Free Republic

President Donald Trump’s unprecedented tariffs, particularly on China, and recent attacks on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell caused alarm among some of his top advisers and America’s biggest CEOs, who warned of financial chaos and store shelves that could go bare, people familiar with the conversations said. The warnings — and the markets’ own volatility this week — seemed to have broken through. Trump backed down Tuesday from his threats to try to remove Powell from the job, telling reporters in the Oval Office: “I have no intention of firing him.” That prompted sighs of relief on Wall Street. A...

WASHINGTON — Many Republican lawmakers lie low when they have differences with President Trump. Sen. Rand Paul has taken the opposite approach. “Congress needs to grow a spine, and Congress needs to stand up for its prerogatives,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters, complaining that Trump relied on a national-emergency law to impose tariffs that Paul believes should be controlled by lawmakers. His comments came just days after he was one of only two GOP senators to vote against the party’s budget framework that is key to Trump’s tax cuts, saying it didn’t do enough to reduce the deficit. The libertarian...

Stock markets have risen around the world after Donald Trump said his tariffs on China would come down “substantially” and he had “no intention” of firing the chair of the American central bank, Jay Powell. The president told reporters in Washington on Tuesday he plannned to be “very nice” to China in trade talks and that tariffs could drop in both countries if they could reach a deal, adding: “It will come down substantially, but it won’t be zero.” The comments sparked a fresh rally on Wall Street, with the S&P 500 blue chip index and the Nasdaq ending the...

The Trump administration has received official trade offers from 18 countries, and its trade negotiation team has meetings scheduled with 34 countries this week, the White House announced Tuesday.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt provided an update on trade negotiations during a briefing on Tuesday.“There is a lot of progress being made. We now have 18 proposals on paper that have been brought to the trade team,” she detailed. “Again, these are proposals on paper that countries have proposed to the Trump administration and to our government.”Over 100 countries have expressed interest in making a deal, per the press secretary.“You...

The Finance Ministry of India announced on Monday that it would be imposing a 12 percent tariff on some steel products — a move apparently intended to prevent China from “dumping” large amounts of steel into the Indian market and elbowing domestic companies out of business.Indian officials had floated the potential of a 12 percent “safeguard duty” in late March in anticipation of news that the United States could impose tariffs that would lead China to see alternative markets to America for products that Americans would no longer want to buy at higher prices. President Donald Trump announced a wave...

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made significant comments about the ongoing tariff tensions with China at a closed-door investor summit on Tuesday in Washington. According to Bloomberg, Bessent told attendees that the standoff with China -- which he said was essentially an embargo -- is unsustainable and that he expects it to de-escalate. He said that while formal negotiations haven't commenced, a deal remains possible. Risk assets have rallied on this.

This could really take a bite out of the Big Apple. The secondhand apparel industry may be dodging duties on imported goods – but the impact of President Trump’s tariffs on thrift shops may still bring a wrecking ball to businesses across the city, resellers told The Post. “There’s a lot of rhetoric that everybody’s going to turn to second-hand [clothing] when wallets tighten,” said Alexis Krase, owner of plus-size secondhand store Plus BKLYN in Greenpoint. “But overall, I think that ultimately means people are also being more critical of spending dollars in general: Overall sales will be down.” Krase,...

Now that Pat Gelsinger is no longer occupying the corner office at embattled chipmaker Intel (INTC), he can acknowledge one thing about the semiconductor industry.Nvidia (NVDA) has a wide, wide lead over its rivals on the tech front..."They have built meaningful moats around their franchise," he added.Gelsinger led aggressive efforts to turn around Intel for more than three years. He slashed thousands of jobs, improved costs, secured CHIPS Act funding, built chip foundries, and promised fast AI chips that could compete with Nvidia and AMD (AMD).He was fired in early December amid missed financial targets, lack of progress on the...

If Donald Trump is upset about higher interest rates, he should stop doing just about everything he can to undermine the U.S. economy in the eyes of the world. As the U.S. becomes a riskier place to do business because of tariffs and fiscal uncertainty, and the independence of the central bank comes under threat from the president, people will demand higher yields to make buying U.S. sovereign debt worth their while. Maybe you think Trump’s trade policy has merit or the Federal Reserve needs to be brought more firmly under the president’s control. That’s a separate question from how...

Don’t go by the defiant rhetoric, China is hurting and in deep trouble over Trump’s tariffsFor the purpose of writing this column, I had to do some research as I always do. What struck me was how effortlessly China is winning the battle of narratives. It’s all a little confusing. We are apparently in the middle of a trade war, caught in the crossfire as the world’s two largest economies slap each other with tariffs in an escalatory spiral with the Donald Trump administration imposing 145% levies on most Chinese goods this month. That’s more than a little concerning for...

