The relationship between international trade and trade policy and the Farm Bill is complex and largely indirect, but vital to the industry. The future of agricultural incomes in the United States will be shaped largely by trade prospects.

In 2011, the United States’s sleepy free trade agenda finally got a shot of caffeine, but if the U.S. wants to seriously bolster its economy in 2012, policymakers ought to anchor their boats to the quay of an aggressive free trade agenda.

With 100,000 patients dying every year from dangerous medicines, it is time to take concrete actions. Establishing a treaty against fake medicines should be the first step.

China is heading for a hard landing in 2012 or 2013 for three reasons: Excess capacity tied to overstimulation of investment in export industries and weak domestic demand growth, a bursting speculative bubble in its real estate sector, and a sharp slowdown in global growth.

Why doesBeijing have so much troublestopping the exportation of dangerous drugs?

If Kurdistan is truly going to become a new Dubai or Bahrain and bolster its wealth and living standards to first world levels, it must rein in corruption or change the leadership which refuses to do so.

Congress is set to pass three bilateral trade agreements that would generate substantial job and export growth in an economy that sorely needs both. And while boosting exports by an estimated $13 billion and jobs by 380,000 won't by themselves turn the economy around, their passage could set the stage for much larger gains in years to come.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (also known as the DPRK, and North Korea) is a special case in the annals of modern economic development, and not a good one: for it is an economy that once achieved a relatively advanced level of modernization, but then proceeded into prolonged, even catastrophic decline.