than I’ve seen in years. And he delivered a message sure to play well among the working-class voters I long represented in Ohio.
The speech transparently served to kick off the president’s re-election campaign. And it should put to rest any questions over whether Biden is too old to run again.
Donald Trump fires up his MAGA legions by telling them Democrats hate America. Like his stolen election lie, it’s a textbook example of projection — charging his opponents with what he’s guilty of.
If you don’t think Trump detests the nation he aspires to lead, you haven’t been listening. Speaking recently before a rapt gathering of far-right activists, he sketched anightmarish portrait of a dystopic America overrun by “bloodshed, chaos and violent crime.”
The nation’s 45th president risibly miscast himself as a “political dissident” bravely standing against “thugs and tyrants and fascists, scoundrels and rogues” who are leading the United States into “servitude and ruin.”
Reacting earlier to the judicial murder of a true political dissident, Trumptwisted Alexei Navalny’s death in an icy Siberian prison camp into a grotesque analogy to his own supposed persecution by the “deep state.”
FACT: Americans buy 11 tons of Ukrainian honey daily.
THE NUMBERS: Sample U.S. imports from Ukraine, 2023 –
Sunflower oil
31,262 tons
Honey
4,075 tons
Apple juice
123 million liters
Hockey sticks
173,000
Electric coffeemakers
176,000
Pig iron
1.1 million tons
WHAT THEY MEAN:
Here’s Jonathan Swift praising bees three centuries back: “We have chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.” And here’s Alisa Koverda, translator and apiary expert at the Ukrainian Agriculture Ministry, writing in the autumn of 2022:
“Ukraine’s honey business is one of the largest in the world. Sadly, as a result of the war, dozens of apiaries and beehives are being destroyed every week. In some cases, beekeepers are able to get some financial support from the government, but it is not enough. Yet, the beekeepers remain optimistic. They share everything they have: their honey, knowledge and optimistic spirit.”
Peacetime Ukraine is the world’s second-largest honey producer, home according to her article to 220,000 commercial beekeepers with 2.3 million colonies, and probably another 200,000 part-time unregistered part-timers. They sold 58,000 tons of honey abroad in 2021. Their top customers were neighboring Poles and Germans; Americans ranked third at 5,953 tons, making Ukraine the fifth-largest U.S. overseas honey source.
Pulling back a bit, pre-war Ukraine’s exports combined a large agricultural trade, centered on wheat — the blue and yellow flag represents the sky and a grain field — sunflower oil and seeds, honey, and processed foods such as apple juice with heavy-industry products led by iron and steel. Altogether this made up about a third of Ukrainian GDP, or $68 billion of a $200 billion as of 2021.
Three years later, exporting is more important still — together with aid and remittances, foreign customers are Ukraine’s main source of hard currency, helping to finance the war effort, keep local fire and police services functioning, and supporting the living standards of civilian workers and families. Markets abroad, though, are obviously now harder to reach. Grains, metals, and vegetable oils are bulky and heavy goods requiring sophisticated logistics and safe sea lanes to move, but Ukraine’s eastern seaports are occupied, and the Dnipro river ports near the front are free but blocked. The national export total accordingly fell from 2021’s $68 billion to $44 billion in 2022, and continued to drop through the middle of 2023. Nonetheless, through military successes, logistical innovation, help from allies, and inventive diplomacy, Ukraine’s trade absorbed the shock, began a rebound in the second half of 2023, and is now rising again.
At the core of this revival is a remarkable naval achievement. Without capital ships of its own, Ukraine has used drones, missiles, and intelligence to sink a third of the Russian Black Sea fleet’s 75 ships – the most recent example yesterday, the three-year-old 1600-ton patrol cruiser Sergey Kotov – and forced the rest to shelter out of range in the east. This has opened a “grain corridor” near the Romanian and Bulgarian coasts, allowing 23 million tons of exports to flow out of Odesa, Chornomorsk, and Pivdennyi in the second half of 2023. In February 2024, the Kyiv Independent reports 8 million tons. To the northwest, meanwhile, support from the European Union and aid programs run by the U.S. State Department and Agency for International Development have helped redirect some of Ukraine’s outbound trade through new road crossings and Danube river ports via Poland, Slovakia, and Romania. The Economy Ministry’s creative diplomacy, meanwhile, has worked out a waiver of Trump-era steel tariffs with the Biden administration, negotiated a free trade agreement with southern neighbor Turkiye, and used WTO rights and rules to battle occasional grain blockages at western-border transit points.
