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Today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released its advance estimate for United States GDP for the fourth quarter of 2019 and the entire calendar year of 2019. The release estimates that real GDP grew 2.1 percent at an annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2019 and 2.3 percent over the four quarters of 2019. Consumer spending and residential investment posted notable gains, propelling GDP growth and setting the stage for future economic expansion. These results show that the economy remains resilient despite a slowdown across the rest of the world and the continuation of the longest expansion in American...

Nancy Pelosi famously proclaimed that Democrats had to pass ObamaCare to find out what was in it. On the other hand, Democrats in California last year passed legislation outlawing many freelance and independent contracting jobs knowing the disruption it would cause—and voters are now discovering the damage. Ride-hailing app Uber this week rolled out changes for drivers and riders in California in an effort to duck the state’s new labor law AB5. That law reclassified a large swath of independent contractors from freelance journalists to Uber drivers as employees who are owed rest breaks, workers compensation, health benefits and paid...

I was very skeptical when U.S. and Chinese officials announced the two nations had reached a “Phase One” trade deal last December. Neither country released any details regarding the agreement. Chinese officials have been exceptionally muted since the announcement, only emphasizing that the United States would remove a number of tariffs, without mentioning any commitments China had made. Neither the United States nor China even articulated a specific dollar amount of the additional U.S. farm products China pledges to purchase.Last week, both the White House and the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office posted the full text of the agreement, immediately...

Three years ago! And one year from now (God willing!) Donald Trump will be sworn in for a second term. But in three short years, these are his accomplishments, just off the top of my head. TPP trade deal - gone Iran Deal - gone Paris Climate Change accords - gone NAFTA - gone (just last week replaced by USMCA) Individual Mandate to purchase health care - gone Corporate Taxes - slashed to 21% Regulations - large bulk eliminated Judges - Confirmed (185 total, 2 Supreme Court, 50 Circuit, 133 District) NATO - paying more of its dues ISIS Caliphate...

Watch cable news, particularly CNN or MSNBC, and hear how the “walls are closing in” on President Trump. Impeachment is underway, a solemn and sober process, celebrated by House Speaker Pelosi handing out autographed pens during the impeachment article signing ceremony. One would think she was signing landmark legislation like the Civil Rights Act given the pomp and circumstance. Meanwhile the Senate passed the USMCA trade agreement, now ready for Trump’s signature, another promise made and kept by the accidental president who has no idea what he is doing. The rube of a president also announced a trade deal with...

Way back in 2015, when the rumors began to circulate about Donald Trump running for president, rumors we had heard for decades, I was shocked at how many “smart people” — those snobs I enjoy heckling as “#GOPSmartSet” — underestimated The Donald. Shrugging off the idea Trump would actually run was fair enough. Like I said, he’d been flirting with the idea for decades. Even I would have bet it was a publicity stunt. No, what surprised me was how #GOPSmartSet and the elite media laughed off Trump as a clown, a huckster, a carnival barker, and bankrupt loser. That,...

A year and a half into Donald Trump’s presidency, Henry Kissinger set out a theory. “I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretences,” he told the Financial Times. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that he knows this, or that he is considering any great alternative. It could just be an accident.” A term has been coined to describe this notion: Ryan Evans of War on the Rocks calls them “Trumportunities.” It is the idea that,...

President Trump trashed 2020 Democrat Mike Bloomberg, calling the septuagenarian a "terrible speaker" and mocking the billionaire's height at 5 feet, 8 inches. "Mini Mike Bloomberg doesn’t get on the Democrat Debate Stage because he doesn’t want to - he is a terrible debater and speaker," tweeted Trump on Friday. "If he did, he would go down in the polls even more (if that is possible!)." The president further slammed Bloomberg in a follow-up tweet soon after, saying, "Mini Mike Bloomberg ads are purposely wrong - A vanity project for him to get into the game. Nobody in many years...

TAMPA, Florida — Vice President Mike Pence told Breitbart News exclusively on Thursday that the Senate’s passage of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade agreement is a “huge win” for American workers and farmers. Pence’s exclusive interview with Breitbart News, which came on his bus tour between Tampa and Orlando, for which he was conducting a campaign swing up the all-important I-4 corridor in the Sunshine State, came moments after the U.S. Senate passed the USMCA, 89-10. The overwhelming Senate vote came a month after the House in mid-December similarly passed the deal with overwhelming bipartisan support, as the USMCA sailed through...

