Free Republic

In a lesson for the ages about political grandstanding, Rep. John Garamendi said, "Nine multinational ocean shipping companies formed three consortiums to raise prices on American businesses and consumers by over 1,000% on goods coming from Asia," as he and other members of the Swamp proudly passed the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022, which former NIT-League president Ed Emmett has rightly called "a cure that's worse than the disease." Never mind that the containership lines have actually operated these alliances, known as Vessel Sharing Agreements, for over a generation, strictly for the benefit of the consumer. The accusatory term...

The U.S. has lost the trade war with China, according to the whole of corporate America. I write at Asia Times: NEW YORK – Never before in US political history has the whole of the American business community—more than thirty major business organizations—spoke with one voice as it did in an August 5 appeal to the Biden administration to eliminate tariffs on imports from China. No entities in American politics are timider than business lobbies, most of whose work involves quiet lobbying for administrative relief and legislative tweaks. Such a high-profile intervention suggests that the business organizations believe that a...

Corporate America sacrificed national interests in service of greed, and so did the U.S. government. As we all know, the source of Corporate America’s unprecedented explosion in profits in the 21st century is the offshoring of manufacturing to China. If you doubt this, please study the chart below of corporate profits. Apologists claim many excuses in an attempt to evade the central role of offshoring production to China, but they all ring hollow: no, it wasn’t increasing productivity or automation or Federal Reserve magic, it was shipping production to China and other low-labor-cost nations. Whether we like to admit it...

Recently Chinese authorities have been scrambling to figure out a way to reinvigorate China’s failed trade war with Australia. Relations between China and Australia have been on a downward spiral over the last 12 to 18 months, triggered by the Australian government’s call for an international probe into the origins of COVID-19.On June 24, 2021, Chinese authorities fired another shot by filing an action at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) against Australian tariffs on three Chinese imports, including railway wheels, wind towers, and stainless-steel sinks.Days earlier, on June 21, Beijing announced a significant investigation into iron ore prices after being...

US President Joe Biden is in Europe as he looks to reset ties with traditional American allies. Trans-Atlantic relations had become increasingly tense during his predecessor’s term, thanks in part to tariffs that Donald Trump slapped on billions worth of European goods. Biden and European Union leaders will on Tuesday commit to ending trade disputes related to aluminum, steel and aircraft, according to a draft communiqué ahead of the US-EU summit. The draft spells out that the two sides will commit to end the nearly two-decade old Boeing-Airbus dispute before July 11 and lift punitive tariffs related to the steel...

SUEZ, Egypt, March 27 (Reuters) – Efforts to dislodge a giant container ship blocking the Suez Canal had allowed its stern and rudder to move on Saturday, but it remained unclear when it could be refloated, the head of the canal authority said.

Last week, our family’s 20 year old electric hand mixer died. We can’t complain; it lasted a long time, and got a lot of use. But it did mean that it was time to go shopping. Now, we do a lot of research on many of the products we buy; a cheap hand mixer, however, did not feel like it merited that kind of research. I just headed to Walmart, expecting to grab one and go. I was surprised by two things in this shopping trip: both a larger selection than I expected, and a narrower choice of countries of...

ARLINGTON, Va.—Americans for Prosperity (AFP) today issued the following statement from Dan Pearson, AFP Trade Policy Fellow, on the Biden administration’s decision to suspend tariffs previously imposed on a number of UK products stemming from the Boeing-Airbus dispute. The suspension will last four months while the countries attempt to resolve the matter: “It is encouraging to see the Biden Administration provide relief from these tariffs. In addition to the benefits Americans will experience from this move, we are hopeful this will lead to a lasting settlement of the dispute between the US and the UK and EU. Freer trade increases...

America must decouple from China as soon as is possible. We are in a cold war with the “People’s Republic” of China. We may, one day, need to win a war against them. Freedom is on the line in our struggle against China, as it is a tyrannical, evil nation. Decoupling for those that don’t know, is separating your economy from the economy of another nation. Right now, the US and China have heavily intertwined economies because we opened relations with them under the Nixon Administration. They make basic goods and materials and ship them here, where we buy them...

Canada has announced that it will retaliate dollar for dollar – to the tune of C$3.6bn – after the US announced a 10% tariff on Canadian aluminum. Donald Trump announced the new aluminum tariffs on Thursday at a campaign stop at a Whirlpool appliance plant in Ohio, accusing Canada of taking advantage of its trade relationship with the US. “The aluminum business was being decimated by Canada, very unfair to our jobs and our great aluminum workers,” he said. At a news conference on Friday, Canada’s deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, called the move “unwarranted and unacceptable” and said [cut]...