Altogether, having stabilized in 2023, Ukraine’s trade is now rising, with IMF projections suggesting 11% export growth this year, supporting in turn national GDP growth of 3.2%. U.S. Census figures on arriving goods provide a set of human-scale examples. Some products — sunflower seeds and steel, for example – remain sharply down. Apple juice and sunflower oil shipments, on the other hand, are now above their 2021 levels and accompanied by a steady flow of light manufactured goods: 176,000 electric coffeemakers, 132,500 pairs of skis (fourth in the world, behind Austria, China, and Bulgaria), 19,600 archery sets, and 173,000 hockey sticks (third, following China and Mexico).
Honey, too, is holding up, justifying the ‘optimistic spirit’ of late 2022. Over the course of 2023, the U.S. Census reports 4,075 tons arriving (mainly in USDA’s ‘extra light amber’ grade), valued at $11 million. December’s arrivals included 74 tons in Chicago, 38 tons in Philadelphia, and 15 tons in New York. So in the third year of war, Ms. Koverda’s beekeepers continue to provide some sweetness and light to both overseas customers and locals, and along with these things an an example of resilience and hope.
FURTHER READING
From PPI:
PPI’s New Ukraine Project, directed by Kyiv-based Tamar Jacoby, has in-depth research and regular reporting on Ukrainian daily life, public mood, economic policy and anti-corruption progress, and more.
Budget and tax expert Ben Ritz explains the low cost, and high return, of military aid to Ukraine.
And Logistics Cluster reviews the status of Ukraine’s ports.
“Sweetness and light”:
Agricultural specialist and translator Alisa Koverda explains Ukraine’s beekeeping culture and wartime adaptation.
… and Фундація Жінок Пасічниць (Fundatsiya Zhinok Pasichnish’ for non-Cyrillic readers; translated, Foundation of Women Beekeepers), with honey contacts and beekeeping tips.
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.
With today’s highly polarized politics and the growing attacks on democracy, the American Identity Project will outline a new approach to teaching democratic values in K-12 schooling and college
Washington, D.C. — Today, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) announced that Richard Kahlenberg will join the organization as the Director of Housing Policy and Director of the American Identity Project, a new initiative that examines what can be done to counter growing anti-democratic impulses on the far left and far right.
Kahlenberg is a leading expert on education and housing policy — and is specifically known for his work on how housing policies inhibit educational opportunities. He’s the author or editor of 18 books with his most recent award-winning release last year titled “Excluded: How Snob Zoning, NIMBYism, and Class Bias Build the Walls We Don’t See.”
“I am thrilled to join PPI and have greatly admired its work advancing innovative and pragmatic ideas that have broad appeal with working-class and middle-class Americans,” said Richard Kahlenberg. “I’m eager to build on PPI’s long history of emphasizing what we have in common as Americans to develop ideas around how to teach the next generation what makes America different.“
“Rick Kahlenberg is a prolific writer and thinker who has enriched national debates around school choice and integration, civic education, affirmative action, and other knotty issues. His admiration for ‘tough liberals’ like RFK and Al Shanker makes him a perfect fit with PPI. He will lead our work on inclusive zoning and affordable housing as well as educating children in the shared ideals that define America’s national identity,” said Will Marshall, PPI President.
The American Identity Project will explore what it means to be an American in today’s highly polarized country and what public schools should be doing to teach a shared American identity that inculcates a deep and healthy sense of reflective patriotism. Kahlenberg, a seasoned researcher and writer on education and civil rights issues and a biographer of the late teacher union leader Albert Shanker, will lead the project and work with policymakers at all levels of government to help shape civics standards. The project will work to create a new approach that fosters appreciation for the American system of liberal democracy by teaching students the importance of free and fair elections and freedom of thought.
Additionally at PPI, Kahlenberg will lead the organization’s work on housing policy. In the United States, housing has become unaffordable for so many low-income families and working Americans — which leads to unequal educational opportunities and political and racial polarization. Kahlenberg will work with federal, state, and local officials and members of key stakeholder groups to examine lessons from successful zoning reform efforts at the state and local levels and find comprehensive solutions to this growing crisis.
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. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on Twitter.
Joe Biden needs a winning issue to save his struggling campaign. He has one in public school choice and would benefit from spotlighting it in his State of the Union address Thursday evening.
