Free Republic

So much for Donald Trump as genius deal-maker. We are supposed to believe his tariff threats are a clever negotiation strategy, but on Thursday he revealed he’s merely an old-fashioned protectionist. His decision to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Europe, Canada and Mexico will hurt the U.S. economy, his own foreign policy and perhaps Republicans in November. In March Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross dangled temporary exemptions to 25% steel and 10% aluminum tariffs to extort trade concessions from U.S. allies. Mr. Ross withdrew the exemptions on Thursday, saying the U.S. “was unable to reach satisfactory arrangements” with...

Canada will retaliate against new U.S. tariffs by imposing its own trade barriers on U.S. steel, aluminum and other products, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said Thursday. This story is developing. Please check back for updates.

Democrats mistakenly tweet 2014 pictures from Obama’s term showing children from the Border in steel cages. They thought it was recent pictures in order to make us look bad, but backfires. Dems must agree to Wall and new Border Protection for good of country...Bipartisan Bill! We have put a great team together for our talks with North Korea. Meetings are currently taking place concerning Summit, and more. Kim Young Chol, the Vice Chairman of North Korea, heading now to New York. Solid response to my letter, thank you! “This investigation involved far more surveillance than we ever had any idea...

FOX News reports the 86-year-old financier and manager of a global network of nonprofits will be forced by BSG Resources’ lawsuit to answer for manipulating the politics and economics of Guinea for his own benefit Despite Soros’ often contentious dealings and reputation as a pompous busybody, the filing in New York Federal Court has thus far largely escaped the spotlight. Soros, who controls a web of international nonprofits in addition to his vast financial empire, used his sway with the government of Guinea to freeze Israeli company BSG Resources out of the West African nation’s lucrative iron ore mining contracts,...

The clean energy transition and other initiatives to decarbonise Europe’s economy will represent 25% of EU spending under a seven-year EU budget plan put forward by the European Commission on Wednesday (2 May). Another key aspect is whether the EU will commit to stop funding fossil fuel projects like gas pipelines, which environmentalists claim risk locking Europe into unnecessary infrastructure. “I’m not sure it’s reached the upper layers of the Commission yet,” Gaventa said. Other parts of the budget could prove controversial, like a proposal to allocate 20% of revenue from carbon trading to the EU budget, as well as...

German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier on Sunday warned the European Union against sparking a trade war with the US in the dispute over US tariffs on steel and aluminum. “I’m of the opinion that neither the US nor the Europeans should risk a trade war,” said Altmaier during a talk show on German public broadcaster ARD. He warned that the trans-Atlantic relationship was at stake. […] Altmaier, who is a member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives (CDU/CSU), said the EU should try to solve the tariff dispute, along with other trade disagreements, in a comprehensive US-EU deal. Earlier, the...

The nation’s top metals processor says business has surged following the Trump administration's tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. “Improved demand, a limited amount of customer pre-buying as a result of announced tariffs, and normal seasonal patterns" pushed first-quarter shipments up 10 percent from a year earlier, yielding a record quarterly sales volume of 1.6 million tons, 'Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.' said Thursday. 'Union Pacific' on Thursday reported first-quarter net income of $1.3 billion on Thursday. Revenue for the first three months of the year was $5.5 billion, up 7 percent from the same time period in 2017.

BEIJING — China has made a series of market opening pledges over the past week, but analysts said the moves are unlikely to help Beijing and Washington take any steps toward resolving their differences or advance negotiations. Instead, frustrations are growing as punitive trade actions pile up. China has pledged specific steps to open up its financial and insurance sector with milestones set for June and again before the end of this year. It has also addressed a key concern of President Donald Trump, pledging to significantly cut 25 percent tariffs on automobile imports this year. Beijing also says that...

In the latest “believe it or not” moment, farmers are experimenting with collars for cows equipped with GPS and electronic signaling that would eliminate the need for fencing and herding. American farmers spent $300 million last year on fencing. To policymakers concerned about the creation of jobs, did anyone see farm fencing falling to the veracious appetite of disruption? The Republican Party, led by Donald Trump, is unabashedly lurching backwards. The tax bill was straight out of the supply side 1980s. The steel tariffs are from the Smoot-Hawley 1930s. Democrats are, understandably, mostly in opposition mode. But the world is...

