As a result, CEI experts have encouraged and supported trade-enhancing policies and treaties over the years, including “fast-track” Trade Promotion Authority, specific trade deals, and multilateral efforts such as the Doha round of the World Trade Organization. We have opposed increased tariffs, attempts to increase regulation through trade deal language, and the trend toward bilateral rather than multilateral deals. CEI continues to make the case for free trade in the face of increased bipartisan hostility to the idea.
CEI’s experts also work with like-minded colleagues abroad to oppose harmful initiatives, such as working with British colleagues to stop that country’s competition agency from blocking mergers between American firms based on speculative reasoning.
Featured Posts

Blog
Matt Ridley’s wisdom on trust and trade
In 1834, Charles Darwin encountered a group of natives in Tierra del Fuego, at the southern tip of South America. Although both parties were unable…

Blog
Africa (and America) need free trade and deregulation, not generosity
Here is a letter I recently wrote to the Wall Street Journal. Africa (and America) need Free Trade and Deregulation, not…

News Release
Trump’s trade negotiations with China put US at disadvantage
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is immersed in trade talks with China in London this week, hoping for a resolution to conflicts over restrictions and…
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Newsletter
The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News 1. HEALTH & SAFETY Food and Drug Administration officials are urging drug safety reviewers to…
Newsletter
The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News 1. GLOBAL WARMING Former Vice President Al Gore is urging an assembly of mayors to…
Newsletter
The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
1. AUTOMOBILITY Many states are attempting to encourage ownership of hybrid powered vehicles by allowing owners driving alone to use carpool commuter…
Newsletter
The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News 1. SPAM E-MAIL Spam “zombies”—computers that are hijacked to send out a spammer’s unwanted email messages—get…
News Release
PhRMA President Billy Tauzin To Keynote CEI Annual Dinner
Washington, D.C., May 9, 2005—In his first address to a non-healthcare industry audience since taking the top drug industry post in January, Pharmaceutical Research and…
Products
One, Two, Many Broken Windows
Full Document Available in PDF Albert Einstein is often attributed with defining…
CEI Planet
April Issue of CEI’s Monthly Planet
Full Document Available in PDF Environmentalism, RIP? Not So Fast, by Angela…
Op-Eds
California’s Extreme Makeover
If <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />California truly is the bellwether for the rest of the country, get ready for more…
Op-Eds
The Mercantilist Fallacy
The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is in trouble. It is so because Congress and the public have forgotten that imports are a…
Products
COP 10: The Green Litigation Tango
Full Document Available in PDF The greens are coming—they’re lawyered up…
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COP-10: Green Gimmicks, Lawsuits, and “Climate Witnesses”
Full Document Available in PDF The 10th Conference of the Parties…
Products
Improving Capitalism: The Respective Roles of Business and Government
Full Document Available in PDF This is an excerpt…
Products
The Drug Reimportation Controversy
As policy battles go, the drug reimportation debate is an unusual one. On its face, the federal ban on reimporting pharmaceuticals appears to violate the…
Op-Eds
Law of the Sea Treaty Debated
David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey are correct that most reasons prompting President Reagan to reject the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST)…
Newsletter
Cooler Heads
Politics Kyoto Goes into Force On February 16, 2005, the Kyoto Protocol came into force internationally. Thirty-four nations are now committed to reducing…
Op-Eds
Global Tax; or Global Tax Reform?
Am I the only one who noticed that the Kyoto Protocol (imposing artificial constraints on energy use to regulate atmospheric carbon dioxide to…
Op-Eds
Travesties of Regulation: Harmful U.N. policies.
Former Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker, who heads the inquiry into corruption in the United Nations' defunct oil-for-food program, has just issued…
Op-Eds
One, Two, Many Broken Windows
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> Albert Einstein is often attributed with defining insanity as doing the same over…
Op-Eds
Ideology vs. Health
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> You are correct about the heartbreaking disgrace of the purge of DDT…
Op-Eds
Six Tsunamis
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> Imagine that every year the world suffered from six or more tsunamis producing…
Study
The Environmental Source
NOTE: A new edition of The Environmental Source has been published. The new version of this essential reference book on environmental policy is available in…