The president hasn’t spoken much on the issue since 2020, when he disparaged charter schools. That was a mistake then, as it would be today. Talking positively about the issue would attract working-class and low-income voters who can’t afford to leave their poorly performing public schools.
Charter schools are free, public and open to all. They have a track record of success. I’ve visited charters in every region of the country, and each has rendered the same complaint: No one outside their small community listens to them. From Rhode Island and Illinois to California and New York, lawmakers often attempt to block new charters or otherwise hamstring existing ones.
Consumer advocates said the failure of the JetBlue-Spirit merger would promote airline competition.
“The decision by JetBlue and Spirit to call off their merger is good news for the flying public,” said Diana Moss, vice president and director of competition policy for the Progressive Policy Institute. “The district court opinion backed up DOJ’s strong case for why the merger would raise fares and eliminate important consumer choice. It sets a mark for how further consolidation in the U.S. passenger markets will get close, close scrutiny.”
FACT: African American owned businesses export over $1 billion worth of goods per year.
THE NUMBERS: African American owned exporting businesses* –
2021
1,139 exporters, $1.12 billion in exports
2020
1,001 exporters, $1.10 billion in exports
2019
1,514 exporters, $0.81 billion in exports
2018
1,400 exporters, $0.83 billion in exports
2017
1,200 exporters, $0.62 billion in exports
* Census/BEA, most recent data available
WHAT THEY MEAN:
Here’s President Biden a week before Christmas, talking up Milwaukee’s African American business community:
“Black small businesses with the talent, integrity, and ingenuity are the engines and the glue that hold communities together. … You’re the ones that sponsor the Little League teams. You’re the one that spon- — involved in the church events. You’re the ones that hold the community together, and you keep it going. You keep it moving. And every new business opening is a — is a vote for hope — just hope. Hope. You know, you’re making the American economy stronger and our nation more competitive.”
Biden’s enthusiastic remarks go on to report a lot of good news: the fastest growth in African American business formation since the 1990s; a doubling in the “share of Black households owning a business,” and a 60% rise in household wealth since 2019. Underneath these data are many stories — some of community collaboration, some of individual enterprise and inspiration, many of hard work, some of policy, many with some of each. Here’s one of the latter, in U.S. trade agencies’ effort to support African American exporting firms as they recover from a calamity:
Background: Each year since 2017, the Census and the Bureau of Economic Analysis have published a statistical picture of American exporting businesses. These include counts by size, race/ethnicity/gender of the owners, top markets and export earnings, employment, and payroll. These reports are labor-intensive projects requiring lots of detail work, and their data usually trail real-world events by three years. But they offer the most detailed description of exporting communities available anywhere in the world. The 2019 survey reports, for example, 1,514 African-American businesses selling over $800 million worth of goods to 60 countries — $43 million to China, $12 million to Ghana, $111 million to Canada, and so on. These (like exporters generally) are generally good employers. In 2021, they averaged 21 workers apiece, at a payroll of $64,600 per worker, whereas across the full list of ‘classifiable’ U.S. businesses — i.e., all privately-owned U.S. firms whose owners the Census and BEA could identify, exporters or not — the comparable averages were 11 workers at a payroll of $54,520 per employee.
COVID Impact: As we noted last summer, the COVID-19 pandemic hit this community very hard. By 2020, the Census/BEA count had fallen from 1,501 to 1,014 exporters — a 34% drop, seven times the 5% loss among all exporters, and well above the 8% of white-owned exporters and the 6% of Hispanic exporters. This is consistent with broader experience, as (for example) Federal Reserve economists reported that African American businesses closed at much higher rates than average in the spring of 2020. A closer look finds the number of medium-sized and large exporters — defined as businesses employing 100 workers or more — pretty stable; Census and BEA report 47 to 49 such businesses in 2019, 2020, and 2021, with exports between $200 million and $400 million per year. Though there are some gaps in the data among smaller firms, the drop in their exporter total appears to be concentrated in small firms with fewer than 20 workers each.
