Free Republic

Vice President Kamala Harris threw her support behind a federal ban on price-gouging in the food and grocery industries last week. It was the first official economic policy proposal of her presidential campaign, and it was pitched as a direct response to the high price of putting food on the table in America today. “To combat high grocery costs, VP Harris to call for first-ever federal ban on corporate price-gouging,” the Harris campaign proclaimed in the subject line of a news release last week, ahead of a speech laying out the first planks of her economic agenda. It is still...

Donald J. Trump didn’t wait for the opening bell before blaming Monday’s market sell-off on Vice President Kamala Harris. “Stock markets are crashing, jobs numbers are terrible, we are heading to World War III, and we have two of the most incompetent ‘leaders’ in history,” the former president and Republican presidential nominee wrote in a post on Truth Social at 8:12 a.m. Eastern time. “This is not good.” Mr. Trump did not mention that markets had suffered far greater single-day losses when he was president, or that economists blamed a variety of factors — including a disappointing July jobs report,...

The New York Times tried turning the screws on Republican members of Congress who are adamant about President Joe Biden agreeing to spending cuts before the debt ceiling is raised … yet again. Times White House correspondent Jim Tankersley wrote in the sub-headline of his anti-GOP propaganda March 7 that “a top economist will warn lawmakers that Republicans’ refusal to raise the nation’s borrowing cap could put millions out of work.” The “economist” was none other than Hillary Clinton donor and “registered Democrat” Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi. Tankersley wielded Zandi to claim that “The U.S. economy could quickly...

The New York Times has turned its sights on the middle class by asking President Joe Biden why Americans shouldn’t pay more at the pump to fight climate change. The Times White House correspondent Jim Tankersley lectured Biden on how economists “say that,you know, when you raise the price of something people consume less of it” [d]uring the Question & Answer session of Biden’s speech following the G-20 summit Oct. 31. To that effect, asked Tankersley, “[W]hy not allow even middle class, uh, people around the world to pay more for gasoline in the hope that they would consume fewer...

At least once a week, a team of President Biden’s top advisers meet on Zoom to address the nation’s supply chain crisis. They discuss ways to relieve backlogs at America’s ports, ramp up semiconductor production for struggling automakers and swell the ranks of America’s truck drivers. The conversations are aimed at one goal: taming accelerating price increases that are hurting the economic recovery, unsettling American consumers and denting Mr. Biden’s popularity. An inflation surge is presenting a fresh challenge for Mr. Biden, who for months insisted that rising prices were a temporary hangover from the pandemic recession and would quickly...

FedEx CEO Frederick Smith has challenged the publisher of The New York Times as well as the paper's business editor to a public debate after the Times reported that the company paid $0 in federal taxes in 2018. In a statement Sunday, Smith argued that the Times's report, published earlier in the day, was "distorted and factually incorrect" and ignored the "$6 billion of capital" that FedEx supposedly "invested in the U.S. economy" in 2018. "I hereby challenge A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times and the business section editor to a public debate in Washington, DC with me...

Studies consistently find that the 2017 law cut taxes for most Americans. Most of them don’t buy it. If you’re an American taxpayer, you probably got a tax cut last year. And there’s a good chance you don’t believe it. Ever since President Trump signed the Republican-sponsored tax bill in December 2017, independent analyses have consistently found that a large majority of Americans would owe less because of the law. Preliminary data based on tax filings has shown the same. Yet as the first tax filing season under the new law wraps up on Monday, taxpayers are skeptical. A survey...

WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Friday he has offered a position on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors to Stephen Moore, a conservative economic adviser who has become an outspoken critic of the Fed’s interest-rate policy. Mr. Moore, who has criticized the Fed for raising interest rates over the past year, is an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation who helped draft Mr. Trump’s tax proposals in the 2016 campaign. As a nominee, Mr. Moore would face intense criticism in the Senate from Democrats, with whom he has clashed on several economic issues in his career as a commentator...

President Trump will ask Congress on Monday for $8.6 billion in additional funding to build a wall along the United States border with Mexico, a person familiar with the details said on Sunday. The request, which will come as part of Mr. Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget proposal, is certain to reignite a conflict with Democrats that led to a record-long government shutdown this year. Mr. Trump had previously requested $5.7 billion to build a wall but was rebuffed by both Democrats and Republicans, who approved a spending bill that did not include the funding. That resulted in Mr. Trump declaring...

Andy Marsh’s New York factory is trapped in the Trump trade wars. As Mr. Trump threatens tariffs on America’s economic allies and its adversaries, many of the domestic businesses that the president says his policies are meant to protect are finding themselves victims of his aggressive approach. Prices are rising for imported goods, other nations are erecting retaliatory trade barriers, and companies like Plug Power, the manufacturing business that Mr. Marsh runs outside Albany, are facing crippling uncertainty from Mr. Trump’s fickle approach. It is not the first time Mr. Marsh has felt firsthand the impact of decisions made hundreds...

In 2012, voters in California approved a measure to raise taxes on millionaires, bringing their top state income tax rate to 13.3 percent, the highest in the nation. Conservative economists predicted calamity, or at least a big slowdown in growth. Also that year, the governor of Kansas signed a series of changes to the state's tax code, including reducing income and sales tax rates. Conservative economists predicted a boom. Neither of those predictions came true. Not right away -- California grew just fine in the year the tax hikes took effect -- and especially not in the medium term, as...

Why a conservative economist says Trump could make America ‘the North Korea of economics’ By Jim Tankersley May 6 In his run for the White House, Donald Trump has threatened to slap tariffs on imports from China, in almost-certain violation of international rules. He has threatened to confiscate money that immigrants from Mexico wire home to their families, in order to force the Mexican government to pay for a border wall. This week, he suggested that, in an economic crisis, the government might repay only some of the money it owes to certain holders of its debt. Those threats reflect...

"I think we’re sitting on an economic bubble. A financial bubble... We’re not at 5 percent unemployment. We’re at a number that’s probably into the 20s if you look at the real number. That was a number that was devised, statistically devised to make politicians – and in particular presidents – look good. And I wouldn’t be getting the kind of massive crowds that I’m getting if the number was a real number." "I’m talking about a bubble where you go into a very massive recession. Hopefully not worse than that, but a very massive recession. Look, we have money...