If the White House wanted a test of how firing Jerome Powell would go over in the markets, it succeeded on Monday. U.S. stocks and the dollar plunged while yields on long-term Treasurys climbed after President Trump renewed his attacks on the Federal Reserve Chairman. Monday was the first full trading day for markets to absorb National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett’s comments Friday that the White House is studying if Mr. Powell can legally be fired. On Monday Mr. Trump demanded again that Mr. Powell make “pre-emptive” interest rate cuts to avoid a slowdown. Cue the meltdown in stocks,...

President Donald Trump will meet with major retailers on Monday after the National Retail Federation (NRF) announced it does not back the president’s reciprocal tariff policies. A White House official told Reuters that the president will meet Monday afternoon to discuss his tariff policies; the meeting will includes representatives from Walmart, Home Deport, Lowe’s, and Target. Walmart confirmed that its CEO, Doug McMillon, would attend the meeting. More than half of Walmart’s imports are from China, while Home Deport and Lowe’s also import from the country. A March report found that Target relies on China for 30 percent of its...

It looks as though trade progress is being made with Japan, as concessions about automobiles were reported on this weekend, signaling that Trump administration could be heading towards a revised agreement with the key ally nation. Japan may loosen auto safety rules for U.S. imports to address President Trump’s concerns over the low number of American cars sold there, Nikkei reports. With differing safety standards between the two countries, Tokyo is eyeing crash test regulations as a possible trade concession, according to Nikkei. During a White House meeting, Trump criticized Japan’s trade surplus and poor U.S. auto sales. Cabinet-level talks...

China, once a communist backwater, has emerged as the world’s factory floor, producing everything from iPhones to plastic brushes. It’s a pragmatic choice, not a philosophical one. A CEO doesn’t cite Rand when moving a factory to Shenzhen; he cites shareholder value. Tariffs, intended to lure these companies back, instead add insult to injury, failing to address the root causes of their departure.

President Donald Trump said on April 17 that China has contacted his administration to negotiate amid an ongoing tariff war, and signaled that a deal on divesting TikTok from its Beijing-based partner company may wait for now. While speaking with reporters during an executive order signing ceremony in the Oval Office, Trump confirmed that top Chinese officials had reached out “a lot” after he raised tariffs on the nation to 145 percent. “I believe we’re going to have a deal with China, and if we don’t, we’re going to have a deal anyway, because we will set a certain target,...

They needed to get the president alone. On April 9, financial markets were going haywire. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick wanted President Trump to put a pause on his aggressive global tariff plan. But there was a big obstacle: Peter Navarro, Trump’s tariff-loving trade adviser, who was constantly hovering around the Oval Office. Navarro isn’t one to back down during policy debates and had stridently urged Trump to keep tariffs in place, even as corporate chieftains and other advisers urged him to relent. And Navarro had been regularly around the Oval Office since Trump’s “Liberation Day”...

US President Donald Trump and his administration are studying whether dismissing independent Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell is an option, his top White House economic aide said. "The president and his team will continue to study that matter," National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett told reporters when asked if firing Powell was a possibility, one day after Trump lashed out at the Fed chief.

Former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the crew at CNBC this week that President Trump’s goal of bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. was a “pipe dream.” It was an odd remark, given how her former boss, Joe Biden, ran for president on the prospect that he could revive manufacturing in the U.S. — the central pillar of his promise to rebuild the economy “from the bottom up and middle out.”

The European Union could be staring down the barrel of a massive economic hit—up to $1.25 trillion—if President Trump follows through on proposed tariffs, according to a new report by Germany’s top economic think tank.The study, released by the German Economic Institute (IW), sounds the alarm over what could happen if the EU refuses to level the playing field. Trump’s America First trade strategy, which includes a 20% blanket tariff on EU goods and a 25% tariff specifically aimed at car imports, is designed to claw back advantages handed to Brussels in past one-sided deals.If the tariffs go into effect...

Folks, I know this is going to be hard, but we must remain steadfast in bearing the burden of new tariffs for our essential items. Hermes has announced they will pass along the cost of President Trump’s tariffs to consumers.Currently, Hermes branded purses ranging from $20,000 to $200,000 are purchased by a whopping 0.001% of Americans, yet 90% of wives for Wall Street hedge fund managers have them.Yes, this is going to be a painful price increase; however, it is our patriotic duty to withstand it. We can survive it.NEW YORK – […] The Paris-based company — which manufactures the...