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Richmans' Trade and Taxes Blog

Switching to CNG is a no-brainer
Howard Richman, 1/19/2012

When I was in Boston for my youngest daughter's college graduation, I noticed that all of the within-airport buses were running on CNG (Compressed Natural Gas). They looked the same as other buses, except that did not give off any diesel smoke. Since CNG burns cleaner, their engines will probably last longer without requiring oil changes.

The switch of Boston Airport busses to CNG is part of a growing switch of fleets to CNG. Eventually, the increasing number of CNG filling stations will make it possible for households to switch to CNG. (Click here to see the GMC pick-up truck that I plan to buy once a CNG filling station opens up in my area.)

The main drawbacks of CNG are: (1) filling stations are not readily available everywhere, and (2) the fuel tanks take up more room on the vehicle. Neither of these drawbacks applies to public buses. In a January 18 blog entry on the Pike Research website, Anissa Dehamna (In D.C., Running on Natural Gas) suggests that the switch-over can save the public transportation companies money, even if they have to build their own filling stations:..

Canada Abandons Kyoto Treaty. The U.S.( Not a Member!) Should Abandon It Also.
Raymond Richman, 12/14/2011

Canada withdrew as a party to the Kyoto treaty on December 12, 2011, a few days ago. It appears likely that other countries will soon follow. The U.S., which is not a party to the Kyoto treaty has been behaving under Clinton, Bush, and Obama as though it were. Although the Senate of the United States refused to approve becoming a party of the treaty, the U.S. government has been cooperating and acting as a full party to the treaty without authorization from the American people. It has been foolishly wasting billions of dollars—no, hundreds of billions—costing American workers hundreds of thousands of jobs and delaying the recovery of the U.S. economy from the recession. Moreover, the billions spent by the federal and state governments have had no effect on climate change. The money spent was completely wasted and succeeded only in reducing the living standards of American worker.

The actions taken under the treaty, the huge subsidies to inefficient wind and solar power, and biofuels have cost American workers hundreds of thousands of jobs and reduced their standards of living all in the name of a doubtful theory of man-made global warming (AGW). Dissenting scientists are convinced that global warming is a natural phenomenon and that man-made emissions play a very small role. But even if the theory were valid, the costs of the measures taken in its name were totally unjustified because they exceeded any possible benefits. And it is a fact, acknowledged by every responsible authority, that the expenditures have not contributed anything of benefit to humanity. The vast sums spent would have been better spent on weather problems we can do something about: hurricanes, tornadoes, cyclones, droughts, and a myriad of other climate problems needing our attention.

China calls Canada's decision 'preposterous'. It is only a coincidence that China is the leading exporter of solar panels and parts for windmills and is the world’s largest emitter of carbon gases. It was exempted by the Kyoto treaty from its obligations as an emerging country! Canadian Greenpeace joined China’s criticism and a spokesman said the country is protecting polluters instead of people. To the contrary, the windmills are noisy, unreliable, and kill migrating birds. They have to be shut down when the winds are too strong and do not generate enough electricity when there are no winds. So fossil fuel plants must be built to back them up. When not built on public lands, neighboring farmers have to be paid thousands of dollars to accept the noise. And they all need to be subsidized because they cannot compete on their own. They require huge subsidies from both the states and the federal government for any entrepreneur to undertake their construction. In addition, the federal government obliges the electric utilities to buy electricity from them and they are permitted to pass the higher cost on to consumers in the form of higher prices. Not only do they not contribute to economic growth but they hamper economic growth.

The Canadian environment minister, Peter Kent, said meeting the country's Kyoto treaty obligations would cost each family $1,600. In our view that is a gross understatement. But he is right that it would impose on Canadian workers and on Canadian companies an intolerable burden. More than that, economic studies have shown that Canada would benefit and the U.S. would suffer little harm from global warming.

Larry Bell in a Forbes article, August 23, 2011, entitled “The Alarming Cost Of Climate Change Hysteria” calculated some of the costs. These do not include the billions in subsidies granted by the states and the burdens borne by workers and consumers. He writes: “ The U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) can't figure out what benefits, if any, taxpayers are getting from the many billions of dollars spent each year on policies that are purportedly aimed at addressing climate change.” Neither can we. Here are some of the costs he reported :...

