Tariffs and Trade - Some of Our Studies

Today has been quite the day. It is just mid-afternoon, and, in addition to a Kyiv School of Economics Board of Directors meeting on Zoom on various important issues, I managed, as of now, to do 4 interviews with the media on Trump, tariffs, and trade, because (we will see if this comes to pass), as of midnight tonight, Trump is to impose 25% tariffs on products from our neighbor Canada and 10% tariffs on products from China. The tariffs on Mexican products have been "paused" for 30 days, due to an agreement between the two Presidents. The situation is incredibly dynamic and volatile.

When I agree to interview requests, it is on topics that are not only timely but ones that we have conducted research on. I  remember fondly when we began to write on the impacts of tariffs (and there are several types, I might add). Colleagues, who were then at Cornell University, Charles F. Nicholson and Phillip M Bishop, were working on impacts of ad valorem tariffs on dairy products from Mexico, had reached out to me and then visited me at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. We published a series of papers, including one in the Annals of Operations Research. Since then, collaborations (and publications) have continued, many with a focus on agricultural products and the impacts of trade policies. Thanks to my co-authors: Dana Hassani, Oleg Nivievskyi, Pavel Martyshev, Deniz Besik, PhD, Michelle Li, June Dong, Ladimer Nagurney, and Mojtaba Salarpour for research that continues to resonate, with acknowledgment to journals, including: the Journal of Global Optimization, the European Journal of Operational Research, Transportation Research E, and the International Transactions in Operational Research, that have published our work on tariffs and other policy instruments (such as quotas and subsidies) and their impacts on commodity flows, producer and consumer prices, and consumer welfare! And for a recent podcast that I did on Talk The Talk with Bill Newman and Buz Eisenberg, for WHMP, on Trump, tariffs and tradeoffs, click here: https://soundcloud.com/whmp/umass-isenberg-school-prof

Below is a collage of first pages of several of our papers on tariffs.

You can find many preprints of the above articles and other ones on the Supernetwork Center website: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/dart.html

Our In Memoriam for Dr. Marguerite Frank Is Now Published and Open Access!

The daughters of Dr. Marguerite Straus Frank informed me over the recent holiday season that she had passed away at the age of 97 on December 11, 2024 in Palo Alto.

I quickly notified Professor Immanuel M. Bomze, the Editor in Chief of the EURO Journal on Computational Optimization (EJCO), of this sad news and he then asked me to partner with him in composing an In Memoriam for Marguerite for EJCO.

Marguerite had been a friend and I even had a photo of her in my presentation on the panel, "What Our Past Can Tell Us About Our Future," that took place at the INFORMS Seattle meeting in October, and that I had written about; see https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2024/11/many-thanks-to-informs-history.html

Despite it being the holiday period, Immanuel and I managed to write the In Memoriam and it did take a lot of research to ensure accuracy. We were in communications with her daughters: Dr. Claudine Frank and Dr. Isabelle Frank. Since Marguerite and I shared some common research interests, writing the In Memoriam brought back many memories, including when she visited me at the Isenberg School and when I hosted her talk at MIT, when I held an NSF Visiting Professorship for Women there. 

We completed the In Memoriam, but the publisher had "technical difficulty," and it took almost 3 weeks to receive the galleys.  Luckily, it was quickly published online. Plus, the In Memoriam is open access.

You may read and download it here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2192440625000012?via%3Dihub

We shared the In Memoriam with the daughters and they were very appreciative.

Marguerite is best known for being the co-developer of the Frank-Wolfe (1956) algorithm. She faced challenges as a female in STEM but left a lasting legacy. I enjoyed our discussions on the Braess Paradox, which was even a theme in my doctoral dissertation at Brown University.

I am also very grateful to Immanuel Bomze for spearheading an annual paper prize in his journal named after Marguerite. As he wrote to her daughters: "We will keep the memory alive, also with the help of the annual EJCO Award."  More info can be found in the In Memoriam.

