Free Republic

Ronald Reagan was an advocate of free trade throughout his presidency. But just like today, many Americans in the 1980s opposed free trade and pushed for measures that would keep the nation out of the global economy.Fortunately, Reagan argued persuasively in support of trade, and his success led to rapid growth in the U.S. economy.He knew that protectionist policies might benefit some industries, but they hurt others.When the government gets involved in trade, special interests get a chance to game the system. These groups excel at making it hard to tell how their policies harm Americans.In his 1987 economic report,...

I wrote about this in a letter late last year, but now here we are more than halfway through the year and it’s only getting worse. So much worse that the Chinese property bubble is now the catalyst that will reset markets – and will likely be one large event that cascades across the globe.- snip - I’m convinced that what finally puts an end to central banker madness and the incessant stream of QE will be the Chinese real estate bubble.- snip - China is going down. The China Beige Book (which is much more accurate) recently showed that,...

Obama is spouting Free Trade dogma and TPP on a live broad cast. Rush Limbaugh must have written his speech. I see no difference between Obama and the Free Trade cadre on Free Republic. No difference. All globalist, kumbaya.Obama: "Free Trade is here to stay" We'll see....

Foreign trade took a beating at both major party conventions, with speakers blaming free-trade agreements for all but wiping out U.S. manufacturing and eliminating millions of middle-class jobs. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have promised to renegotiate or abandon trade agreements with key U.S. trading partners such as Mexico and Canada. That would be a colossal mistake. The number of manufacturing jobs in the United States has indeed been in a long decline since the late 1970s... American factories and American workers are making a greater volume of stuff than eve... ...America’s 21st century manufacturing sector is dominated by...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is threatening to leave the World Trade Organization and rip up agreements like the North American Free Trade agreement, and his critics predictably are branding him everything from "wrong-headed" to "insane." But here's the real deal. When our politicians and diplomats negotiate trade deals, we lose because they don't know a good deal from a bad one. For instance, when President Bill Clinton signed NAFTA in 1993, he believed it would "create 200,000 jobs in this country by 1995 alone." Instead, the U.S. has lost over 700,000 jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute, while...

Falling rates of global trade growth have attracted much comment by analysts and officials, giving rise to a literature on the ‘global trade slowdown’ (Hoekman 2015, Constantinescu et al. 2016). The term ‘slowdown’ gives the impression of world trade losing momentum, but growing nonetheless. The sense of the global pie getting larger has the soothing implication that one nation’s export gains don’t come at the expense of another’s. But are we right to be so sanguine? World trade volume plateaued around January 2015 Using what is widely regarded as the best available data on global trade dynamics, namely, theWorld Trade...

PHILADELPHIA — Gov. Terry McAuliffe fueled new distrust of Hillary Clinton among liberal Democrats this week with a declaration that the presidential nominee was likely to reverse her position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership after the election.The Clinton campaign swiftly rejected the idea that she would waver on TPP and called her longtime friend and chairman of her 2008 campaign “flat wrong.” But Republican nominee Donald Trump seized the moment, saying that McAuliffe revealed Clinton’s true nature as a free trader — and a flip-flopper whom voters shouldn’t trust.

The first day of the Democratic National Convention is over—and the Trans-Pacific Partnership was probably the major punching bag of the night. There is vicious opposition within the Democratic Party over this free trade agreement. An agreement that Hillary Clinton once called the gold standard for free trade deals. She has since walked back her praise. Yet, Donald Trump criticized free trade as well, and is actively trying to court Sanders supporters based on the issue of trade. The anti-TPP sentiment is stronger here than on any other issue that's been mentioned.— Philip Klein (@philipaklein) July 26, 2016 Sanders forced...

Washington - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump today hit out at his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and her running mate Tim Kaine, saying they "do not look presidential" as he claimed that enemies like ISIS are "drooling" over their nomination. "Just saw crooked Hillary and Tim Kaine together. ISIS and our other enemies are drooling. They don't look presidential to me!" Trump said on twitter as he posted a series of tweets wherein he described Kaine as a job killer. "Tim Kaine has been praising the Trans Pacific Partnership and has been pushing hard to get it approved. Job killer!"...

His reversal was so rapid that I'm surprised he didn't suffer whiplash. I am referring to the rapid U-turn that Senator Tim Kaine, tapped today to be Hillary Clinton's running mate, made on the Trans Pacific Partnership. Until the moment he was picked by Hillary, Kaine was strongly for the TPP. And then today he suddenly saw the light and, hallelujah, he now proclaims to "oppose" the TPP. I put "oppose" in quotes because he now opposes it as much as Hillary pretends to oppose it. However, Huffington Post reporter Michael McAuliff relayed Kaine's new found TPP opposition without the slightest...

