Sincerely,

Joe

An income tax-free death benefit

1. Transfer to the insured on the policy
    
2. Transfer to the partner of the insured (but not to a co-stockholder)
    
3. Transfer to a partnership in which the insured is a partner
    
4. Transfer to a corporation in which the insured is a stockholder or officer
    
5. Transfer in which the recipient's basis is determined by the transferor's basis (e.g., a gift)

• Dividends from whole life insurance can be used to reduce premiums or to buy additional insurance, neither of which triggers taxes.
   
• Dividends taken as cash are not taxable unless the amount of the dividend exceeds the premiums paid.
   
• Dividends reinvested to "accumulate at interest," on the other hand, are an exception to the tax-deferred growth rule, and the interest earned on these dividends is taxable each year.

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

The North American Free-Trade Agreement is one such fast-track agreement, and was a controversial issue in the 1992 presidential campaign. Negotiations for the agreement had begun in 1990 under President George H.W. Bush, who was given fast-track authority in 1991, later extended through 1993. While government proponents of the agreement - including presidential candidates George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton - predicted that NAFTA would lead to a trade surplus with Mexico and hundreds of thousands of new jobs, third-party candidate Ross Perot vehemently disagreed. He claimed its passage would result in a "giant sucking sound going south," with money pouring out of the U.S. into Mexico.

NAFTA entered into force January 1, 1994, between the countries of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The purpose of the agreement was to eliminate all tariffs between the three countries within 10 years, excluding some U.S. exports to Mexico to be phased-out over 15 years.


Labor Rights and Conditions

This agreement was an attempt to appease the AFL-CIO (a traditional Democratic Party supporter) and their concerns that the agreement would lead to similar agreements with other low-wage countries and loss of jobs in America. While the intentions behind the labor pact were good, the outcome was disappointing. According to Rebecca Van Horn, writing in the International Labor Rights Forum 12 years after NAFTA's passage, the agreement has been ineffective since "labor rights violations abound, an immigration system remains broken, and the link between the welfare of workers abroad and workers at home goes unexamined."

Environmental Protections

Worried that Mexico would become a haven for industrial polluters, environmentalists opposed NAFTA and filed a suit to require the Clinton administration to file an environmental impact statement before submitting the agreement to Congress for approval. If upheld, the strategy would have killed the treaty. As a consequence, trade sanctions on Mexico were added, in case they violated the environmental provisions. While coupling environmental concerns to free trade was innovative at the time, the enforcement agency created by the agreement - the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) - was grossly underfunded and lacked enforcement authority over the parties. An independent study of the CEC in 2012 concluded that it appears to be "moderately effective at promoting environmental cooperation to improve domestic environmental programs," but has been unable to enforce environmental laws or integrate trade and environment as originally hoped.

Economic Effects

According to U.S. Census figures, United States exports and imports to Mexico in 1994 totaled $50.8 million and $49.5 million, respectively, creating a positive trade balance of less than $2 million. By 2015, exports had risen to $235.7 million with imports of $296.4 million, creating a trade deficit of $60.7 million. In the 21 years since the passage of NAFTA, the cumulative trade deficit with Mexico has been almost $820 million.

The Census Bureau reported exports and imports to Canada in 1995 of $127,226 million and $144,369.9 million, respectively. While annual exports to Canada had more than doubled by 2015 ($280,609 million), imports increased at the same rate ($296,155.6 million). The cumulative trade deficit with Canada was more than $870 million in the period 1995 to 2015.

In spite of intentions to produce a trade surplus, Ross Perot's prediction of money funneling south (and north) out of the states is supported by the numbers.

But whether or not NAFTA has been beneficial to the country depends on upon your choice of expert analyses:

Economist Robert Scott of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute claims that trade deficits with Mexico totaled $97.2 billion and cost 682,900 jobs in the period from its passage to 2010. Scott also argues that the new jobs that replaced the lost jobs paid less, estimating American workers lost $7.6 billion in wages in 2004 alone. Scott's colleague, Jeff Faux, writing in The Huffington Post, claims that NAFTA and other trade agreements favor corporations eager to produce "in countries where labor is cheap, environment and public health regulations weak, and governments easily bribable."

