Using two independent data sources—the intrafirm trade data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis and the related party trade data from the US Census Bureau—I construct and compare measures of US intrafirm exports and imports. I find that, in general, the two datasets provide similar measures of US intrafirm trade, particularly for exports. Understanding the differences that do exist in measurement will likely require study of the confidential micro data at both the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census Bureau.

Following its opening to trade and foreign investment in the mid-1980s, Mexico's economic growth has been modest at best, particularly in comparison with that of China. Comparing these countries and reviewing the literature, we conclude that the relation between openness and growth is not a simple one. Using standard trade theory, we find that Mexico has gained from trade, and by some measures, more so than China. We sketch out a theory in which developing countries can grow faster than the United States by reforming. As a country becomes richer, this sort of catch-up becomes more difficult. Absent continuing reforms, Chinese growth is likely to slow down sharply, perhaps leaving China at a level less than Mexico's real GDP per working-age person.

We propose a methodology for studying changes in bilateral commodity trade due to goods not exported previously or exported only in small quantities. Using a panel of 1,900 country pairs, we find that increased trade of these “least-traded goods” is an important factor in trade growth. This extensive margin accounts for 10 percent of the growth in trade for NAFTA country pairs, for example, and 26 percent in trade between the United States and Chile, China, and Korea. Looking at country pairs with no major trade policy change or structural change, however, we find little change in the extensive margin.

We show how offshore profit shifting by US multinational enterprises affects several key measures of the US economy. Profits shifted out of the United States grew rapidly from the mid-1990s to 2010 and have since waned. From 1982–2016, on average, 38 percent of income attributed to US direct investment abroad is reattributable to the United States. We find that adjusting for profit shifting shrinks the trade deficit, decreases the return on US foreign direct investment abroad, boosts productivity growth rates in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and lowers labor’s share of income.

Since the early 1990s, as the United States borrowed heavily from the rest of the world, employment in the US goods-producing sector has fallen. We construct a dynamic general equilibrium model with several mechanisms that could generate declining goods-sector employment: foreign borrowing, nonhomothetic preferences, and differential productivity growth across sectors. We find that only 15.1 percent of the decline in goods-sector employment from 1992 to 2012 stems from US trade deficits; most of the decline is due to differential productivity growth. As the United States repays its debt, its trade balance will reverse, but goods-sector employment will continue to fall.

We study China’s export growth to the United States from 1950 to 2008, using a structural model to disentangle the effects of past tariff changes from the effects of changes in expectations of future tariffs. We find that the effects of China’s 1980 Normal Trade Relations (NTR) grant lasted past its 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the likelihood of losing NTR status decreased significantly during 1986–92 but changed little thereafter. US manufacturing employment trends support our findings: industries more exposed to the 1980 reform have shed workers steadily since then without acceleration around China’s WTO accession.