Council on Foreign Relations

The recession has added fuel to the debate over skilled-worker visas, including a recent congressional effort to create stricter rules. CFR's Jagdish Bhagwati says the United States should be welcoming skilled workers and other immigrants.

Jagdish N. Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya argue that legal protectionism used indiscriminately could undermine the liberal trading system. When exhortation does not work, the threat of retaliation is needed to deter such protectionism.

Jagdish Bhagwati argues that the Employee Free Choice Act is a free trade compatible approach to dealing with the stagnation in workers' real wages.

Unlike the world's leaders at the last G20 meeting, President Obama has not turned his rhetoric loose against protectionism. In this Forbes.com article, Jagdish Bhagwati writes that Prime Minister Gordon Brown must ask the president to passionately defend trade and openness.

The Obama administration faces its two most protectionist challenges from the ‘Buy America' provisions in the stimulus package and the China bashing on ‘currency manipulation'. In this Financial Times op-ed, Jagdish Bhagwati argues that President Obama must fight protectionism right away or live to see the virus spread beyond control.

In this Financial Times op-ed, Jagdish Bhagwati warns that Mr. Obama, who has properly denounced unilateralism, should not undermine the respect for the rule of law that the WTO embodies at the multilateral level.

Many critics believe that globalization sets back social and ethical agendas, arguing that globalization lacks a human face. But in this article for the John Templeton Foundation, Jagdish Bhagwati argues that actual outcomes are the opposite of those feared.

There is an assumption that financial innovation is like non-financial innovation in that both are examples of what Joseph Schumpeter called "creative destruction". But in this Financial Times op-ed, Jagdish Bhagwati writes that the downside of financial innovation can be "destructive creation". We therefore need an independent commission of experts to look at the potential downsides of financial innovation.

In this New York Sun op-ed, Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya make the case for optimism on the Doha Round. A compromise is possible if the U.S. agrees to cap trade-distorting subsidies at a minimum of the current payouts and India agrees to a downscaling of the Special Safeguard Mechanism.

As in the 1980s, the United States is once again a fearful giant.  In this Financial Times op-ed, Jagdish Bhagwati writes that only an agenda for institutional change that addresses the fragility of jobs and enables workers to face new uncertainties has a chance of returning trade policy to sanity.

Because of their discriminatory effect and the preferential treatment they give to member nations, Free Trade Agreements must be placed on moratorium, writes Jagdish Bhagwati.