Free Republic

President Trump has made clear he wants to revitalize Venezuela’s oil industry so he can use the cash to make the country great again — but the sector is in shambles after decades of plunder, talent flight and negligence as a result of socialist rule. After capturing Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro over the weekend, Trump vowed that US companies would soon tap into the nation’s rich oil reserves, which Caracas says hold about 303 billion barrels worth of petrol, roughly 17% of the world’s supply. Production has plummeted since hitting a high in 1997 — and the country produced just...

Dow Jones Industrial Average Last Updated: Jan 5, 2026 at 1:17 p.m. EST 49,144.24 Up 761.85 1.57% Previous Close 48,382.39 YTD Range Day Range 48,449.62 to 49,157.19 52 Week Range 36,611.78 to 49,157.19

Narrative consistency on economic coverage is definitely not one of CNN’s strongest suits, and its latest pile of garbage it spewed to harangue President Donald Trump’s economy is case-in-point. CNN Business Executive Editor David Goldman, who’s developed a reputation at MRC for being one of the most logically inconsistent economic writers at the decrepit network, launched another fallacy-rattled hit piece at the Trump economy. “It’s about to officially become Trump’s economy,” read Goldman’s headline for his January 2 op-ed posing as news, where he excoriated the president for accurately blaming his predecessor Joe Biden and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell...

The gas pump has emerged as a rare source of relief for Americans drowning in higher prices — and that positive trend is expected to continue in 2026, regardless of the uncertainty in Venezuela. Gas prices are projected to average just $2.97 a gallon nationally this year, according to forecasts from fuel savings platform GasBuddy. If that forecast, shared first with CNN, proves accurate, 2026 will be the fourth straight year of falling prices at the pump and the first with the annual average below $3 a gallon since 2020. It’s a far cry from 2022, when the gas pump...

Well, Donald Trump has done it again! He stumped the chumps. The "chumps" in this case were the "blue-chip" academic and financial economists whose consensus forecast this time last year was of high inflation and low economic growth. Wrong on both counts. As you've probably heard, the GDP growth for Q3 came in at a red-hot 4.3%, following 3.5% for the second quarter. Some 90% of professional economists got it wrong -- all underestimating the strength of the Trump economy. QED: These weren't random errors. These were "hate Trump" errors. They also predicted inflation of above 3% for 2025. It's...

In an August 1 interview with Fox News, Peter Navarro, Director of President Trump’s Office of Trade and Manufacturing, argued that President Trump should get the Nobel Prize in Economics:AdvertisementBasically, President Trump has taught an economic lesson to the world. In real time, in the real world, he’s taught that the biggest country and biggest market in the world can impose tariffs in order to address blatant cheating and do it in a way which increases the growth of the United States without inducing inflation… I never read that in the textbooks when I was getting my PhD in economics,...

ZeroHedge is out with a year-end list of 30 numbers. They are in no particular order, but when you group a few together here and there, you start to get a picture of things.For instance, here’s some numbers to tell us how bad inflation is, and notably, who caused it. It all started to go south after 2019, a.k.a. after Trump and solidly into the Biden years. We knew that, but yikes. Check out the data.In 2019, you could get a cheeseburger at McDonald’s for a dollar. Today, the average price of a cheeseburger at McDonald’s is $3.15.Since 2019, the...

Every year, New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof ends the year providing a useful and compelling summary of good news from the past year to counteract the general journalistic theme of bad news dominating the headlines. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kristof refused to offer that annual summary this year. His reactionary political ethic regarding the President of the United States prevented this work. In his own words: "I’ve done these “best year ever” columns annually, irritating Eeyores. But now I just can’t. The year 2025 was a setback for humanity -- and unfortunately, the United States is a reason for the retreat.”...

President Trump championed his import tariffs Saturday as an economic game changer — while predicting the upcoming midterm elections will hinge on “pricing.” The tariffs have brought in more than $200 billion this year, according to the Customs and Border Protection agency, but face the potential of being struck down by the Supreme Court. “Tariffs are creating GREAT WEALTH, and unprecedented National Security for the USA. Trade deficit has been cut by 60%, totally unheard of. 4.3% GDP, and going way up. No inflation!!! We are respected as a Country again,” Trump wrote Saturday morning on Truth Social. Trump has...

Argentina’s President Javier Milei is on track to make economic history in a country shedding the trauma of socialism after decades of stagnation. Ironically, the paths of Argentina and Germany may soon intersect. Javier Milei has now been in office for two years. It is an economically fascinating experiment. The man from Buenos Aires, internationally notorious for his dramatic chainsaw imagery, is conducting a libertarian experiment on a living country. Milei is implementing what he long advocated during his campaign: the oversized state sector, with its vampiric bureaucracy, extracts the lifeblood of the private economy; socialism is, for him, a...