Gov. Perry is On Track to Create a Million Jobs -- We're published in this morning's American Thinker
Howard Richman, 10/22/2011

We begin:

Republican presidential candidate, Gov. Rick Perry, says his energy plan will "kick start economic growth: and create 1.2 million jobs," and he is correct. He revealed his "Energizing American Jobs and Security" plan in an October 14 speech at a U.S. Steel plant near Pittsburgh, saying, "We are standing atop the next American economic boom ... energy.... But we can only do that if environmental bureaucrats are told to stand down."

Follow the following link to read it:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/gov_perry_is_on_track_to_create_a_million_jobs.html

Gov. Perry Is On Track to Create a Million Jobs. Could Be Several Million
Raymond Richman, 10/18/2011

Maria Recio reported in the McClatchy Newspapers on Friday, October 14 (my birthday! And it was a nice gift!) that Presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry released an energy-centric program to expand offshore drilling and domestic oil and gas exploration that he claimed would create 1.2 million jobs. Perry, who spoke at a suburban Pittsburgh steel mill said he would move to open federal lands to drilling, including Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and curtail the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory powers.

Perry calls the plan “Energizing American Jobs and Security” and claims that it will “kick-start economic growth and create 1.2 million jobs." Perry said, “We are standing atop the next American economic boom ... energy." “But we can only do that if environmental bureaucrats are told to stand down," he said. "America has proven but untapped supplies of natural gas, oil and coal. America is the Saudi Arabia of coal, with 25 percent of the world's supply. Our country contains up to 134 billion barrels of oil and nearly 1.2 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas." We said the same on this site several times that removing the restrictions on the drilling of oil on public lands and offshore would create a million jobs. Together with the drilling of natural gas in our abundant shale deposits, it would create an economic boom and millions of additional jobs.

Perry's energy proposal drew fire from President Barack Obama's campaign and environmental groups. "Gov. Perry's energy policy isn't the way to win the future, it's straight out of the past -- doubling down on finite resources with no plan to promote innovation or to transition the nation to a clean energy economy," Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said. Daniel Weiss of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, said Perry's plan "ignores a clean tech future while returning to a fossil fuel past. ... The Perry plan should be stamped 'Made By Big Oil.” Texas Democratic Party spokeswoman Rebecca Acuna said Perry "wants to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency and run the federal government like he runs Texas." This is the kind of garbage the ultraleft uses to attack the ideas of opponents instead of debating the issues. ...

Obama contributing taxpayer money to global warming god
Howard Richman, 10/1/2011

At a California fundraiser, President Obama explained why his contributions of billions of taxpayer dollars to bankrupt and near-bankrupt solar power producers are worthwhile. According to Obama, if appeased, the global warming god will cause the rains to come in their season, and thus prevent droughts and fires like the ones currently occurring in Texas. Specifically, he said:

Some of you here may be folks who actually used to be Republicans but are puzzled by what’s happened to that party, are puzzled by what’s happening to that party. I mean, has anybody been watching the debates lately? You’ve got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change...

But the high priests of global warming haven't proven to be a very successful in their prophesies:...

A SolarTheory of Global Warming Casts Doubt on Man-Made Global Warming
Raymond Richman, 8/31/2011

No doubt the ban-carbon-emissions-lobby will find arguments that belittle the CLOUD research at CERN, Europe's leading nuclear research center, the results of which were published last week in Nature magazine. But one thing is certain, the CLOUD experiment has confirmed that there is an alternative theory to the current theory that man-made-carbon emissions cause global warming. Al Gore, former v-p of the United States, embraced and fostered the theory and made repeated statements that the global warming science was settled. He made a movie which created widespread fear of global warming which he alleged was the result of the industrial world’s emissions of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. From 2007 on, he knew that there was an alternative theory. That was the year in which a Danish scientist, Henrik Svensmark, affiliated with the Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Institute, published a paper describing his theory that climatic changes on Earth were the result of solar activity through the latter’s effects on cosmic rays bombarding the earth.

Svensmark theorized that cosmic rays causes clouds to form cooling the earth or impeded the formation of clouds leading to global warmings. When the sun experiences strong magnetic activity, it diverts the cosmic rays heading for the earth preventing the formation of clouds and when there was a weak magnetic effect, cosmic rays bombarded the earth’s atmosphere, seeding the clouds and facilitating cloud formations. When the sun’s magnetic activity is weak, cosmic rays cause clouds to form and cool the earth. When the sun’s magnetic activity is strong, the reduction in cosmic rays bombarding the earth’s atmosphere creates global warming. ...

