Free Republic

Chancellor Angela Merkel visits China on Thursday, seeking to close ranks with the world’s biggest exporting nation as US President Donald Trump shakes up explosive issues from trade to Iran’s nuclear deal. Finding a common strategy to ward off a trade war and keep markets open will be Merkel’s priority when she meets with President Xi Jinping, as Washington brandishes the threat of imposing punitive tariffs on aluminium and steel imports. “Both countries are in agreement that open markets and rules-based world trade are necessary. That’s the main focus of this trip,” Merkel’s spokeswoman Martina Fietz said in Berlin on...

It was easy to miss the U.S.-China trade statement that the White House released Saturday, right in the midst of royal wedding mania. But it's hard to hide that China looks as if it's winning President Trump's trade skirmish — so far. The statement said that, after several days of talks, the Chinese agreed to “substantially” reduce the United States' $375 billion trade deficit with China and that the details would be worked out later. It was noticeably vague. Notice China didn't agree to a specific amount. On Friday, Trump's top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, was telling reporters that the...

Just-ended U.S.-China trade talks produced a commitment by Beijing to “significantly increase” its purchases of American goods and services, according to a joint statement Saturday from the rival economic powers trying to lower trade tensions. They also agreed on “meaningful increases” in U.S. exports of agriculture and energy products and greater efforts to increase trade in manufactured goods and services. The statement, however, provided no dollar amounts on how much China might boost its purchases of American products. The statement also was silent on whether the talks had made progress in easing the trade standoff between the world’s two biggest...

The Trump administration will soon unveil a “new” North American Free Trade Agreement. U.S. trade negotiators have sought, among other things, to limit its duration, impose new domestic content requirements on certain products, and weaken investor legal protections. Even with these protectionist features, congressional Democrats are unlikely to vote for President Trump’s Nafta 2.0. He will need the support of pro-trade Republicans like me to ensure passage of any new agreement. To pressure us into voting for an agreement that diminishes free trade, some in the administration suggest offering a grim choice: either approve a diminished Nafta, or the president...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Encouraged by a booming demand for construction equipment, Mike Haberman was planning in early February to hire at least 30 more workers for the manufacturing facility of his Gradall Industries in Ohio. That plan now is shelved, Haberman said, because the cost of steel used in Gradall’s telescopic excavators and vacuum trucks shot up by one-third following President Donald Trump’s crackdown on steel imports. As steel costs account for 35 percent of his cost of production, he fears rising prices would not only hurt his export sales, but also give an edge to foreign rivals at home....

The clean energy transition and other initiatives to decarbonise Europe’s economy will represent 25% of EU spending under a seven-year EU budget plan put forward by the European Commission on Wednesday (2 May). Another key aspect is whether the EU will commit to stop funding fossil fuel projects like gas pipelines, which environmentalists claim risk locking Europe into unnecessary infrastructure. “I’m not sure it’s reached the upper layers of the Commission yet,” Gaventa said. Other parts of the budget could prove controversial, like a proposal to allocate 20% of revenue from carbon trading to the EU budget, as well as...

The Trump administration’s decision to continue trade negotiations with allies averted new tariffs but threatens to slow corporate spending and drive up costs, developments that could inject new uncertainty into financial markets. The questions about tariffs—and when they would take effect—already have been rattling Wall Street. Investors dumped stocks when they feared the chances of a trade war were escalating, only to buy back in when those worries subsided. Since the tariffs were announced in early March, the S&P 500 has fallen just 2.2%, but it has had moves of 1% or more on 17 of 43 trading days through...

Germany on Tuesday called for a “permanent exemption” on steel and aluminium tariffs, after the US decided to postpone a decision on the issue. “The German government has taken note” of the decision by US President Donald Trump to hold off on imposing controversial tariffs on steel and aluminium from the EU, Canada and Mexico, a government spokeswoman said. But Germany “is still waiting for a permanent exemption” from the tariffs and wants the European Commission to “continue dialogue with the United States”. Germany’s call came as the European Union accused the United States of prolonging “market uncertainty” with its...

German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier on Sunday warned the European Union against sparking a trade war with the US in the dispute over US tariffs on steel and aluminum. “I’m of the opinion that neither the US nor the Europeans should risk a trade war,” said Altmaier during a talk show on German public broadcaster ARD. He warned that the trans-Atlantic relationship was at stake. […] Altmaier, who is a member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives (CDU/CSU), said the EU should try to solve the tariff dispute, along with other trade disagreements, in a comprehensive US-EU deal. Earlier, the...

The nation’s top metals processor says business has surged following the Trump administration's tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. “Improved demand, a limited amount of customer pre-buying as a result of announced tariffs, and normal seasonal patterns" pushed first-quarter shipments up 10 percent from a year earlier, yielding a record quarterly sales volume of 1.6 million tons, 'Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co.' said Thursday. 'Union Pacific' on Thursday reported first-quarter net income of $1.3 billion on Thursday. Revenue for the first three months of the year was $5.5 billion, up 7 percent from the same time period in 2017.

