Free Republic

Elon didn’t reverse that through inspiration. He reversed it by building companies that required understanding manufacturing or failing completely. SpaceX and Tesla forced engineers to learn how metal fractures, how tolerances cascade through systems, how physical iteration costs months and millions per failure. No debugging. No patches. Just physics that doesn’t negotiate. Boyle: “Training two generations of engineers.” The product isn’t the cars. It’s the people. Look at who’s founding America’s critical hard-tech companies now. The common thread isn’t Stanford or MIT. It’s time on factory floors at SpaceX or Tesla. They learned welding. They learned that “impossible” just means...

Taiwan has told Washington that its proposal to move 40% of the island’s semiconductor supply chain to the U.S. was “impossible,” Taipei’s top tariff trade negotiator said in an interview. Speaking on a local television broadcast Sunday, Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun said she had made it clear to Washington that the island’s semiconductor ecosystem, built over decades, could not simply be relocated. Taiwan’s international expansion, including its investments in the U.S., is predicated on the notion that the industry remains’ rooted in Taiwan and continues to expand domestic investments, she said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.

As the Trump economy begins to boom even as inflation moderates, Democrats and the anti-Trump media are desperate for a spin that might discredit Trumponomics. Their latest Hail Mary: pushing a counterfactual narrative that President Trump’s tariffs are hurting, rather than stimulating, a manufacturing revival for blue-collar America. The latest manufacturing data obliterates that lie. In January, the ISM Manufacturing Index jumped 4.7 points to 52.6. That wasn’t just an estimate beat; it was a blowout, and an important one. The ISM Manufacturing Index is the most widely followed survey of factory activity worldwide. When it moves above 50, the...

Kevin Green is back to break down a pair of movers in the semiconductor space. Onsemi (ON) shares are looking for direction after a mixed earnings report. Meanwhile, TSMC (TSM) executives say the White House's plans to relocate up to 40% of its supply chain to the U.S. is "impossible." KG later turns his attention to the Cboe Volatility index (VIX) as it continues a recent upward trend. He notes the $26 level as a potential one to watch that could "wash away some of the bulls." For Tuesday's trading range for the S&P 500 (SPX), KG is looking at...

BASF plant in Ludwigshafen, 1881.In its ‘Climate & Energy’ newsletter on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal’s report on Germany’s chemicals industry headlined ‘The Agonising Decline of One of Europe’s Core Industries’ reads less like an industry report than a forensic examination of an industrial autopsy. Once Europe’s formidable manufacturing powerhouse, Germany is now presiding over the steady dismantling of one of its most foundational industries – chemicals – under the combined weight of self-inflicted energy scarcity, climate moralism and geopolitical miscalculation. In Politico’s view, the auto sector has already assumed the role of Exhibit A in Germany’s economic self-harm. But...

One-third of business leaders say they’re not making a statement about Minneapolis following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse and U.S. citizen, by immigration agents because it is “not relevant to their business,” a CNBC flash survey found. …More than 60 CEOs of Minnesota-based companies signed a letter on Sunday urging “an immediate de-escalation of tensions,” but stopped short of demanding that ICE leave the state, while Democratic state officials, such as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, have done so. CNBC sent the survey to 550 C-suite executives on Monday and Thursday...

It is to laugh - the Democraps are taxing their businesses out of the state to continue The Somali Walz. 10:58 long

On local Twin Cities radio this morning a representative of an unnamed business said the liberal upheaval in the state is causing some businesses to rethink expansion in Minnesota. The individual, who did not want to be identified, said businesses and industry are seeing job recruitment as more challenging due to sanctuary city policies and unruly protests. Red states are more attractive.

On Monday, President Donald Trump, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of the Navy John Phelan announced a new series of what they called "Trump Class" battleships, a new initiative to revamp and restore the maritime industry and shore up America's maritime dominance. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was also in the Oval Office and offered remarks. Navy's new class of Large Surface Combatants: THE BATTLESHIP.The most lethal surface combatant ever constructed. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/7AH5G4IJj5— The White House (@WhiteHouse) December 22, 2025The president was flanked by images of the first Golden Fleet battleship, "The U.S.S. Defiant." Trump opened his remarks...

The skilled trades workforce, critical to keeping the country's infrastructure and economy running, is rapidly declining. While many companies are working to address the shortage, General Motors has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to build its own pipeline of future workers. Over the past five years alone, the automaker has invested more than $242 million in its skilled trades apprenticeship program, which is geared toward training the next generation of skilled trade professionals with a combination of classroom instruction and thousands of hours of hands-on experience at a GM facility, Michael Trevorrow, GM's senior vice president of global manufacturing,...