Governor Romney may have been brainwashed by the global warmers
Howard Richman, 6/20/2011

Governor Mitt Romney, the leading Republican candidate for President, claimed earlier this month that man-made global warming is real. He said:

I don’t speak for the scientific community, of course, but I believe the world’s getting warmer. I can’t prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that . . . so I think it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and the global warming that you’re seeing.

His endorsement of the 20th century theory comes, unfortunately for him, at the same time that scientists are switching to the 21st century theory that climate change is mainly due to extra-terrestrial activities, mainly cosmic rays and solar activity.

For example, in the April 7 Financial Post Australian mathematician and engineer David Evans (Carbon warming too minor to be worth worrying about), a former proponent of the 20th century theory, revealed that the global warming models were disproved even before global temperatures peaked in 1998:...

Why Cancer Preventing Sunscreen can Increase the Prevalence of Skin Cancer
Jesse Richman, 6/16/2011

The FDA is poised to approve new regulations on sunscreen. One of the questions being asked in the public debate is why skin cancer prevalence has been increasing even as the use of sunscreen as also simultaneously been increasing. In this brief note I show why a sunscreen that substantially REDUCES the degree to which a given hour of sun exposure will lead to skin cancer can none the less INCREASE the prevalence of skin cancer if the sunscreen reduces the discomfort caused by sitting in the sun even more.

Suppose each person has a certain degree of tolerance for sunburn and the discomfort associated with sitting in the hot sun while the skin bakes. For simplicity, let's say this tolerance is for one unit of solar discomfort.

Further, suppose that a sunscreen is effective at reducing solar discomfort, allowing the individual to sit in the sun ten times as long as he or she otherwise would before the solar discomfort level is reached. Thus, instead of ten minutes, an individual wearing this sunscreen can now sit in the sun for 100 minutes.

Suppose further that this sunscreen allows the individual to substantially reduce the incidence of cancer, reducing by five times the degree to which sitting in the sun for a given number of minutes increases the risk of cancer. Before sunscreen, the cancer risk from ten minutes in the sun was one cancer risk unit. After sunscreen the risk from ten minutes in the sun is .20 cancer units.

A quick and naive look at this problem would lead one to think that making the sunscreen available will reduce the incidence of cancer. The sunscreen is in fact known to be effective at preventing skin cancer! This is, however, totally wrong.

Now do the math.

President Obama announces that his administration will temporarily stop blocking drilling for oil
Howard Richman, 5/15/2011

Here is a selection from the AHN summary of his announcement:

Obama has instructed the Department of Interior to conduct annual lease sales in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve. He also ordered a “speeding up” of evaluations of oil and gas reserves in the Mid- and South-Atlantic Ocean.

Also part of the plan is opening new leases in the Gulf of Mexico and providing incentives for oil companies to develop their unused leases “both on and offshore.”

Obama said that oil companies will now have more time to meet higher safety standards, and he is extending drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico that were impacted by the moratorium imposed by the Obama administration following the 2010 DeepWater Horizon oil spill.

His statement does not address the steps taken by his administration to stifle natural gas and coal production, just oil. He is saying that "oil companies will now have time to meet higher safety standards."...

How to Switch to CNG while Saving Taxpayer Money -- we're published in this morning's American Thinker
Howard Richman, 5/12/2011

Here are some of the graphs that accompanied our commentary. This one compares the price at the pump for Compressed Natural Gas and Gasoline:

This one shows why natural gas has been coming down in price, relative to oil. It shows how proven U.S. reserves for natural gas and oil compare:

Our point was that if the U.S. govenrment purchased only CNG new vehicles, that would save the government about $1.60 per gallon at the pump and at the same time cause CNG filling stations to pop up all over the country making it possible for consumers and businesses to switch.

To read the article, go to: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/05/how_to_switch_to_cng_while_sav.html

Unlike other fuels, the Opportunity Cost of using Uranium for Electricity Generation is Negligible
Michael Natelson, 4/20/2011

[Michael Natelson Ph.D. is a Nuclear Engineer and a member of Ideal Tax Association's Board of Directors]

As a result of the tragic events in Japan much has been written and broadcast concerning the future of nuclear power. Scenarios have ranged from modest delays in deployment of new plants to forgoing in time the nuclear option entirely. Many of the benefits and costs/risks have been discussed, but a key grand scale motivation for pursuing nuclear energy from fission reactors is omitted. Uranium, and ultimately Thorium, fueling reactors could supply the bulk of humanity’s electrical energy needs for several thousand years. This is possible because these elements are abundant in the earth’s crust, and the reactor technology to exploit them has progressed to an industrial scale and continues to improve.