In his personal blog, professor of economics Brad DeLong at the University of California claims that NAFTA has resulted in a loss of only 350,000 jobs - a small number of the 140 million total U.S. jobs. He estimates that 700,000 new jobs to make exports to Mexico would have resulted if monetary and fiscal policy had been unchanged. DeLong also notes that Mexico has benefited from an increase of 1.5 million jobs that indirectly helps America. In any event, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce claims that trade with Canada and Mexico supports nearly 14 million U.S. jobs, including almost five million new jobs.
Both sides recognize that job losses have occurred since the passage of NAFTA, but disagree on its cause. Many on the left blame trade agreements or corporate boards and officers who outsource jobs overseas. According to James Moreland of Economy in Crisis, "The capitalist market in the United States makes it nearly impossible for any successful company to avoid the lure of cutting American industrial jobs and shipping the work abroad."

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

Despite the growing opposition to NAFTA for its contribution to American job losses, talks began under President George W. Bush in February 2008 to join the Pacific Four (New Zealand, Chile, Singapore, and Brunei) trade agreement talks. President Obama continued the effort that subsequently included Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia, NAFTA members Canada and Mexico, and Japan. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade agreement negotiated between the 12 Pacific Rim countries, was signed by the parties in early 2016. China is noticeably missing from the alliance. The agreement is not yet in force, having to pass Congress first and other countries' legislative bodies.

Like NAFTA, the agreement includes the reduction and elimination of tariffs between the signatories (the member countries to the agreement). The agreement purports to protect intellectual property, establish new labor rights, protect the environment, and reduce income inequality among the nations. Reminiscent of NAFTA's controversial passage, opponents and proponents have made similar arguments for TPP that accompanied the earlier trade agreement.

Economic Benefits

The benefits resulting from TPP's passage projected by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative include:

• Elimination of 18,000 tariffs now affecting U.S. exports to other countries in the partnership
   
• New jobs averaging 5,800 per billion dollars of exports with pay up to 18% higher than non-export jobs
   
• Enforceable labor and environmental protections, requirements for foreign-owned government businesses to compete fairly, and rules to keep the Internet free and open

Proponents of TPP

In The Diplomat, K. William Watson, a policy analyst with the Cato Institute, asserts that "free trade is universally good. The value of free trade agreements is how they lower protectionist trade barriers that divert the gains of economic exchange to a narrow group of politically connected rent-seekers [those who seek economic gain through the political process without benefit to others]." According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, more than half of American CEOs would hire more U.S. workers if they could sell more exports.

The proponents of the agreement include the U.S. Coalition for TPP. Described as a broad-based group of U.S. companies and associations representing the principal sectors of the U.S. economy, the group works closely with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Other business groups advocating the passage of TPP include the National Association of Manufacturers, Business Roundtable, National Small Business Association, and American Farm Bureau Federation.

According to Techdirt, Big Pharma, Hollywood, and Wall Street (three of the biggest lobbying industries in Washington, D.C. ) are advocates of the partnership because they will receive additional protection from competition from foreign competitors.

Opposition to the Agreement

Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, generally for free trade, wrote in The New York Times that the TPP increases the ability of certain corporations to assert control over intellectual property, creating "legal monopolies." He also states, "What's good for Big Pharma is by no means always good for America."

While the Federal Government refers to the TPP as a new high-standard trade agreement that levels the playing field for American workers and American businesses, opposition to its passage is widespread:

• Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF, a nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world, claims TPP is "a secretive, multinational trade agreement that threatens to extend restrictive intellectual property laws across the globe."
• Public Citizen. A nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded in 1971, Public Citizen argues that the agreement satisfies 500 official trade advisors representing corporate interests to the detriment of the public interest and that the pact will "promote job offshoring and push down U.S. wages."
• AFL-CIO. The federation of 56 labor unions representing 12.5 million workers asserts that TPP is modeled after NAFTA, "a free trade agreement that boosts global corporate profits while leaving working families behind."
   
• Democratic Congress Members. According to The Economist, Congressional opposition to the passage of TPP has stiffened. "Our constituents did not send us to Washington to ship their jobs overseas," stated three House Democrats: George Miller of California, Louise Slaughter of New York, and Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut.

The Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, notes that prominent economists are divided about the TPP, even though they are advocates of free trade. While favoring free trade, Daniel T. Griswold of the Cato Institute opposes connecting labor and environmental restrictions on partners. He notes that Republicans have rejected the use of sanctions in trade agreements, while Democrats have warned that they will not vote for treaties without such penalties.

Read the complete article here.