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On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump’s first news conference since July didn’t deliver fresh insights into the billionaire’s policies, but it did manage to whipsaw Wall Street stocks. U.S. equities tumbled after the presser started, with comments from Trump that drug companies were “getting away with murder” with respect to pricing. However, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.50% the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.28% and the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.21% all closed higher in the wake of the hourlong conference. Equities had traded higher on the promise clarity on Trump’s promise of delivering a shot in the arm to...

President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a press conference in Trump Tower, New York, January 11, 2017. Trump's plans for rebooting the economy 15 Hours Ago | 03:22 Donald Trump wasn't asked much about the economy during his press conference on Wednesday, but when he was, the president-elect managed a rather colossal error. Trump said that there "are 96 million wanting a job and they can't get (one). You know that story. The real number. That's the real number." It is unfortunately very far from the real number. There are in fact 96 million Americans age 16 and older who are...

New analysis from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (Georgetown Center) finds that President-elect Trump’s 10-year $1 trillion infrastructure proposal could create 11 million jobs, restoring the job growth trajectory derailed by the Great Recession, but also risks overheating the economy. It is not surprising that $1 trillion in spending on infrastructure is certain to have positive employment effects in keeping with standard Keynesian theory. However, the additional spending, in combination with tax cuts and other economic policy shifts proposed by the President-elect, could generate inflation and set the stage for further interest rate hikes. President-elect Trump’s...

As state lawmakers propose all kinds of ways to boost economic opportunity, there's one policy that's rightly gaining momentum: right-to-work laws. Right-to-work laws do more than protect individuals from being required to join a union as a condition of employment. They are a proven catalyst for expanding jobs and opportunities throughout the states. This past weekend, Kentucky became the 27th state to pass right-to-work legislation — and it's not hard to see why. Many of Kentucky's neighboring states had already passed right-to-work and Kentuckians have seen firsthand the benefits it brought to their neighbors. Indiana, for example, saw its workforce-participation...

Media outlets and activists episodically highlight the ethical complexities of mineral supply chains that lie behind producing everything from electric cars to iPhones. The U.S. imports nearly a half-trillion dollars worth of tech products – computers, TVs, integrated circuits, and batteries – and another half-trillion worth of cars and machinery. All of these goods begin with raw materials increasingly sourced from places like the Congo, China, or Argentina. Most economists hold free trade as generally positive. But that doesn’t mean markets necessarily consider the ethical dimensions of trade decisions, especially when consumers are unaware of them. For several years now,...

There has been more concern about the market topping last week than we have in quite some time. We have the 20,000 level in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and 2300 in the S&P 500 just overhead, and with the Nasdaq Composite eclipsing the 5000 mark as well, it seems to make everyone looking for the market to top. But just because we are hitting round numbers in a market doesn't suggest that the market is topping. STOCKS TO BUY: TheStreet Quant Ratings has identified a handful of stocks with serious upside potential in the next 12-months. Learn more. As...

Small business owners' optimism soared in December to the highest level since 2004, the National Federation of Independent Business said Tuesday, as President-elect Trump unleashes "animal spirits" on Main Street, even as corporate titans such as General Motors (GM) and Ford (F) tread carefully with the president-elect. NFIB's small business optimism index shot up 7.4 points to 105.8, the best reading since December 2004. It was the biggest monthly gain in decades. A net 50% of smaller firms see business conditions improving vs. 12% in November and -7% in October. "We haven't seen numbers like this in a long time,"...

With a Navy commitment in hand to build 18 new Columbia-class nuclear submarines, Electric Boat in Groton is planning a hiring and spending spree that will be felt across the state. The company is gearing up to hire 2,000 new employees this year at its Connecticut and Rhode Island plants, with 1,350 jobs slated for Groton. Electric Boat employs about 14,500 people in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and that employment is projected to grow to 18,000 by 2030. Company President Jeffrey Geiger on Monday told business and legislative leaders during an annual update that the company will meet the Navy's...

NEW YORK – French billionaire Bernard Arnault, proprietor of the luxury fashion conglomerate LVMH, announced Monday his intention to “expand” his factories in the United States following his meeting with President-elect Donald Trump. In a statement to reporters upon leaving Trump Tower, Arnault said he considers building in the near future two new textile factories in this country, “possibly” in the state of North Carolina or in Texas. The French fashion entrepreneur said his company has made Louis Vuitton products in California for more than 25 years, and due to the brand’s success, he’s going to expand the business in...

Into the future By Udo Gollub at Messe Berlin, Germany I just went to the Singularity University summit. Here are the key points I gathered. Rise and Fall: In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they were bankrupt. What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 years – and most people don’t see it coming. Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on paper film again? Yet digital cameras...