The “motivation” I refer to above, however, is based on the fact that Uranium and Thorium have negligible substitution-value. They have no other significant economic application.

This is not true for other sources of electrical energy. Obviously, coal, oil and natural gas are excellent chemical feed stocks. It is already clear that it makes no sense to burn oil to generate electricity. It is much more valuable as an energy source for transportation. Burning gas in combined cycle turbine generators with thermal efficiencies of~60% is attractive at today’s gas prices, but with modern home heating furnaces at better than 90% efficient this use might be a better choice if we are to burn this finite resource.

One can also think about “substitution-value” as applied to the resources needed for electrical energy generation from “renewable” sources. The land needed per Watt for solar, biomass and wind farms could have other uses....

EPA disses Congress
Howard Richman, 4/16/2011

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrators are refusing to come to Congressional hearings on new EPA regulations. Here's a selection from an article by Robin Bravender posted at Politico.com:

Of three Energy and Commerce Committee hearings held this week on controversial EPA rules, the agency sent an administration witness to just one.

Rep. Henry Waxman of California, the top Democrat on the panel, sent a letter Tuesday to top committee Republicans saying the EPA couldn’t make it because the majority didn’t give either the EPA or the Democrats enough advance notice. He asked Republicans to make “greater efforts in the future to ensure that the committee is able to hear from administration witnesses by providing adequate notice.”...

Meanwhile, Congresssional Republicans with some Democratic support are doing their best to rein in the agency. An editorial (EPA's days as 'rogue agency' are numbered) in the Washington Examiner reports:...

Foolish Economic Stimulus Policies Aggravate the Trade Deficits
Raymond Richman, 3/11/2011

The U.S. international trade deficit unexpectedly widened in January 2011 to US $46.34 billion compared to $40.26 billion in December 2010. Both imports and exports increased but imports increased at a substantially faster rate than imports. An increase in exports(X) shows up as a contribution to the Gross Domestic Product while an increase in imports(M) shows up as a subtraction from GDP. To refresh the reader’s memory, if he or she took a course in economics, GDP = C + I + G + X – M, where C is the sum of consumer goods and service produced in the country, I is the sum of investment goods (Machinery, buildings, and the like), G is the sum of goods and services purchased by governments, and X equals exports of goods and services and M equals imports of goods and services.

The U.S. has not had a favorable balance of trade in decades. In 1992, X-M amounted to $39 billion; by 2000, the last year of Pres. Clinton’s second administration, it had grown to $379 billion in spite of the fact that the federal budget was in balance that year. We mention that because many believe that our budget deficits are responsible for our trade imbalances. By 2008, the last year of Pres. G.W. Bush’s second administration, it had grown to $699 billion. The trade balances are no respecter of the President’s party affiliation.

Nearly all academic economists gazed passively on the growing trade deficits. Many were aware that it was costing American workers millions of good factory jobs and that it was accelerating the decline of manufacturing. But they considered that a price that had to be paid in the interest of their ideology, free trade. The fact that it was contributing to a worsening of the U.S. distribution of income, they refused to admit. They argued instead that it was the poor education of the American worker that denied him access to good jobs. As though the workers abroad whose products we were importing were better educated rather than lower paid....

Must Read: Saleri's Opinion Piece in WSJ 3-9-11
Raymond Richman, 3/10/2011

In the WSJ, today March 9, 2011, Nansen G. Saleri, President and CEO of Quantum Reservoir Impact in Houston, Texas, in an opinion piece entitled “Our Man-Made Energy Crisis” argues that, “At current rates of global consumption, there are sufficient oil and gas supplies to last well into the next century.” He writes:

What’s missing is a coherent U.S. energy policy. At best, the Obama administration’s approach to U.S. domestic oil and gas production can be characterized as a strategy of ambivalence, an uneasy equilibrium between desire to lessen the role of fossil fuels and the reality of their necessity in a functioning U.S. economy. Last year’s Deepwater Horizon tragedy in the Gulf tilted the current administration’s policies to an even more punitive posture vis-à-vis domestic energy production....