News Release
Disrupting Unscientific Chemical Speculation
Contact for Interviews: <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> Richard Morrison, 202.331.2273 …
Newsletter
Cooler Heads
Politics COP-10 Opens in Buenos Aires with Attacks on US Intransigence As the tenth Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention…
News Release
Time to End “Mad Cow” Madness
Washington, D.C., December 1, 2004—The Competitive Enterprise Institute joins President Bush in calling for an end to the unnecessary and harmful ban on importation of…
Op-Eds
A Green Push to Keep Projects Safe for Vermin
The next time you see rats roaming around public housing units in New York City, think of Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. He and a handful…
CEI Planet
CEI Planet: September 2004
Full Document Available in PDF Tech Regulation Done Right, by Braden Cox…
Study
Ratification without Representation?
Full Document Available in PDF In 2001, the Bush Administration signed the United Nations Environment…
Op-Eds
Ratification Without Representation: Making a Joke out of the Constitution
“Why don't we just give them ours?” Jay Leno asked last summer as the Bush administration was helping <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns =…
Op-Eds
For Unions, Protecting Jobs Means Protectionism
On June 7, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Mexican trucks can enter the U.S. without a government agency review of their impact on…
Products
CEI Planet: July 2004
Full Document Available in PDF “Who’s Afraid of RFID?” by Jim Harper…
Op-Eds
Visions of “Ecodemics”
In Six modern plagues, veterinarian and journalist Mark Jerome Walters, like many modern-day greens, deems humankind the source of many of the world’s problems. He…
Op-Eds
Canada and China Versus America
Riots, vandalism, raucous protests we’re all familiar with hard-edged displays of anti-Americanism abroad these days. But this pernicious envy also takes other forms. Not all…
Op-Eds
They’re Coming for Your Shrimp
H.L. Mencken famously defined Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." Yesterday’s puritans worried about their neighbors enjoying alcohol or gambling…
Op-Eds
Sympathy for the Mosquito?
“Save Our Mosquitoes,” isn't a plea one expects to see these days with the mosquito-borne West Nile Virus killing hundreds and making thousands…
Op-Eds
Why the Sympathy for Mosquitoes? Pesticides Get an Undeserved Rap
”Save Our Mosquitoes” isn’t a plea one expects to see these days with the mosquito-borne West Nile virus killing hundreds and making thousands of people…
News Release
Broadcast Update on Issues in the News
Contact for Interviews: <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> Richard Morrison, 202.331.2273 …
Op-Eds
This Should Go over Like a Lead Balloon
Brewing in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Washington D.C. is a new public health scare that may soon reach beyond the beltway…
Op-Eds
Across the Atlantic, Anti-Dumping Protectionism Cuts Both Ways
Europeans opposed to America’s hard-line “antidumping” trade policies should take heart. It is now becoming easier to explain to Americans the danger that these policies…
News Release
The Politics Behind Pesticides and the West Nile Virus
In a new study published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, author Angela Logomasini exposes how environmental activists are opposing vital efforts to combat the deadly…
Op-Eds
Down in the Dumps
When most people hear the words “illegal dumping,” they probably think of someone using somebody else's trash dumpster without permission. However, in the…
Products
Q&A With Paul Driessen
Full Document Available in PDF…
Products
Sympathy for the Mosquito? Anti-Spraying Hysteria Reaches the Absurd
Full Document Available in PDF “Save Our…
CEI Planet
April/May Issue of CEI’s Monthly Planet
Full Document Available in PDF “The Day After Never,”…
Newsletter
Vol. VIII, No 7
Politics Connecticut Bill Aims at Slowing State Economy The Connecticut state legislature is currently considering SB.595, which aims to reduce the…
Op-Eds
Culture Wars
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> When Americans hear the word “outsourcing,” they typically imagine the movement of <?xml:namespace prefix =…
CEI Planet
January-February Edition of CEI Monthly Planet
Full Document Available in PDF “The European Constitution Falls Apart,”…
Op-Eds
Perils of Cultural Protectionism
Attention all European firms that export to the U.S.! Thanks to a protectionist political project run by Canada and France, you…
Op-Eds
Protecting our Exports
Auto parts, precious metals, lumber—Canadians have found many ways to export their way to success in the global economy.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns…
Op-Eds
Tying Down a Cultural Giant
There’s an amusing scene in Gulliver’s Travels in which the protagonist awakens from a nap and has his first encounter with the tiny…
Op-Eds
The Global Network of Snobs
Cultural creativity is big business in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />America. According to the most recent data from Economists Incorporated, U.S.