Geopolitics, diversification, and Fed easing contribute to the U.S. dollar’s downward pressures.While the so-called Santa Claus rally delivered year-end gains for stocks and precious metals, the U.S. dollar received a lump of coal to finish a not particularly strong 2025. The U.S. dollar index, a measure of the greenback against a weighted basket of currencies, is on track for its largest annual decline since 2003. This year, the index has dropped 10 percent, with nearly all of the damage occurring in the first half of 2025, when it tanked almost 11 percent. The alternative trade-weighted dollar index—a measure created by...

Clinton won in 1992 by selling a recession that was already over; the lesson for 2026 is simple—ignore real economic gains, and a fake downturn can still decide an election. As the 1992 campaign approached, incumbent president George H.W. Bush was seen as a shoo-in for reelection. The First Gulf War ended in 1991 with a spectacular U.S. victory at the head of a coalition that had expelled Saddam Hussein from Kuwait with few losses. For much of 1991, Bush’s approval ratings hovered between 90 and 70 percent. By February 1992, an obscure Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton, emerged as the...

Wyoming's oil and gas producers say Christmas came early last week when the Bureau of Land Management extended the deadline for compliance with bonding requirements that threatened to shutter small operators across the state. The Direct Final Rule delays enforcement of Biden-era regulations that would have increased bonding costs by 1,400% while the Trump administration works toward permanent solutions. "This marks significant progress in addressing the anti-oil and natural gas regulations that were handed down during the previous administration," said Pete Obermueller, president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming. "While this rule does not cover new bonds and does not...

For much of 2025, the dominant narrative among economists, market strategists, and Wall Street commentators was straightforward and gloomy. Trade shocks would slow growth. Immigration crackdowns would tighten labor markets. Tariffs would reignite inflation. A recession, many said, was not a matter of if, but when. That story has not played out.Instead, the U.S. economy continues to outperform expectations and outpace other developed nations. Growth has persisted even as consumer confidence has fallen, the labor market has cooled, and trade policy uncertainty has lingered. For investors, this disconnect between sentiment and reality is not just interesting. It is actionable.At the...

Data this week showed that the American economy is growing at its fastest pace in two years — and yet polling shows the mood on Main Street is grim. It’s almost hard to believe we’re talking about the same economy. But the metrics offer another reminder that two seemingly diverging trends can simultaneously be true. An economy that’s growing rapidly doesn’t necessarily mean everyone is feeling it. Yes, gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the US economy, heated up this summer to a sizzling annualized pace of 4.3%, far outpacing economists’ expectations. But the booming GDP did not...

Even more surprising than the blockbuster 4.3% economic growth rate recorded in the third quarter of 2025 was the fact that some 90% of the nation’s professional economists got it all wrong. These economic whiz-kids’ faulty forecast comes on the heels of their predictions last week that inflation was going to be above 3%. Instead, the actual number was 2.7%. Welcome to the gang that can’t shoot straight. Maybe it’s time for this cadre of Keynesian economists to send their PhDs back to the Ivy League schools they got them from, and just admit they have no idea what they’re...

President Donald Trump’s revamp of the H-1B white-collar outsourcing program has prompted cautious approval from advocates for American professionals and college graduates. “It does not end H-1Bs, but it fundamentally reshapes who benefits from them,” said Hany Girgis, a tech-training CEO. Employers and their lawyers are expected to file lawsuits against the new rules, which somewhat shift the distribution of new H-1B workers towards employers who offer higher wages. That shift will modestly pressure companies to hire young American graduates — but will not restrict the huge inflow of foreign workers via other programs, including the “cap-exempt” H-1B, J-1, L-1,...

The U.S. economy grew at a much greater-than-expected pace in the third quarter, boosted by strong consumer spending, a delayed report released Tuesday showed. U.S. gross domestic product, a sum of all goods and services produced in the sprawling U.S. economy, expanded by 4.3% in the July-September period, the Commerce Department said in its initial reading of third-quarter growth. Economists polled by Dow Jones expect a gain of 3.2%. Consumer spending expanded by 3.5% in the third quarter after rising 2.5% in the second quarter. Increases in exports and government spending also boosted growth, while a smaller dip in private...

"You're heading into 2026 with one of the biggest banks on Wall Street telling you the economy can ran stronger than most people expect. Bank of America's Global Research team used its December 2025 outlook to stake out a clearly bullish position on next year's growth, especially in the US." Average inflation over the last 20 years: 2.52% Inflation today: 2.7% Not the end of the world.

The U.S. economy grew at a much greater-than-expected pace in the third quarter, boosted by strong consumer spending, a delayed report released Tuesday showed. U.S. GDP expanded by 4.3% in the July-September period, the Commerce Department said in its initial reading of third-quarter growth. Economists polled by Dow Jones expect a gain of 3.2%. Consumer spending expanded by 3.5% in the third quarter after rising 2.5% in the second quarter.