Global panic as green energy sector collapses due to fading government subsidies
Howard Richman, 2/22/2011

John Sullivan has the story. He writes that England has decided to cut off its subsidies for wind and solar energy in April 12 and that this is just the last in a chain of countries to reduce their subsidies:

Britain’s decision is another nail in the coffin for Europe’s tottering green energy market. Last year the first of several crushing body blows was dealt to environmentalist dreams when the Spanish government retrospectively cut the value of its tariffs in its own U-turning energy review.

The devastated Spanish Solar Photovoltaic Industry Association, with mass bankruptcies on the cards, is accusing their government of utter betrayal is yet to carry out a threat to sue over the ruling....

In today's WSJ, Congressman Fred Upton opposes EPA carbon regulation
Howard Richman, 12/30/2010

Upton is the incoming Republican Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. His commentary was co-authored with Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity. Here is a selection:

On Jan. 2, the Environmental Protection Agency will officially begin regulating the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. This move represents an unconstitutional power grab that will kill millions of jobs—unless Congress steps in....

The best solution is for Congress to overturn the EPA's proposed greenhouse gas regulations outright. If Democrats refuse to join Republicans in doing so, then they should at least join a sensible bipartisan compromise to mandate that the EPA delay its regulations until the courts complete their examination of the agency's endangerment finding and proposed rules.....

Interview with Piers Corbyn
Howard Richman, 12/29/2010

In our American Thinker commentary on Monday, my father and I named Piers Corbyn the "Best Climate Predictor of the Year." You can watch an interview with him:

Winner of this Year's Best Climate Predictor Award (Clue: It wasn't Al Gore) - we were published in American Thinker this morning
Howard Richman, 12/27/2010

Here's a selection:

Corbyn, like many other astrophysicists, has figured out that climate change is mainly due to extraterrestrial forces, including solar activity and cosmic rays, not carbon dioxide. If you still believe in the theory that carbon dioxide causes climate change, click here to watch an excellent lecture by Jasper Kirkby at the Cern, one of Europe's most highly respected centers for scientific research. Astrophysicists have discovered that changes in the rate of cosmic ray inflow cause climate change and that solar activity shields the earth from cosmic rays. They haven't completely worked out the mechanism yet, but they think it has to do with cosmic rays causing cloud formation and clouds reflecting sunlight back into space.
Who says that climate change will not be catastrophic? Starting January 2, President Obama's EPA will start enforcing its new regulation that American industries use the "best available control technologies" to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. This could increase American energy costs sufficiently to choke off our economic recovery.
And don't forget that at the conclusion of last year's climate conference in Copenhagen, President Obama negotiated the Copenhagen Accord with China, Brazil, South Africa, and India as a framework for future negotiations. That accord lets China opt out from any verifiable requirements but commits the developed nations to paying out $100 billion per year to the U.N. and to the participating developing countries. It states:

You can read the entire commentary at:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/12/the_winner_of_this_years_best.html

A New Solar Plant Shows the Economic Dangers of US Commitment to Environmentalist Foolishness
Raymond Richman, 12/26/2010

Two news items that appeared just before Christmas demonstrate the inability of our leaders to learn the dangers to America’s economic future of our espousal of so-called green energy sources. The federal government is taking a huge risk in subsidizing the construction of alternative energy sources like solar and wind power. The federal government wasted hundreds of billions of dollars in Pres. Obama’s $800 billion economic stimulus plan by such subsidies and, as seems clearly evident, created very few jobs.

The first news item appeared in the Wall Street Journal, headlined “Spain’s Cuts to Solar Aid Draw Fire”. It reported that a group of international investors has called on the Spanish government to reconsider its plans to cut costly subsidies for solar power, “including existing power plants”. . In Spain, the government pays the extra cost “roughly 10 times the price utilities pay for power produced from conventional sources such as gas and coal”. Last year, the government paid out €2.6 billion. Now it wants to reduce the existing subsidies. But investors who have acquired a vested interest in continuation of the inefficient subsidies want them continued. Apparently, our leaders are committed to the same foolishness. ...

Winner of this year's 'Best Climate Predictor' Award
Howard Richman, 12/22/2010

It's time to choose the winner of this year's "Best Climate Predictor" award. There are five nominees: (1) Al Gore, (2) Arnold Schwarzenegger, (3) the IPCC of the United Nations, (4) Piers Corbyn and (5) President Hu.

