Free Republic

HAMBURG (Reuters) - China may have to start buying U.S. soybeans again in coming weeks despite the trade war between the two countries as other regions cannot supply enough soybeans to meet China’s needs, Hamburg-based oilseeds analysts Oil World said on Tuesday.

Link only due to copyright issues: https://www.porkbusiness.com/article/its-great-time-be-fancy-pork-farmer

At the center of the table in a modest, high-rise apartment in the teeming city of Shenzhen, China, a simmering pot of soup stock was surrounded by large platters featuring mushrooms, different kinds of thinly shaved meat, lettuce, potato, cauliflower, eggs, and shrimp. Folding his hands together, Jian Zhang, a onetime rural farmer who now works as an employee for a small consulting firm in the city, asked his fellow diners to give thanks for the meal — the likes of which he could have only dreamed of when growing up in a remote village in the Jiangxi province. The...

China just lost its ranking as the world’s number two stock market. After a Thursday slump, Chinese equities were worth $6.09 trillion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That compares with $6.17 trillion in Japan. The US has the world’s largest stock market at just over $31 trillion. China’s stock market overtook Japan’s in late 2014, then soared to an all-time high of more than $10 trillion in June 2015. Chinese equities and the nation’s currency have taken a beating this year amid a trade spat with the US, a government-led campaign to cut debt and a slowing economy. “Losing...

UAE and Greek companies claim world first tech allows architects to become industry’s master builders UAE-based 3D printing company Immensa Technology Labs has released the result of a joint effort with Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) to recover a series of concrete casting techniques with the aid of large-format 3D printing. In what the two companies claim is a world-first, a ‘Sensorial Adaptive Concrete Screen’ was developed with NOWlab, the innovation department of Berlin-based BigRep. The screen showcases techniques that once belonged to skilled craftsman but have had life breathed back into them through expert digital fabrication. According to a statement...

Full Title: 'Death to the dictator!' Violence on streets of Iran as police use tear gas on furious protesters, including chador-clad women, demonstrating against 'corrupt regime' ruining the country while waging ideological war abroad Protests have broken out in a number of cities against Iranian regime this week Comes after the dramatic drop of Iran's currency and other economic problems 'The nation is forced to beg while the leader lives like God,' protesters chanted 'Death to the dictator!' Violence on streets of Iran as police use tear gas on furious protesters, including chador-clad women, demonstrating against 'corrupt regime' ruining the...

President Obama addresses workers (White House photo) UNITED NATIONS – The Obama administration’s release Thursday of the more than 2,000 pages of the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, known more commonly as Obamatrade, has prompted a rash of criticism from both the political left and the right. Critics charge the pact undermines U.S. sovereignty by establishing a secret, unaccountable TransPacific Partnership Commission with sweeping regulatory powers over 40 percent of the world’s economy while sending jobs abroad. “This trade agreement would allow foreign corporations to challenge our health, safety and environmental protections in a foreign tribunal outside our...

One of the nation’s top labor leaders on Wednesday called on the Obama administration to immediately release the text of a far-reaching trade deal that spans the Pacific Rim to Latin America. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka wrote a letter to President Obama arguing that stakeholders, lawmakers and the American public need to see the final text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to start what is expected to be a long process of evaluating the deal brokered by the United States and 11 other nations. House and Senate Democrats have made similar appeals since the pact was brokered a week ago...

President Donald Trump’s most powerful weapon is what makes him Big Government Democrats’ worst nightmare and the trait that most baffles Establishment Republicans who don't have it. .... (quoting Bill Hobbs' Facebook essay) .... "Donald Trump instinctively knows almost immediately where his opponent's jugular vein is, and that is where he attacks, and that is where he exerts the most pressure and the most leverage to get the best deal." "For example, in the primary, Jeb Bush was the odds-on favorite to win. He had the money, the Establishment, the résumé, and the name. All of the other candidates tried...

President Trump mocked conservative mega-donor Charles Koch early Thursday for complaining that tariffs hurt foreign workers, telling the billionaire he is “correct.” “Charles Koch of Koch Brothers, who claims to be giving away millions of dollars to politicians even though I know very few who have seen this (?), now makes the ridiculous statement that what President Trump is doing is unfair to ‘foreign workers.’ He is correct, AMERICA FIRST!” Trump tweeted Thursday morning.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is getting an earful – on Twitter – from teachers union boss Randi Weingarten for reportedly keeping the door open to a possible Trump endorsement in 2020. Newsmax reported Wednesday that Trumka would not rule out a union endorsement for the president. “Every [candidate] will be looked at,” Trumka said. He added, “we will consider every candidate who’s running.” Trumka simply may have been stating union policy, not wanting to get ahead of an endorsement process that is nowhere close to starting, for an election more than two years out. At the same time, he noted...