Policy Since: Over the past three years, the government’s trade bureaucracy — Biden’s political appointees and civil servants at Secretary Raimondo’s Commerce Department, Reta Lewis’ Ex-Im Bank, and other agencies; career loan officers and regional export promotion specialists at 107 Commerce Department sites around the United States, U.S. Commercial Services officers at 146 overseas missions — have been trying to help the community repair the damage. A quick snapshot of one:
The Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration’s Global Diversity Export Initiative creates an array of support programs ranging from webinars to high-level overseas missions: an on-line training session last Thursday for African-American businesses on opportunities and frequent challenges overseas; a South Africa mission for personal-care product manufactures this spring; eight “Bridges to Global Markets” events around the country for diverse companies hoping to find foreign customers this year, in the Mississippi Delta, Detroit, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and other sites. Here’s GDEI lead Terri Batch, enthusiastically looking back at last year’s National Black Business Summit:
“We met with Black business owners from every corner of the country to promote ITA’s resources to support Black entrepreneurs – particularly those who haven’t previously engaged in international trade – discover new international markets for their products and services. During this event, I had the opportunity to moderate a Pan African Diaspora lunch panel that featured the services of the U.S. Commercial Service, Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM), the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Agency (USPTO), as well as entrepreneur and founder of Eminent Future, Isaac Barnes. This dynamic panel offered practical advice and support for black businesses pursuing business opportunities in Africa and beyond. Throughout the conference, we were also joined by speakers from other federal agencies including U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Census Bureau, and Prosper Africa. This whole-of-government approach to provide support for black-owned businesses to grow and scale into international markets is essential to carry out an inclusive and equitable economic agenda.”
And here are her Milwaukee colleagues, at work today a few miles west of Biden’s speech site and trying to help. The data from BEA and Census are so far available only for 2021. But they do show an early rebound from the 1,001 exporters of 2020 to 1,139, and pretty substantial export growth, from the pre-Covid $806 million to more than $1 billion in 2021. All helping to underline and vindicate Biden’s Christmastime enthusiasm.
And the Small Business Administration’s export center.
Data:
From Census and BEA, the world’s best statistical portraits of exporting communities by ownership, markets, export value, employment and payroll from 2017 to 2021.
… and Census’ annual report on exporters and importers by large/medium/small size, known as “Profile of Importing and Exporting Companies,” with totals, state-by-state figures, and 25 overseas markets.
And for context, the New York Fed (2020) studies the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on African American business.
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.
“Nations that do things out of self-interest are much stronger allies than nations that act out of sympathy”
Interview with Tamar Jacoby, the director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s New Ukraine Project. Interviewer: Iwona Reichardt.
IWONA REICHARDT: Looking at the near future regarding US politics and policy towards Ukraine, what can we expect in your view?
TAMAR JACOBY: I am still modestly hopeful that the US Congress will pass the aid package that has been pending since last October, although they might not pass the whole package. It has already passed the Senate by a resounding margin, bigger than anyone expected. But the House of Representatives is going to be a much tougher setting. The current belief in Washington is that military aid for Ukraine could pass but not economic aid. This might not be what Ukraine wants, but it will still be important – what Kyiv needs most from the US right now is military aid. At the same time, I fear that even if it passes, this will be the last American package for Ukraine. American support for Ukraine has been eroding for two years, since the full-scale invasion. It used to be 60, 70 or even 80 per cent; but we are now down to the 50 or 60 per cent support. If Donald Trump is re-elected, I fear that American aid will be cut off entirely. But even without a President Trump, I fear that American interest and concern and attention for the war is flagging. The good news is that Europe is stepping up to fill this gap, so the timing could be okay. We have also recently been alarmed by news about Russian nuclear weapons in space, so maybe some Americans will wake up.
Washington, D.C. — Today, Diana Moss, Vice President and Director of Competition Policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, released the following statement in response to the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) lawsuit to block the Kroger-Albertsons merger.
“PPI applauds the Commission for moving to block the merger of two of the largest grocery chains in the U.S. The FTC’s enforcement action protects consumers and workers from a colossal loss of head-to-head competition that would hit them directly in their wallets and paychecks.
“The Kroger-Albertsons merger follows years of systematic consolidation in grocery markets that has been overseen by the FTC. Higher grocery prices, lower wages and benefits, a loss of quality and service, and food ‘deserts,’ have added to the burden of high inflation and loss of worker bargaining power. The FTC’s complaint to block the Kroger-Albertsons merger advances the importance of antitrust enforcement that recognizes harms in both labor and consumer markets.
“Additionally, the FTC explains its decision to decline Kroger’s and Albertsons’ inadequate divestiture proposal. It calls out the failed divestitures that followed in the wake of the 2015 merger of Safeway and Albertsons, making clear that the Kroger-Albertsons merger is ‘too big to fix.’ The most effective remedy for restoring lost competition in a merger that is ‘too big to fix’ is to block it.”