In off the record conversations with fund managers and investment research firms in New York, there is a growing consensus that Trump will ultimately slap tariffs on a broad array of Made in China goods. The threats of tariffs would have moved to becoming actual tariffs. China charges more for imports of U.S. products -- sometimes 10 times more (automobiles, for example) -- than the U.S. charges for China goods coming here. Politically speaking, the trade war is something Wall Street hates, but Main Street does not. There is a concern in farm country that higher U.S. tariffs would force...

BEIJING — China has made a series of market opening pledges over the past week, but analysts said the moves are unlikely to help Beijing and Washington take any steps toward resolving their differences or advance negotiations. Instead, frustrations are growing as punitive trade actions pile up. China has pledged specific steps to open up its financial and insurance sector with milestones set for June and again before the end of this year. It has also addressed a key concern of President Donald Trump, pledging to significantly cut 25 percent tariffs on automobile imports this year. Beijing also says that...

Mexico and the European Union agreed to a new trade deal over the weekend, and the timing is no accident. With the French and German leaders in Washington this week, and the Nafta talks getting serious, America’s trading partners are showing that the world won’t stop if the U.S. goes protectionist. The EU-Mexico deal is the sort of trade opening that is increasingly common beyond America’s shores. The two sides have agreed in principle to remove protections on a long list of agricultural goods, and to expand two-way trade in services such as travel and telecommunications. The pact also will...

In the latest “believe it or not” moment, farmers are experimenting with collars for cows equipped with GPS and electronic signaling that would eliminate the need for fencing and herding. American farmers spent $300 million last year on fencing. To policymakers concerned about the creation of jobs, did anyone see farm fencing falling to the veracious appetite of disruption? The Republican Party, led by Donald Trump, is unabashedly lurching backwards. The tax bill was straight out of the supply side 1980s. The steel tariffs are from the Smoot-Hawley 1930s. Democrats are, understandably, mostly in opposition mode. But the world is...

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), on Thursday urged policymakers to steer clear of all protectionist measures amid rising trade tensions between the United States and its major trading partners. "Trade restrictions have not been proven helpful and we suspect that they might even dent confidence," Lagarde said at a press conference during the spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank, adding all countries should "work together to resolve disagreements without using exceptional measures." The spring meetings of the two leading international financial institutions come after the Trump administration recently announced additional tariffs on...

After suggesting last week that the U.S. government would seek to rejoin the sovereignty-shredding Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), President Donald Trump took to social media on April 18 to slam the controversial “free trade” regime that he once described as the “rape of our country.” Instead, Trump is seeking a bilateral agreement with remaining Pacific-rim governments such as Japan. Grassroots conservatives celebrated the announcement. But establishment voices were less than happy about it. Writing after a meeting at his Mar-a-Lago estate with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump suggested he was still opposed to TPP and preferred a bilateral trade deal...

A new attack ad against DeSantis has links to the bare knuckled political operative -------------snip--------------- Today an outfit called National Liberty Federation began airing about $290,000 in ads on radio and Fox News TV stations across Florida hammering Republican U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis: -------snip--------- The National Liberty Federation is run by a Palm Beach County resident named Everett Wilkinson, who used to call the group the South Florida Tea Party. Wilkinson for years has worked closely with Roger Stone, hosting a 2011 Boca Raton Trump rally that served as a harbinger of his presidential campaign, vocally supporting more casinos in...

Sales Tax: $0. Online shoppers have gotten used to seeing that line on checkout screens before they click "purchase." But a case before the Supreme Court could change that. At issue is a rule stemming from two, decades-old Supreme Court cases: If a business is shipping to a state where it doesn't have an office, warehouse or other physical presence, it doesn't have to collect the state's sales tax. That means large retailers such as Apple, Macy's, Target and Walmart, which have brick-and-mortar stores nationwide, generally collect sales tax from customers who buy from them online. But other online sellers,...

I think I must have been ill that day. At some point, no one can say precisely when, libertarians apparently swore a feudal oath of fealty to the Republican Party. In response to an American Prospect article on libertarian disenchantment with the Bush administration, Reason's own former editor in chief Virginia Postrel explained that "real Dean voters don't like Jeff Flake. (I do.)" On the Crossfire view of politics, this makes sense: You pick your team and root for it, come hell or high water. The Platonic Real Dean Voter can't possibly hold any affection for a member of the...

The Obama Administration tried to put the coal industry out of business, and in the 2016 presidential campaign Hillary Clinton proposed subsidies to ease the financial pain government had created. The question is why President Trump would adopt this economic method with an idea to increase subsidies to farmers hurt by the Trump tariffs. Mr. Trump has been getting an earful about the damage that his tariffs-first trade policy might do to U.S. farmers if countries like China retaliate. But instead of dropping the tariffs, Mr. Trump and some of his advisers are floating the idea of increasing farm subsidies...