Free Republic

I’ve looked and could find no information on which US steel manufacturers are providing the steel for the wall. Does anyone know?

The United States is not doing enough to promote free trade and the elimination of trade barriers around the world. In fact, it’s doing just the opposite and imposing barriers on billions of dollars’ worth of imports. As a result, new trade restrictions implemented by World Trade Organization member countries have reached historic highs. Over the last two review periods, new trade restrictions totaled $588.3 billion and $339.5 billion, respectively. For the previous two periods, new trade restrictions totaled roughly $100 billion or less. The latest figures present a worrisome and unpredictable climate that is harming the overall health of...

There is a new hero, at the moment, for conservatives and Republicans in the nation in the form of Arizona Governor Doug Ducey. Ducey’s move to rescind $1M of incentives Nike is receiving for a planned factory in the Phoenix-area garnered him praise – although it should be pointed out Nike will still get a smorgasbord of kickbacks from the city of Goodyear. Most accolades include the refrain, “Ducey is right – but the incentives should not have been offered in the first place – however, Nike definitely doesn’t deserve the money because they’re offended by colonial America.” The...

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Sunday proposed a sweeping agriculture and rural investment plan to break up big agriculture monopolies and shift farm subsidies toward small family farmers. “I think a farmer that produces the food we eat may be almost as important as some crook on Wall Street who destroys the economy,” Sanders said during a campaign event in Osage, a town of fewer than 4,000 people. “Those of us who come from rural America have nothing to be ashamed about, and the time is long overdue for us to stand up and fight for our way of...

Even $1.5 billion in subsidies and loan guarantees can’t save a “clean” energy company from bankruptcy. That’s the takeaway from the looming failure of SunEdison, a company that touts itself as the “largest global renewable energy development company.” Once a darling of Wall Street and the green Left because of SunEdison’s portfolio of wind and solar projects, the company’s stock is now in free fall. Furthermore, two related companies that were spun off from SunEdison — TerraForm Global and TerraForm Power — also appear to be in financial distress. On March 30, Brian Wuebbels, the CEO of both TerraForm companies,...

SunEdison, which bills itself as the world’s largest green energy company, may soon file for bankruptcy protection, according to a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing, as the company faces “liquidity difficulties” despite getting millions in government subsidies.

For the last decade, the U.S. has pursued a case before the World Trade Organization (WTO) against illegal subsidies provided to Airbus by four European governments, which have given the European plane maker an unfair advantage in the global market. With government help, Airbus has captured 50% of the global commercial airplane market . The European Union has used delay and stall tactics to continue evading global trade rules by filing their own cases against the United States and ignoring WTO compliance rulings against their illegal practices. They’ve lost badly at every twist and turn, and now it’s time for...

A World Trade Organization (WTO) compliance panel ruled Thursday that the European Union has fallen dramatically short of remedying the harm to Boeing from illegal subsidies to Airbus. The decision opens a path for the U.S. to implement trade sanctions against the EU — potentially imposing billions of dollars in tariffs on its goods or services.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced a seven-point family protection action plan in his state-of-the nation address in Budapest. “This is Hungary’s answer to challenges, rather than immigration”, the prime minister said. Listing the points of the action plan, Orban said: * every woman under 40 years of age will be eligible to a preferential loan when they first get married. * The preferential loan of the family home purchase scheme (csok) will be extended; families raising two or more children will now also be able to use it for purchasing resale homes. * The government will repay 1 million forints...

Sunday is the Super Bowl.I look forward to playing poker and watching. It's easy to do both because in a three-hour-plus NFL game there are just 11 minutes of actual football action.So we'll have plenty of time to watch Atlanta politicians take credit for the stadium that will host the game. Atlanta's former mayor calls it "simply the best facility in the world."But politicians aren't likely to talk about what I explain in my latest video -- how taxpayers were forced to donate more than $700 million to the owner of Atlanta's football team, billionaire Arthur Blank, to get him...