China appealed to Washington on Thursday to stay calm and “correct its attitude” following a U.S. threat to raise tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods in a dispute over technology policy. A foreign ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, said Beijing was open to dialogue but gave no indication about the status of possible negotiations. […] “We urge the United States to correct its attitude and not to try to blackmail China because it will never work,” said Geng at a news conference. “We advise the United States to be level-headed and avoid simply acting on impulse, otherwise it will ultimately...

RALEIGH, N.C. — Residents in a North Carolina town hoping to read “Rex Morgan M.D.” with Sunday coffee are in for a rude awakening. And a newspaper says it’s all President Donald Trump’s fault. The Robesonian in Lumberton announced it’s dropping an eight-page color comics section from Sunday editions. A newspaper editorial last week said it made the “not-so-funny” decision to cut the comics because of rising costs spurred by Trump administration tariffs on Canadian newsprint. “This newspaper has made the difficult decision to drop the Sunday comics, a decision that we really believe was made at the White House,”...

Senior officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration said on Wednesday that proposed tariff rates on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods would be raised from 10 percent to 25 percent, in an effort to “encourage” China to change its trade policies. The Trump administration aims to push changes on China’s policies on intellectual property protection, technology transfers and subsidies for high technology industries. The move comes as the US and China have been tangled in a trade dispute, since President Donald Trump announced earlier this year that the US would apply punitive tariffs on steel and aluminum worldwide and...

Despite strong condemnations of the Trump administration for what he calls the “growing wage inequality” among Americans, AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka on Wednesday refused to rule out his union endorsing President Donald Trump for re-election in 2020. “Well, he will be looked at [for the labor endorsement],” Trumka told Newsmax, “Everyone [of the presidential candidates] will be looked at.” Pressed as to how serious he was about the AFL-CIO considering not endorsing the Democratic nominee for president for the first time since 1972, Trumka insisted “we will consider every candidate who’s running in 2020.” Recalling the last presidential race, the...

On Monday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo led a team of Cabinet-level officials to unveil the economic piece of the administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy. While he didn’t actually call out China by name, the entire scheme is meant to show the countries of East and Southeast Asia they have an alternative to what many see as China’s predatory debt approach to energy, infrastructure and digital economy investment, which is already resulting in backlash in countries including Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Critics may call the plan a drop in the bucket compared with the multitrillion...

The price of a can of Coca-Cola? Likely going up. A package of Pampers? That too. Plane tickets? They also may be more expensive. These items and more may cost more in the coming months as people start feeling the effects of higher fuel prices and raw-material costs as well as a range of tariffs. Janette Hendricks said she has noticed higher prices on “just about everything” in the past three months or so. That’s put a little pressure on the recently retired nurse in Washington. So she goes shopping less often, “makes things stretch,” and she always shops for...

China said on Wednesday that "blackmail" wouldn't work and that it would hit back if the United States takes further steps hindering trade, as the Trump administration considers slapping a 25 percent tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods.

Billionaire plutocrat and GOP mega-donor Charles Koch says President Donald Trump’s tariffs on aluminum, steel, and thousands of Chinese-made imports are “ridiculous” and “unfair” to foreigners. Koch, who funds a network of organizations with his brother, David Koch, told the media during a conference with donors over the weekend that Trump’s ten percent tariff on imported aluminum and 25 percent tariff on imported steel was not fair to foreign countries and foreign workers. The Trump administration has said the tariffs on imported goods are necessary to protect American jobs and industries from foreign competition where foreign-made products are sold much...

Waking up 18 months ago to discover Donald Trump had been elected US president filled me with despair. What on earth had happened to politics? How could a reality TV star with no experience of government – and multiple character flaws to boot – have been chosen by American voters to be their leader? My 13-year-old daughter was also deeply troubled. “How could America vote for a man who said these things about women?” I didn’t know what to say. She went off to school. And I went off to a dance studio to practise a Gangnam Style salsa for...