The Senate overwhelmingly passed President Trump's proposed replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Thursday, sending the deal to the president’s desk for his approval. Passage of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) represents a rare moment of bipartisanship in a bitterly divided Congress. The deal cleared the Senate by a vote of 89 to 10 on Thursday, close to a month after passing the House by a vote of 385-41. Republicans were eager to help Trump accomplish a major pillar of his economic agenda despite their preferences for a deal with looser restrictions. Democrats, who broadly shared Trump’s...

US threats to impose tariffs on European autos did not come up in trade talks in Washington, European Union Trade Commissioner Phil Hogan said Thursday. “It was not mentioned; it was hardly mentioned,” Hogan told reporters in the US capital. “I think it should be good news for Germany.” The Trump administration has repeatedly threatened to put tariffs on European automobiles imported into the US, citing threats to national security. But a deadline to make a decision passed last November without a comment from the White House after the EU threatened to impose retaliatory tariffs on US imports. Hogan’s remarks...

Expected live at 11 a.m. ET: The Senate is expected to vote on the USMCA trade agreement. At noon, impeachment Managers, led by the House Sergeant at Arms, hold a procession ceremony.

Not only has the “Phase One” trade deal now been signed by the United States and China, but official texts have now been released. And my initial read indicates that the Trump administration just might have come up with an effective enforcement regime – though success here will depend on U.S. governments (including this one) displaying nerves of steel. At the same time, the enforcement terms raise the question of why the President felt the need to reach this point via a treaty, rather than simply punish China unilaterally for economic transgressions – as his tariffs on hundreds of...

If you go by the Labor Department’s statistics, the job market was very hot in November. Then it became cold in December. Average the two out and — in true Goldilocks fashion — the economy (like the porridge) may now be just right. I’ve always told you that the government’s employment stats are flaky. Various adjustments are supposed to take care of things like Christmas hiring and new companies just coming into being. But they don’t. They only confuse things. And only after many months or even years of revisions do we learn what the job market was really like....

LONDON — Iran is caught in a wretched economic crisis. Jobs are scarce. Prices for food and other necessities are skyrocketing. The economy is rapidly shrinking. Iranians are increasingly disgusted. Crippling sanctions imposed by the Trump administration have severed Iran’s access to international markets, decimating the economy, which is now contracting at an alarming 9.5 percent annual rate, the International Monetary Fund estimated. Oil exports were effectively zero in December, according to Oxford Economics, as the sanctions have prevented sales, even though smugglers have transported unknown volumes. The bleak economy appears to be tempering the willingness of Iran to escalate...

What a difference a year makes. 2018 was tough on investors, and it ended with stocks in retreat. The decline was triggered by growing fears of a prolonged U.S.-China trade war fueled by President Trump’s “I am tariff man” tweet on December 4.In addition, the Federal Reserve was in a multiyear cycle of rate hikes. Nobody knew it at the time, but the last hike occurred on December 18, 2018. Across nearly every major asset class, 2018 was a bad year. Fast forward to December 2019.A yearlong rally accelerated in the fourth quarter, with stocks ending the year at...

A new Media Research Center analysis found that the three major network evening newscasts only gave President Donald Trump’s booming economy and U.S. trade nine minutes of coverage since the House Democrats’ impeachment push began on Sept. 24, 2019.

U.S. coal-fired power plants shut down at the second-fastest pace on record in 2019, despite President Donald Trump’s efforts to prop up the industry, according to data from the federal government and Thomson Reuters. Power companies retired or converted roughly 15,100 megawatts (MW) of coal-fired electricity generation, enough to power about 15 million homes, according to the data, which included preliminary statistics from the Energy Information Administration and Reuters reporting. That was second only to the record 19,300 MW shut in 2015 during President Barack Obama’s administration. The replacement of coal with power generation from natural gas and renewables has...

So what is the question to which measuring wealth distributions and a wealth tax are the answer? To briefly review, in Part I we met the fact that "wealth is measured as "capitalized income," Y/r. But only some kinds of income and with r choices that blew up measured wealth inequality. In Part II we learned that a big reason wealth inequality widened is that interest rates fell. If r falls, Y/r rises, but it's the same Y. In Part III we noted the distinction between consumption, income and wealth inequality. Wealth is beyond badly measured as a measure of...

IMPOSING SANCTIONS WITH RESPECT TO ADDITIONAL SECTORS OF IRAN By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.) (NEA), section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (8 U.S.C. 1182(f)), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, find that Iran continues to be the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism and that Iran...