Free Republic

The United States and Mexico are expected on Monday to announce that they have reached a preliminary deal on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). U.S. and Mexican trade negotiators worked through the weekend and were meeting again on Monday morning at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to complete the deal on key provisions of the agreement. The next step is bringing Canada back into the talks to complete the modernization of the 24-year-old three-nation pact. President Trump has called NAFTA "the worst trade deal ever made" and said he would fix it so the United States...

Forecasters don't expect Hurricane Irene to make landfall until Saturday. But for nearly a week now, big-box retailers like Walmart and Home Depot have been getting ready. They've deployed hundreds of trucks carrying everything from plywood to Pop-Tarts to stores in the storm's path. It's all possible because these retailers have turned hurricane preparation into a science — one that government emergency agencies have begun to embrace.At Home Depot's Hurricane Command Center in Atlanta, for example, about 100 associates have been trying to anticipate how Irene will affect its East Coast stores from the Carolinas to New York.At times like...