The most important question raised in the Democratic Party’s South Carolina debate did not concern such foolish measures as Medicare-for-All, reparations for slavery, or Joe Biden’s imbecilic exaggeration about murder statistics (150 million murders in the USA? Really?). The key issue of the day was only mentioned in passing, by Michael Bloomberg, of all people, and it was immediately set aside… and of course, he got it wrong. Michael Bloomberg tried to make a case for his nomination, on the grounds of his own extensive business experience… and his own long and happy collaboration with Mainland China. He talked about...

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...

Does the US and China have an interim agreement to retreat from its bruising trade war? Earlier this week, Donald Trump declared a diplomatic victory, and pledged a signing ceremony at the White House to nail it down. I will be signing our very large and comprehensive Phase One Trade Deal with China on January 15. The ceremony will take place at the White House. High level representatives of China will be present. At a later date I will be going to Beijing where talks will begin on Phase Two!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2019 The later...

Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, that nation’s top trade negotiator, will visit Washington this week to sign the “phase one” trade deal with the U.S., the South China Morning Post reported Monday. The newspaper, citing a source briefed on the matter, said Beijing has accepted the U.S. invitation for a deal signing in Washington, and the Chinese delegation will stay in the U.S. for a few days until the middle of next week. The South China Morning Post is run by Alibaba but is often criticized for being biased in favor of the state. The two countries have been working...

The U.S. and China have such different economic and political systems and different sets of values. We may have to settle our differences through other means, beyond a trade agreement. Last Friday, U.S. and Chinese officials confirmed that that two nations reached a “phase one” trade deal. After more than two years of uncertainty, this is welcome news for many. Yet it is concerning because so few details of the agreement have been made public, and a deal-signing date has yet to be announced.What’s in the Trade Deal? According to the Wall Street Journal, the United States agreed not to...

Germany on Thursday (12 December) warned Washington to mind its own business after US lawmakers gave initial approval to a bill that would sanction contractors working on a Russian pipeline to Germany. The EU also opposed sanctions against ‘companies doing legitimate business’. “European energy policy is decided in Europe, not in the US,” Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Twitter. “We reject external interference,” he said. The €9.5 billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline will run under the Baltic Sea and is set to double shipments of Russian natural gas to Germany. The German-Russian Chamber of Commerce (AHK) said the pipeline...

Reaching an interim trade deal could ease tensions between China and the United States for the time being but would not necessarily bolster relations in the long run, according to diplomatic observers. A so-called phase one agreement may offer only initial relief as both countries’ governments face uncertainties at home, the observers said, cautioning that some of the remaining points of dispute were likely to resurface in subsequent talks, along with the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump. Although there were rallies and upbeat sentiments across global markets on Friday after US reports that consensus on an agreement had been...

A household debt crisis may be brewing in China as the government tries to boost sluggish consumption amid a domestic economic slowdown and trade war with the United States. China’s household debt had ballooned to 60.4 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) at the end of 2018, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said in its annual financial stability report last week. And for the first time, the household debt to income ratio hit 99.9 per cent, meaning that total debt is now roughly equal to total household income among the average Chinese household. “[Household debt growth] is...

A trade deal between the US and China is inching closer after all. Bloomberg News, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that the two sides are close to agreeing the amount of tariffs to be rolled back in the "phase one deal." Officials are getting closer on the specifics of tariff relief, the news organization reported. Stocks pushed higher on the news at 9:30 a.m. in London (4:30 a.m.) with US futures underlying the Nasdaq and S&P 500 rising at least 0.5%. The DAX, Euro Stoxx 50, and CAC indexes all soared more than 1%. "US negotiators expect a...

Smiles and waves between Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping on Monday (December 2). Though this isn't just a casual video chat between two of the world's most powerful men, but the launch of a landmark pipeline that will transport natural gas from Siberia to north east China - a boost to economic and political ties between Moscow and Beijing and part of Russia's attempt to pivot East, away from the pain of Western financial sanctions imposed over its 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea. (SOUNDBITE) PRESIDENT, VLADIMIR PUTIN, SAYING: "This is a remarkable, genuinely historical event not only for...