Some Recent Coverage of Our Research in the Media

Next Monday, President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated for his second term in office. We can expect a quite dynamic, volatile period. I believe that the research that we have been doing will be extremely relevant from the modeling of tariffs and other policy instruments, such as quotas, and their impacts on a variety of product supply chains, to start.

I am gearing up for media inquiries and believe that, as an educator, it is very important to respond and to inform the public.

In the past few weeks, during the winter break at the University of Massachusetts, I have not only been getting ready for the spring semester and have also been writing papers, but, in addition, I've had several interviews and press releases on our work.

I am very pleased that the professional society of INFORMS issued a press release on our recent paper, "A Multiperiod, Multicommodity, Capacitated International Agricultural Trade Network Equilibrium Model with Applications to Ukraine in Wartime,"  published in Transportation Science. This paper I co-authored with my PhD student Dana Hassani and with Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) colleagues: Oleg Nivievskyi, and Pavlo Martyshev. The press release is available here: https://www.informs.org/News-Room/INFORMS-Releases/News-Releases/New-Study-Shows-How-Ukraine-War-Impacts-Global-Food-Supply-Chain-Urges-Alternative-Routes-for-Grains. Many thanks to Ashley Smith of INFORMS for this excellent writeup!

Also, UMass Amherst released this press announcement https://www.umass.edu/news/article/anna-nagurney-co-edits-new-book-disaster-management-research on my latest book, Dynamics of Disasters: From Natural Phenomena to Human Activity, co-edited with colleagues: Ilias S. Kotsireas, Panos M. Pardalos, Sten Pickl, and Chrys Vogiatzis and published by Springer Nature in late December. This book is extremely timely and contains 10 refereed chapters plus a preface. 

Recently, I was on Talk The Talk on WHMP to speak with Bill Newman and Bud Eisenberg on Trump, Tariffs and Tradeoffs: https://soundcloud.com/whmp/umass-isenberg-school-prof?in=whmp/sets/on-ice

We had such a lively discussion that they have asked me to come back after the inauguration.

And, just a few days ago, I had the pleasure of speaking with Janet Nguyen of Marketplace for her article, "Do blood donation centers sell your blood?" https://www.marketplace.org/2025/01/10/do-blood-donation-centers-sell-your-blood/ My research group has written many studies on blood supply chains and my article in The Conversation,  published shortly after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 pandemic, helped to influence national policy on blood donations; see: https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2023/12/honored-to-have-played-part-in.html

In late December I was interviewed for this deeply researched article on sanctions on Russia and chemicals published by Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-billionaires-whose-chemical-factories-fuel-russias-war-machine-2024-12-30/

And, not long before that, I was interviewed for this article in The New York Times on how Trump's tariffs would deal a big blow to the auto industry: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/26/business/trump-tariffs-mexico-canada-cars.html

Stay tuned! Interesting times await us!

Congratulations and Kudos for 2024

2024  was truly a remarkable year, despite challenges.

On December 5, 2024, I was deeply honored to present the Blackett Lecture at The Royal Society in London, England, thanks to the OR Society. It was an incredible event and I thank the OR Society President Dr. Gilbert Owusu for the warm introduction and for his great moderation of the Q&A following my lecture. It was extra special to have my husband, Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney, Isenberg School Dean Anne P. Massey and Associate Dean Bill Brown in attendance, as well as Diane Isenberg and Center Associate Dr. Stavros Siokos. Thanks to all who attended. The reception and dinner were fabulous and the OR Society has kindly posted a recoding of my Blackett Lecture on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-LsIEsi-m0

And, in late December 2024, our latest Dynamics of Disasters: From Natural Phenomena to Human Activity volume was published by Springer Nature!  The book is a collection of 10 refereed chapters. I was delighted to work with my fellow Co-Editors: Ilias S. Kotsireas, Panos M. Pardalos, Stefan Pickl, and Chrys Vogiatzis on this volume. It is based on papers, and, also, invited ones, that were presented at our Dynamics of Disasters conference in Piraeus, Greece, in July 2023. Full information about the book can be found here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-74006-0 I'd like to take the opportunity to also thank the reviewers of the chapters. It was special to have a paper, co-authored with my Isenberg School PhD student Dana Hassani and with colleagues at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) in Ukraine: Oleg Nivievskyi and Pavlo Martyshev published in this volume:  https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-74006-0_7.