Libs Try to Unhinge Trump's Cabinet After eight years of fundamentally transforming America, most liberals aren't exactly thrilled to see it transformed back. Desperate to keep their legacy of lawlessness alive, the Left is taking the surest path to protecting their "progress:" fighting the leaders who would unravel it and return law and order to America. With the New Year came a new intensity to knock down any cabinet nominees of President-elect Donald Trump's who pose a threat to President Obama's radical gains. To their disappointment, that seems to be almost everyone. The cabinet Donald Trump is assembling has been...

Amid pressure to build products at home, Apple is seeking to conduct "high-tech manufacturing" at one of its American plants, according to a federal government filing. Apple has requested to make finished products in its facility in Mesa, Arizona, according to the document, first reported by Business Insider. Right now, it has permissions to make consumer electronics components there, the filing said. Mesa first announced the Apple manufacturing facility in 2013, when there were expected to be 2,000 jobs created there. In 2015, Apple said it would invest $2 billion to expand "a command center for the company's global networks."...

Where many Asian Americans saw an exclusionist whose views on immigration evoked past injustices, Lisa Shin saw a pragmatist unafraid of addressing national security issues head-on, and whose economic savvy could create jobs and return America to the fore of the global economy. Shin, the daughter of South Korean immigrants, was one of President-elect Donald Trump’s most vocal advocates among the Asian American community during the election, and was invited to speak at the Republican National Convention earlier this year. Shin’s father came to the U.S. to study mechanical engineering, and her parents became naturalized citizens shortly after. Her father...

MOUNT AIRY, N.C. — From a perch on Main Street, the hometown of actor Andy Griffith looks this day like it was plucked right out of the television show that bears his name. And it was. Residents and tourists from farflung states mill along the thoroughfare, past the quaint low-slung shops made of Mount Airy's famous white granite and named, like Floyd's City Barber Shop, for references in "The Andy Griffith Show," the folksy comedy set in the idyllic fictional small town of Mayberry that first aired in 1960. And yet even as this city of about 10,000 nestled in...

Big banks shouldn't act like hedge funds by making dangerous bets that can ruin the economy. That's the principle behind the Volcker Rule, a controversial part of the post-crisis Wall Street reform. The rule prohibits banks like Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan from making risky wagers with their own money and bans them owning big stakes in hedge funds or private-equity firms. The banks hate it. Wall Street has bitterly complained about the Volcker Rule for years... ...named after legendary Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, who came up with the idea and fought hard to include it in Dodd-Frank. But recently,...

It has long been rumored that Paul Krugman does not write the New York Times column that appears under his name. I have no reason to believe that that is true, but I hope it is. There are not many situations in which the reputation of a winner of the Nobel prize and the John Bates Clark medal would be improved by an act of intellectual dishonesty, but this is one of them. Like homelessness and military casualties, U.S. government deficits are an issue that bleep into visibility on the progressive radar almost exclusively during Republican presidencies. On October 23,...

Chalk up another win for the president-elect? Toyota is set to make a $10 billion capital investment in the U.S. over the next five years, Toyota Motor North America chief executive Jim Lentz said during an interview at the Detroit auto show, Reuters reported.

European Union: OK, quick: Of the seven major industrial nations, what country grew fastest last year? If you said Great Britain, you were dead right. Funny, because just last June after the Brexit vote, many experts were predicting a British collapse. Here's the reality: "Britain ended last year as the strongest of the world's advanced economies with growth accelerating in the six months after the Brexit vote," says The Times of London. Britain's economics community, not to mention its badly biased, anti-Brexit media, now have egg on their faces... ...dire prognostications of market disaster and a global meltdown never came......

Sears. Macy's. Kohl's. Traditional department store retailers have taken hard hits over the Christmas holidays, with sales lagging the generally robust performance of retailers overall. Now, these mall stalwarts are slashing thousands of jobs and hundreds of stores, trying to right-size themselves. It's no coincidence. Sears on Thursday became the latest retailer to announce that it was restructuring... ...Macy's is letting 10,000 people go. And Kohl's warned about its decline in sales over the holidays. Analysts expect Kohl's to announce cuts. A few years back, it was discounter Wal-Mart, the biggest retailer on earth, announcing it was closing 100 stores....

 The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, through the Department of Commerce, announced today that the goods and services deficit was $45.2 billion in November, up $2.9 billion from $42.4 billion in October, revised. November exports were $185.8 billion, $0.4 billion less than October exports. November imports were $231.1 billion, $2.4 billion more than October imports. The November increase in the goods and services deficit reflected an increase in the goods deficit of $3.4 billion to $66.6 billion and an increase in the services surplus of $0.5 billion to $21.4 billion. Year-to-date, the goods and services...