Gore, Schwarzenegger and the IPCC made their mark through their dramatic predictions of catastrophic sea level rise due to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Al Gore once predicted that sea level would rise by 20 feet over the century. Last year, Governor Schwarzenegger unveiled a map showing world sea level rising by 1.5 meters over the next century. In 2001 the IPCC predicted that sea level would rise by 3 feet over the next century. The actual rise over the last 18 years is 1.85 inches, which works out to 10.4 inches per century. This is similar to the 20th century's rise of 8 inches, but much less than the average rise of 4 foot per century for the last 10,000 years as the glaciers left by the last ice age continue to melt.

The chart below shows how these predictions stack up against 18 years of accurate satellite measurements:

Al Gore's prediction is clearly the best of these three. He was awarded a million dollar Nobel Peace Prize for bringing this issue to the attention of the world. The IPCC's prediction is second. At the Cancun Conference this month they won a huge expansion of the UN bureaucracy. Schwarzenegger's prediction comes in third since it is not yet clear whether he will get the global warming spokesman job in the Obama administration that he is angling for.

British astrophysicist Piers Corbyn is the clear loser. He still works out of a drab office that the Sydney Morning Herald calls "undistinguished":...

Obama halts US drilling in Chukchi Sea
Howard Richman, 4/7/2010

Investor's Business Daily has been following the story. In a May 29, 2009, editorial they reported:

Back in July, when IBD first interviewed the then-little-known governor, Palin emphasized developing Alaska's Chukchi Sea resources. Under those icy waters, it was then believed, was enough oil and gas to supply America for a decade.

"It's a very nonsensical position we're in right now," Palin told us. "(We) ask the Saudis to ramp up production of crude oil so that hungry markets in America can be fed, (and) your sister state in Alaska has those resources."

At the time, it was thought that Chukchi's waters northwest of Alaska's landmass held 30 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

Today, Science magazine reports that the U.S. Geological Survey now finds it holds more than anyone thought — 1.6 quadrillion, or 1600 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas, or 30% of the world's supply and 83 billion barrels of undiscovered oil, 4% of the global conventional resources.

That's enough U.S. energy to achieve self-sufficiency and never worry about it as a national security question again....

China agrees to modify export subsidies
Howard Richman, 1/4/2010

According to United States Trade Ambassador, Ron Kirk, China has agreed to eliminate or modify its export subsidy program. His office reports:

"I am very pleased that today we have signed an agreement with China confirming full elimination of the numerous subsidies we identified as prohibited under WTO rules. This agreement demonstrates President Obama's commitment to ensuring that American workers, farmers, ranchers, manufacturers, and producers get a fair chance to compete for business around the world, to sell more goods to global consumers, and to bring jobs and other benefits of our trade agreements back home," said Ambassador Kirk. "This outcome represents a victory for the full spectrum of U.S. manufacturers and their workers, given the reach of these Chinese industrial policy initiatives. We are pleased that the WTO dispute settlement mechanism has worked as intended, enabling the parties to reach an appropriate resolution," Ambassador Kirk added.

China's actual actions, however, may not be so sweeping. The same article also reports:

Under the agreement, China confirms that it has taken steps either to eliminate the measures of concern or to modify them to remove any provisions related to export-contingent brand designations and financial benefits.

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Wikipedia:
[An] extensive argument for balanced trade, and a program to achieve balanced trade is presented in Trading Away Our Future, by Raymond Richman, Howard Richman and Jesse Richman. �A minimum standard for ensuring that trade does benefit all is that trade should be relatively in balance.� [Balanced Trade entry]
Journal of Economic Literature:
[Trading Away Our Future] Examines the costs and benefits of U.S. trade and tax policies. Discusses why trade deficits matter; root of the trade deficit; the �ostrich� and �eagles� attitudes; how to balance trade; taxation of capital gains; the real estate tax; the corporate income tax; solving the low savings problem; how to protect one�s assets; and a program for a strong America....
Atlantic Economic Journal:
In Trading Away Our Future Richman ... advocates the immediate adoption of a set of public policy proposal designed to reduce the trade deficit and increase domestic savings.... the set of public policy proposals is a wake-up call... [February 17, 2009 review by T.H. Cate]