And, speaking of Ukraine, I continued to serve as the Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of KSE and on its International Academic Board, with many meetings, and important issues requiring thoughtful and intense decision-making. I was thrilled to have the University of Massachusetts Amherst announce the second cohort of Virtual Scholars, based in Ukraine, thanks to our great partnership. All ten of the Virtual Scholars have been matched with faculty at the Isenberg School of Management.  I am honored to be working with three of them - Professor Myroslava Kushnir at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv,  Professor Borys Kormych at the Odesa Law Academy, and with Dr. Pavlo Martyshev of KSE, who was also part of our first cohort, as were Myroslava and Borys.  The Office of Global Affairs, led by Dr. Kalpen Trivedi, issued this nice press release: https://www.umass.edu/global-affairs/news/kyiv-school-economics-and-university-massachusetts-amherst-launch-second-round-virtual-scholar. Also, as part of this partnership, in Fall 2024, we had 5 exchange students from KSE studying at UMass Amherst and in the Spring 2025 semester we will have 4 staying on.

This was an amazing year for conferences with the 70th birthday conference in honor of Professor Panos Pardalos taking place in mid June in beautiful Halkidiki, Greece, with presentations by Center Associate Professor Dmytro Matsypura of the University of Sydney and me on joint work with Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney of the University of Hartford and my PhD student Ismael Pour. Both the EURO conference in Copenhagen this summer and the INFORMS conference in Seattle this past fall served as outstanding venues for many Center Associates to present their research. At the EURO conference, Center Associates: Professor Tina Wakolbinger of the Vienna University of Economic and Business, Professor Deniz Besik of the University of Richmond, and Professor Sara Saberi of WPI as well as Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney, and I, all took part. At the INFORMS conference, Center Associate Dmytro Matyspura, who had traveled all the way from the University of Sydney, was busy with editorial board meetings and recruiting, and we got together also with Center Associates Professor Pritha Dutta of Willamette University and Professor Ke "Grace" Ke of Central Washington University. Another highlight was to have two of my PhD students, Ismael Pour and Samira Samadi, who joined us as new Doctoral Student Center Associates, present for the first time at an INFORMS conference in Seattle. Dana Hassani also presented. And, our UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter received the Magna Cum Laude award from INFORMS in Seattle. Hard to believe that I have served as the Chapter's Faculty Advisor since 2004. Many of the officers and members celebrated with us at the award ceremony.  Info on the chapter and its activities can be found here: https://websites.umass.edu/umassinf/. Ismael Pour is this year's Chapter President and Dana Hassani was last year's Chapter President.

This was a very busy year for seminar presentations, including at MIT and at the University of Maryland, and other presentations. I very much enjoyed giving a keynote at the Supply Chain Resilience SCRIPS Workshop in Washington DC in early October: https://annanagurney.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-supply-chain-resilience-scrips.html

We have been busy responding to numerous interview requests, including from Reuters, The New York Times, The Washington Post, AlJazeera, because of our expertise on supply chain networks. For some of the coverage by the media, see: https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/media/media.htm

For our recent journal articles, please visit the Supernetwork Center website:

https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/dart.html

For photos of many events that we were engaged in, please, see:

https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/cfoto/centerphotos.html

For additional news and updates, please, see the Spring 2024 and Fall 2024 Supernetwork Sentinel 

https://supernet.isenberg.umass.edu/newsletters/sentinel.html

Hoping for a 2025 New Year filled with peace, great research, conferences, and professional activities, robust health, and prosperity. Thank you for the support!