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.
During the “Big Tech” era, the US economy has substantially outperformed major European countries, and that advantage only widened in the pandemic years. Since 2007, U.S. productivity growth has averaged 1.2% per year, compared to only 0.1% annually for France and Germany (Table 1). And real wage growth in the U.S. averaged 1.1% annually, compared to 0.7% for France and 0.8% for Germany. (Table 2)
Drilling down, it’s clear that much of that difference between U.S. and Europe is due to the strong gains in the American tech and ecommerce sector. For example, real wage gains in the U.S. tech and ecommerce/retail sectors have averaged 1.6% per year since 2007, double the overall real wage gains in France and Germany.
Against this backdrop of strong wage and productivity growth, recent remarks by U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai have an odd ring to them. At a January 31 competition conference in Europe, Tai argued that:
“I think for a long time we’ve pursued this assumption that well, these are iconic American companies. They are brand names that we’re very proud of. Therefore, anything that is good for them will be good for us. That benefiting the companies will create that trickle down benefit to the company’s workers and the communities where those workers live. And we’ve seen over time, that just isn’t happening.”
In fact, the data shows that U.S. workers, and tech/ecommerce/retail workers in particular, have done better than workers in major European countries.
Tai went down a similar route when she spoke at a February 12 event at the Council for Foreign Relations, and called into question the nationality of America’s leading tech companies.
“A question that I’ve been asking is: ……what is an American company? …..Because from a tax perspective, ……how many of our big tech companies are actually, for tax purposes, headquartered in other places and actually paying taxes there as opposed to paying taxes here. If that’s the definition of an American company, I’ll have to ask you and others, how many of these American companies are actually really American companies?”
That’s a strange take for the country’s lead trade negotiator. Certainly, there’s a vigorous debate about how best to regulate and tax the most successful tech companies. But there’s little doubt that they are American companies, investing in America, benefiting American workers, and paying American taxes. Tai should be supporting them, not undercutting them.
Table 1: Comparative Productivity Growth
(Real GDP per employed worker, annual growth rate)
In purely military terms, Israel is winning its war against Hamas. Its forces have driven Hamas fighters out of much of north and central Gaza, killing at least 10,000 while losingfewer than 300 Israeli troops.
But the war is taking a horrendous toll on civilians. It has killed more than 29,000 Palestinians, wounded nearly 70,000 and reduced much of northern Gaza to rubble. These figures come from Hamas-controlled public health officials anddo not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Over theprotests of President Biden and European leaders, Israeli forces are preparing to assault Rafah, a city on Gaza’s southern border. Following Israel’s orders to evacuate, more than 1.4 million displaced civilians have fled there to escape the fighting in the north.
The plight of Palestinian civilians iseclipsing the global outrage that followed Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis and the taking of more than 250 hostages. This incenses many Israelis, who believe with reason that many Palestinians regard Hamas’s orgy of murder, rape and kidnapping as a legitimate response to Israeli “occupation.”
Hamas uses civilians as human shields and profits politically from their deaths. The more Palestinian “martyrs” it feeds into the maw of war, the louder the international clamor for cease-fires and false accusations by Hamas apologists that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza.
On this episode of RAS Reports, PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools Project Co-Director Tressa Pankovits sits down with Washington State Senator Mark Mullet (D-Issaquah) to discuss his bill S.B. 5809 which is designed to close the funding gap experienced by public charter schools in Washington state.
“The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.”
This Black History Month, teachers and students of all colors will study this famous quote from martyred leader and speaker Malcolm X and hopefully reflect on its meaning. For so many, the future is more uncertain than ever. As we grapple with issues ranging from Artificial Intelligence to post-COVID learning loss, chronic absenteeism, the science of reading, teacher diversity, and the future of higher education, there is a greater need for a transformative solution to longstanding racial disparities in educational outcomes.
The recent National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), commonly referred to as “The Nation’s Report Card,” underscores the persistent disparities between races. For example, white fourth graders continue to outscore their Black counterparts by a margin that has only marginally improved since 1992. The imperative for change is clear and waiting is simply not an option.
In the realm of educational innovation, where is the visionary idea that will instill accountability, grant autonomy to educational leaders, and expand school choice for low-income parents, thereby fostering the most significant gains for Black and Brown students?