On the morning Fox and Friends show guest Frank Luntz, the corpulent pollster, was wearing Nike running shoes with American flags on them. Shoes made in Vietnam. Nike puts American flags on shoes made by third world slaves after shutting out the American worker. I am sure those things cost $200.00. This is the problem in a nutshell..

Just over a month ago, when we pointed out that that the gasoline curve was about to shift from contango into backwardation, we said that the gasoline tanker armada off the coast of Singapore was about to start offloading as it would soon become uneconomical to hold product in offshore storage. This meant one thing: China was about to unleash a wave of accelerated gasoline exports across the entire world. We pointed out the unprecedented surge in Chinese gasoline stocks... and added that as China continues to imports tremendous amounts of both crude and product, far greater than actual demand,...

It’s been exactly one year since Donald Trump convulsed America’s political pros and punditocracy in howls of hilarity when his rambling campaign kickoff speech veered into his now-famous vow to build his Trump wall across our southern border – and somehow make Mexico pay for it. Now this: In a rare, carefully scripted speech on Tuesday, Trump delivered a series of political hits that, come November, may turn out to be powerful enough to topple yet another iconic political wall – this one seemingly far more impenetrable than any wall the aspiring mogul-in-chief dreams of being able to build. Namely:...

Francis has sent a message to the Argentinians for the 200th anniversary of their country’s independence. We pray that the country will be defended against all forms of colonisation, he said

This is for free trade globalists only. Specifically, to post here you need to adhere to the following viewpoint: 1. You want Trump to be President. 2. You are in favor of increased trade and want more trade deals and find Trumps rhetoric troubling. 3. You are a trade globalist but not an immigration globalist. You like Trumps views on immigration.

A leading service sector index signaled that the bulk of the U.S. economy expanded at the fastest pace in 2016. Meanwhile, the U.S. trade deficit widened more than expected, while refinancing activity spiked on plunging mortgage rates... The Institute for Supply Management said its services gauge for June jumped 3.6 points to 56.5, the highest since last November... U.S. Trade Deficit Widens The U.S. trade gap for May rose 10% to $41.1 billion, the Commerce Department said, wider than the $40 billion expected. Imports rose 1.6% on consumer goods and higher prices for petroleum. Exports dipped 0.2%. Mortgage Applications Jump...

In a remarkable interview with Business Insider, Arizona Senator Jeff Flake argued that Congress should pass President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement despite the American people’s overwhelming objection to it. BI writes: Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake told Business Insider during a Wednesday interview that Congress is going to have to “suck up” and ratify the agreement because it simply must be done, even in the face of hostile opposition to trade along the campaign trail… ‘I do still think there are enough people that realize we’ve got to do it,’ the Arizona Republican said. ‘Some of those things you just...

When he descended the Trump Tower escalator on June 15 last year to announce his run for the presidency, Donald Trump polled near the bottom of the Republican field. An NBC-Wall Street Journal poll taken from June 14 to 18 reported Trump was the first choice of 1 percent of Republican voters, behind Rick Perry, Carly Fiorina, and eight others. A RealClearPolitics graphic tracking an average of several polls illustrates the stunning speed of Trump’s rise. For most of June, Trump’s line slithered along the bottom of the 17-person field, then headed by Jeb Bush. Two weeks after his announcement,...

Donald Trump is not a professor, but for years he will be yielding insights to every student of economics. His Tuesday address on trade did a masterful job of combining antiquated fallacies with misinformation and ignorance to create an encyclopedia of error. Instructors have never had so much free help constructing their lesson plans. The vision Trump conjures is one of alluring simplicity. He promises to achieve "economic independence" by abandoning globalization, instead using American workers to produce American goods. This change, he said, would "create massive numbers of jobs" and "make America wealthy again." It's a scam, skillfully pitched...

House Speaker Paul Ryan sought to present a united front with presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump on trade issues, despite their differing perspectives on international trade deals. "He wants to get good trade agreements," Ryan told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in an interview Wednesday. "So do I." Ryan's remarks come shortly after Trump sharply criticized trade agreements in a speech at a western Pennsylvania Rust Belt town earlier this week, blaming globalization for having "wiped out totally, totally our middle class." Trump further called the landmark Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade deal that involves a "death blow for American...