Entrepreneur, Ivy-Leaguer, New Yorker, and prospective 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang hopes to win his way into the White House on a promise of a $1,000 per month “freedom dividend” to every American family. “Critics will say my idea is impractical,” Yang predicted. “But I’ve just initiated a pilot test of the concept with the Fassi family of Goffstown, New Hampshire. I gave them their first check on New Year’s Eve. The checks will continue for the entire year. I predict that their lives will be enriched and their anxieties relieved. If elected president in 2020 I will extend...

More than 900,000 cubic yards of cheddar, American and Swiss currently sit in cold storage across the United States, enough cheese to form a wheel the size of the U.S. Capitol building. The excess is the biggest the country has seen since the government started keeping track a century ago, and it's 16 percent larger than the cheese surplus of 2016 when the government offered to buy up $20 million worth of excess cheese... "Part of it is changes in the domestic use of that milk." Another factor is trade — "a self-inflicted wound," Novakovic says. And there is growing...

Subsidies: President Trump's economic adviser Larry Kudlow says subsidies for electric cars and other renewable energy programs might soon be eliminated. That would be a major victory on the road to energy freedom. National Economic Council chief Kudlow, a well-known free marketeer and supply-sider, said subsidies might disappear as soon as 2020 — interestingly, the next presidential election year. The decision comes after General Motors — the beneficiary of $2,500-$7,000 tax credits for those who buy GM's plug-in cars, not to mention two separate corporate tax cuts — decided to close five North American plants, leaving 14,700 workers without jobs....

General Motors Co on Monday pulled the plug on the Chevrolet Volt hybrid and the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant that builds it, both examples of a costly gamble that is not paying off. GM’s widely touted factory of the future, forced on a town desperate for jobs and hailed decades later by former resident Barack Obama, is set to wind down over the next few years, leaving beleaguered Hamtramck wondering what happened. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said at a news conference Monday that he told GM chief executive Mary Barra Monday that “we moved thousands of people out of that neighborhood...

This Halloween while you're getting pudgy from candy,crony capitalists are getting rich off sugar subsidies.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law. ... the Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times. The department argued in its memo that key...

A proposal to repeal Obamacare entitlements and replace them with grants to states would reduce premiums for individual coverage by as much as 32 percent, according to an analysis by the Center for Health and Economy.The Health Care Choices Proposal also would modestly reduce the deficit, increase the number of people with private health insurance, and cut Medicaid spending, according to Center for Health and Economy.The proposal, the product of national and state think tanks, policy analysts, and others in the conservative community, embarks on a new path to empower consumers and return authority to the states to provide people...

A 52-story skyscraper on Park Avenue in New York City is the world headquarters for JPMorganChase, the largest bank in the U.S. But according to data from the Department of Agriculture, it’s also the home of one of 850 “farmers” who live in Manhattan. 270 Park Avenue, New York City. All photos from Google Street View. Between 1995 and 2016, those “farmers” received almost $16 million in federal farm subsidies. The map below plots their locations. Many of these “farmers” are also bankers, lawyers or Wall Street bigwigs. Their “farms” are at decidely urban addresses like 1015 Madison Avenue, 135...

More than half of Americans approve of President Trump's decision to send billions of dollars in aid to farmers affected by new retaliatory tariffs, according to a CBS News poll released Sunday. Fifty-six percent of respondents said that they support the plan, including three-quarters of Republicans and a third of Democrats, according to the survey, which was conducted from July 26-28. The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it would send as much as $12 billion in emergency relief to farmers affected by recent retaliatory tariffs implemented as part of an ongoing trade war. Trump has faced criticism for imposing...

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., probably didn't have the best birthday this year. A Kansas City Star report on Tuesday revealed that a whole lot of federal dollars have been flowing to businesses tied to the senator's husband since she took office in 2007. According to the report, more than $131 million in federal subsidies have been routed to companies McCaskill's husband, Joseph Shepard, has invested in since she entered the Senate. "Based on the data, it appears that a growing percentage of Shepard’s personal earnings come from new businesses he has invested in that are receiving federal awards, primarily rural...