The world's leading manufacturer of advanced chips is TSMC in Taiwan. Back in 2020, President Trump helped convince TSMC to make a major investment in building chips here in the US, specifically in Arizona.Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has agreed to build an advanced chip factory in the United States, in a response to the Trump administration’s growing concerns about the security of the global electronics supply chain and its competitive tensions with China.The decision by T.S.M.C., which operates enormous plants in Taiwan to produce chips used in most smartphones and many other devices, was confirmed late Thursday after earlier press...

For nearly a century, America’s military strength has come largely through self-reliance. We not only made the ships, airplanes and tanks, our country supplied the parts and materials for these complex systems. But a lot has changed in recent times.Unfortunately, our military has increasingly relied on sourcing parts globally -- including from possibly unreliable places like China. It’s a disastrous side effect of globalization.For example, while modern jet engines may typically include between 30,000 and 50,000 parts, ensuring they are “China-free” has proven to be incredibly difficult. We’ve already seen deliveries of F-35s delayed over this issue, revealing that supply...

In his second term, President Donald Trump certainly hasn’t been afraid to go bold — and now it could be the stock market’s turn. The slate of reforms under consideration could be the biggest positive development for our financial markets since the early days of the Reagan administration, if not since the creation of the federal securities laws themselves. It could also finally put the brakes on the rise of “woke capital.” For years, political activists have been using America’s biggest corporations as vehicles for their social agenda. They call it “ESG” — environmental, social and governance investing — but...

Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, is claiming that he cannot fill 5,000 mechanic jobs – even though they pay $120,000 per year. This is a problem that TV personality Mike Rowe has been talking about for years. We don’t have enough young people in the country who are learning skills, such as working with tools, or how to do things like be an auto mechanic. Meanwhile, we have a surplus of people in college who are going into massive debt wasting their time on useless topics like gender studies, women’s studies, and various social justice topics. The New York...

TULSA, OKLA. (KTUL) — Oklahoma is experiencing rapid growth in the data center industry, with 36 facilities either planned, under construction, or already operational. This expansion has prompted concerns over the massive consumption of electricity and water by these centers, leading one Oklahoma lawmaker to spearhead an interim study examining their potential impacts on the state's resources. State Rep. Amanda Clinton's (D-District 71) study highlights that decisions regarding the location of these facilities are primarily made at the local level, with minimal state oversight. The study demonstrated that data centers consume significant amounts of water and electricity, potentially straining local...

"There is a lot of chatter these days about holding those evil companies that hire illegals to some type of legal retribution. Let me explain why this is the willful failure of government, not the actions of some greaseball company owners." ... "When the first unscrupulous contractors started working with illegal aliens, they generally paid cash under the table. No payroll taxes or anything like that were paid. When this percolated up to the powers that be, there was an outcry. About hiring illegal aliens and putting hard working American citizens out of work? Not a chance. They came down...

November morning in New Hampshire. Pat Buchanan is standing among the men and women of a footwear factory, listening to the assembly-line cobblers about the threats posed by cheap imported shoes to not only their jobs but their communities and their country. It’s an early winter evening in Wheeling. The guys at the pub [wonder] what they will do when the smelter shuts down, never to be re-opened. How could we lose? Surely America will see what’s coming? Surely conservatives and the Republican Party will embrace the cause of these Americans whose efforts defeated first fascism and then communism, only...

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced that the company will build seven supercomputers for the Department of Energy with up to 100,000 chips all made in America. Huang said, “The first thing that President Trump asked me is, ‘bring manufacturing back.'” The New York Post reports that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made several significant announcements during the keynote address at the company’s GTC event in Washington, DC, highlighting the company’s ongoing success and its commitment to advancing e AI technology. The event, held for the first time in the US capital, signifies Nvidia’s pursuit of work with the government and contractors...

[H/T Keflavik76]𝙲𝚘𝚗𝚜𝚎𝚛𝚟𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚎 ᥫ᭡ 𝙳𝚒𝚟𝚊™@1776Diva❌𝐖𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐧'𝐭 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐚 𝐛𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐭 𝟏𝟏/𝟓/𝟐𝟒, 𝐰𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐝𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐚 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥- 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐏𝐇𝐄 ‼️Listen as tech expert and billionaire Marc Andreesen talks to .@joerogan about the plans for totalitarian control that were being laid out for the @KamalaHarris administration. 😳October 7, 2025

Some leftists are now claiming that conservatives are foolish to expect President Trump, who once went bankrupt, to turn the economy around. As leftist claims frequently do, it shines a spotlight on their willful ignorance of history. Our society glorifies overnight successes and flawless trajectories. But it's worth refamiliarizing ourselves with the stories of individuals who have plummeted to financial ruin only to rebuild their careers and create successful businesses. These serve as powerful reminders of human resilience. Bankruptcy, a word synonymous with defeat, has marked the journeys of countless individuals who have refused to let it define them. Instead...