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), on Thursday urged policymakers to steer clear of all protectionist measures amid rising trade tensions between the United States and its major trading partners. "Trade restrictions have not been proven helpful and we suspect that they might even dent confidence," Lagarde said at a press conference during the spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank, adding all countries should "work together to resolve disagreements without using exceptional measures." The spring meetings of the two leading international financial institutions come after the Trump administration recently announced additional tariffs on...

After suggesting last week that the U.S. government would seek to rejoin the sovereignty-shredding Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), President Donald Trump took to social media on April 18 to slam the controversial “free trade” regime that he once described as the “rape of our country.” Instead, Trump is seeking a bilateral agreement with remaining Pacific-rim governments such as Japan. Grassroots conservatives celebrated the announcement. But establishment voices were less than happy about it. Writing after a meeting at his Mar-a-Lago estate with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump suggested he was still opposed to TPP and preferred a bilateral trade deal...

I think I must have been ill that day. At some point, no one can say precisely when, libertarians apparently swore a feudal oath of fealty to the Republican Party. In response to an American Prospect article on libertarian disenchantment with the Bush administration, Reason's own former editor in chief Virginia Postrel explained that "real Dean voters don't like Jeff Flake. (I do.)" On the Crossfire view of politics, this makes sense: You pick your team and root for it, come hell or high water. The Platonic Real Dean Voter can't possibly hold any affection for a member of the...

Everything I have learned as a capitalist and a Republican is that tariffs are counterproductive. They are hidden taxes that raise the price of the goods we buy and harm trade with other countries, which is not good for America or for our trading partner. If that is so, then provide us with another path to solving the China trading problem. President Trump probably made a mistake with going after steel and aluminum importers as a class. Certainly he has a point that we must maintain our own production capabilities in those areas, but just because our industries are suffering...

When JoJo McKibben was the victim of a hit-and-run on April 3 as she biked to work, she wasn't all that surprised. She was hit while biking by a drunk driver last summer and has come to expect that cars won't realize she's riding on two wheels. McKibben's boyfriend Brendan Sharpe said he has also been seriously injured by cars while he's biked in Austin, once in 2009 and again in 2015... Katie Delleoz, the executive director of Bike Austin, said she personally has nearly been struck at the same intersection McKibben was hit at last week

Chinese President Xi Jinping promised on Tuesday to open the country’s economy further and lower import tariffs on products like cars, in a speech seen as an attempt to defuse an escalating trade dispute with the United States. While much of his pledges were reiterations of previously announced reforms that foreign businesses say are long overdue, Xi’s comments sent stock markets and the U.S. dollar higher on hopes of a compromise that could avert a trade war. Xi said China will widen market access for foreign investors, addressing a chief complaint of its trading partners and a point of contention...

China has filed a World Trade Organization complaint challenging U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff hike on imported steel and aluminum, the trade body said Tuesday. The tariff spat is one element of a wide-ranging trade dispute between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping's government. Trump also has threatened to increase duties on $50 billion of Chinese goods in a separate conflict over technology policy. (please see link, for full article)

Ok. It took exactly ONE DAY. China just filed a lawsuit, against America.

The special counsel is investigating a payment made to President Trump’s foundation by a Ukrainian steel magnate for a talk during the campaign, according to three people briefed on the matter, as part of a broader examination of streams of foreign money to Mr. Trump and his associates in the years leading up to the election.

This thread is a friendly collaborative place for FReepers to analyze information and share opinons. FReepers have a wide variety of reasons for investigating Q Anon content; this is not the appropriate place to criticize or badger those who choose to use some of their time in this manner. I plan to post one thread at a time and ping new drops posted to it. When I post each (new) thread, the prior thread is retired and all new posts occur on the newest thread. If you are new to Q Anon, the three links below provide overviews to...

US policy towards China has been misdirected for decades and policymakers are now recalibrating ties, Senator Elizabeth Warren told reporters during a visit to Beijing amid heightened trade tensions between the world's two largest economies. The Massachusetts Democrat and Trump foe, who has been touted as a potential 2020 presidential candidate despite rejecting such speculation, has said US trade policy needs a rethink and that she is not afraid of tariffs. Misdirected policy After years of mistakenly assuming economic engagement would lead to a more open China, the US government was waking up to Chinese demands for US companies to...