Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:
A story in yesterday’s issue of The News & Record looked at the track record of the Piedmont Triad’s WIRED project, a three-year regional development effort funded by the federal government. The $15-million program provided the region with funds to align and tailor workforce and economic development systems around four growing local industries: advanced manufacturing; creative enterprises and the arts; health care; and logistics and distribution.
Because the federal grant is ending, the initiative, which is coordinated by the Piedmont Triad Regional Partnership, is undergoing a restructuring. With funds raised from the private sector, the partnership intends to maintain the logistics effort, sustain another effort concentrating on the home furnishings industry, and launch new efforts tied to nanotechnology and regenerative medicine.
From the Economic Policy Institute’s analysis of national trade data for 2009:
The U.S. Census Bureau reported recently that the U.S. goods and services trade deficit fell from $695.9 billion in 2008 to $380.7 billion in 2009, a decline of $315.3 billion (45.3%). The historic collapse in global trade reflects the effects of the recession and financial crisis on both the demand for goods and services, and the impact of widespread shortages of loans needed to finance trade.
Despite the drop in the trade deficit in 2009, more of the gap is related to the country’s increasingly lopsided trade relationship with China. Last year, China accounted for 80 percent of the United States’ trade deficit in on non-oil goods. Notes the report:
China has captured a growing share of U.S. and world markets for manufactured products through a wide array of unfair trade practices including currency manipulation, export subsidies, widespread suppression of worker rights and wages, and tariff and non-tariff barriers to exports. It has purchased massive volumes of foreign exchange over the past decade in order to suppress the value of its currency. China’s total foreign exchange reserves increased $453 billion to a total of $2.4 trillion in 2009. China took advantage of the rest of the world during the financial crisis by increasing its share of U.S. markets for manufactured products.
A round-up of policy reports from the week ending on 2/12:
A new report by Adam Linker of the North Carolina Health Access Coalition looks at the charity care practices and policies of the state’s 112 hospitals. According to the study, 35 percent of these hospitals post clear, comprehensive charity care policies online.
More specifically, the study call on all hospitals to set an ambitious charity care standard:
Hospitals should strive to provide free care to families earning less than 200 percent of federal poverty level and provide some discount to families earning less than 300 percent of federal poverty level. Hospitals should consider benchmarking charity care policies to a reasonable cost-of-living index like the Living Income Standard.
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