The Economic Report of the President

Some reporters have already started to ask me what I hope to hear in the State of the Union address President Obama will deliver next week.  I can’t really express my wishes any better than Christina Romer, the President’s former Council of Economic Advisers Chair, did in her New York Times column last weekend.  In particular (emphasis added):

Twenty-four U.S. businesses will join Commerce Secretary Gary Locke for a business development mission to India on February 6-11.  The businesses joining the trade mission are based in 13 states across the country and more than half of them are small- and medium-sized companies. The delegation, which also includes senior officials from the Export-Import Bank (EX-IM) and the Trade Development Agency (TDA), will make stops in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, where Locke will highlight export opportunities for U.S. businesses in the advanced industrial sectors, of civil-nuclear trade, defense and security, civil aviation, and information and communication technologies. Locke accompanied President Obama to India in November, where they witnessed more than $10 billion in business deals between U.S. companies and Indian private sector and government entities, supporting 50,000 American jobs. “Exports are leading the U.S. economic recovery, spurring future economic growth and creating jobs in America,” Locke said. “The business leaders joining me on this mission see the great potential to sell their goods and services to India, helping drive innovation and create jobs in both countries.” The India business development mission will help build on the exporting success U.S. companies had 2010 – up 17 percent compared to the same period in 2009. It will be Locke’s second trade mission as Commerce Secretary; in May, he led a clean energy business development mission to China and Indonesia.

The Administration has committed itself to doubling exports in five years, via the National Export Initiative. Much of the journalistic coverage has focused on the regulatory, trade-credit financing, and export promotion measures being considered [0]. I wanted to take a macro oriented approach to the viewing the plausibility of this goal.

Markups, Competitiveness, and the Bush Tax Cuts and Deficits The Administration released the annual Economic Report of the President on Friday. Many topics were covered, but here I’ll remark upon a few issues, motivated by several graphs. First is price markup over unit labor cost. The interesting trend since 2001 has been the rise in this variable.

Article written by Prieur du Plessis, editor of the Investment Postcards from Cape Town blog.This post is a guest contribution by Asha Bangalore, vice president and economist of The Northern Trust Company.

This guest column by Secretary Locke was published in the Seattle Times on Friday.**********WHEN Republicans vote next week to repeal the Affordable Care Act, they are voting to repeal a new level of control that American families have over their health-care decisions. They are also voting to make American businesses less competitive in the global economy. Because just 10 months after its passage, the act has brought badly needed change to the American health-care system. The law: • Prevents children with pre-existing conditions from being denied coverage; • Eliminates lifetime caps on the dollar amount insurance companies will spend on enrollees' benefits, like cancer treatment; • Allows children to stay on their parents' insurance plans until they are 26; • Gives tax credits to small businesses to help them afford health care for their employees; and • Takes meaningful steps to lower costs and improve the quality of health care for all Americans But from my perspective as U.S. commerce secretary, one of the most important benefits of the law is that it will make American businesses more competitive by reining in rapidly increasing health-care costs. As President Obama has noted: "We are in a fierce competition among nations for the jobs and industries of the future." The Affordable Care Act will allow American businesses, large and small, to improve their performance against foreign competitors, most of whom have significantly lower health-care costs. The cost savings are real, and they will grow over time.