Free Republic

China Proposes Six-Year Buying Spree Citing sources familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported Friday that China has offered to significantly boost its purchase of U.S. goods over a six-year period in an effort to re-balance trade between the two superpowers. By increasing its annual imports from the United States, Beijing would reduce its trade surplus to zero by 2024. That would require a spending boost of more than $1 trillion.

The United States is expected to churn out far more oil in 2019 than what international analysts originally forecasted. The International Energy Agency, a Paris-based organization that helps coordinate energy policies for industrial countries, released its latest oil market report Friday, noting exceptional numbers for the U.S. fossil fuel industry. The agency reported U.S. oil production is expected to rise by 1.3 million barrels a day in 2019. While this number is lower than the record-smashing 2.1 million increase producers enjoyed in 2018, it’s more than double what the IEA initially expected to see in 2019. The forecast illustrates the...

This morning, Dow Jones Industrial Average Futures Trading predicted a gain of over 130 points for the index at market opening . The US stock markets have been buoyed by news that trade tariffs could be eased or even rolled back.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is going to restart high-risk food inspections this week despite the partial government shutdown, which has forced the FDA to suspend most routine domestic food facility inspections. "We re-starting high risk food inspections as early as tomorrow," FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb tweeted on Monday, noting that the inspections will be performed by employees who have agreed to come back to work unpaid.

How as Americans do we explain the intransigence of the left when it comes to national security? 'Tis a mystery. These people, these Democrats in Congress, are among the most privileged persons on the planet. They have enjoyed, more than most, the blessings bequeathed by the Founders, the authors of the Constitution. Yet they are determined, like Obama, to transform us into something this nation was never meant to be: a land without borders. While all of them are on record supporting a border wall in the past, now that Donald Trump is president, they all oppose it with every...

RUSH: Yeah, another thing that’s so frustrating to me about all this honestly, folks, is that Donald Trump has really made good on his promise to make America great again and then is in the process of reshaping the world. Do you realize…? Have you heard the ChiComs have agreed to start importing rice from the United States? Now, stop and think about this for a second. Donald Trump sold ice to Eskimos. He has just made a deal where the ChiComs are gonna import rice from American farmers. The ChiComs on all of these arguments over tariffs are gonna...

Not only will Donald Trump win the November election, but his victory will propel U.S. economic growth higher, according to Jeffrey Gundlach. Trump will fuel a debt-driven increase in government spending, which Gundlach said will push GDP growth to levels reminiscent of the Ronald Reagan era. Gundlach did not endorse Trump or say whether he would vote for him. Gundlach spoke to investors on June 14 to provide updates on the DoubleLine Total Return Fund (DBLTX). He is the founder and chief investment officer of Los Angeles-based DoubleLine Capital, known for its fixed-income mutual funds, closed-end funds and ETFs. Copies...

Steve Hanke recently set out to prove “why President Trump’s trade message and protectionist policies are rubbish” in a Forbes article. Instead, the Johns Hopkins University economist exposed himself as a word-mincing, logic-twisting sophist—just like every other intellectual mercenary associated with the faux-libertarian propaganda mill that is the Cato Institute. Hanke’s argument: trade deficits don’t exist, China is not screwing America, and President Trump (the village idiot) is jousting windmills. The real problem is lazy Americans who shop-til-they-drop and demand welfare “gimmies” from Uncle Sam.

.....will be fully operational in 2022, would produce 1.2 million tons a year of steel plate products and create about 400 full-time jobs.....

At year-end 2018, how is President Donald Trump’s regulatory reform project going? Better than Obama, Bush II, and Clinton in terms of fewer regulations; but not as good as Trump’s own first year. Let’s look at it. Monday, December 31, 2018, is the last federal workday of the year. That would seem obvious, but a partial federal shutdown on December 22 made clock-out earlier for some. Nonetheless, a preliminary tally for Federal Register page and rule counts for Trump’s 2nd calendar year has appeared, even though “[d]uring the funding lapse, Federalregister.gov is not being supported." The Number of Pages in...

Donald Trump has delivered on a key promise that many economists said was impossible: manufacturing jobs boomed in 2018. The manufacturing sector added 284,000 positions over 2018, its best year since 1997. The revival of American manufacturing was a cornerstone of Trump’s 2016 campaign promise to Make America Great Again. Many economists derided the idea that manufacturing could boom in the U.S., insisting that a combination of automation and globlization meant that factory jobs were gone for good. Some even accused Trump of attempting to “con” the American people with promises of manufacturing jobs.

TerraPower reached an agreement with state-owned China National Nuclear Corp in 2017 to build an experimental nuclear reactor south of Beijing. But Gates wrote in an essay published late last week that TerraPower is unlikley to follow through on its plans in the face of new U.S. restrictions on technology deals with China. The Bellevue, Washington-based company is now unsure which country it will work with to conduct trials of its technology, which is desgined to use depleted uranium as fuel for nuclear reactors in a bid to to improve safety and costs, company officials told the Journal. “We’re regrouping,”...

In his second year in office, the list of extraordinary things President Trump has done, for good and ill, continued to grow. Today, I offer my annual list of the 10 best things Trump has done in office. (In my next column, I will give you my list of the 10 worst.) 10. He has secured the release of 19 people, including 16 Americans, from foreign captivity. When Pastor Andrew Brunson was freed by Turkey, he became the 19th captive released thanks to Trump. Others include: four held by North Korea; an aid worker and her husband held by Egypt;...

OP STORIES NEWSLETTERS CHINA HK ASIA WORLD COMMENT BUSINESS TECH LIFE CULTURE SPORT WEEK IN ASIA POST MAG STYLE .TV INFOGRAPHICS PHOTOS TOPICS MOST POPULAR Illustration: SCMP CHINA BUSINESS US trade war forces businesses to rethink Chinese investments amid fears dispute will drag on into new year Foreign direct investment inflows to China drop in first 11 months of year as concerns grow there will not be a swift resolution to the tensions One survey found that around a third of companies were considering delaying or cancelling investments Chad BrayChad Bray UPDATED : Sunday, 30 Dec 2018, 11:03PM 4 The...

President Trump took a brilliant, gutsy step in confronting China over its parasitic trade strategy, and the signs today are unmistakable that he made the right call. Consider two developments in the last few days. China's principal stock market in Shanghai has closed out 2018 with the world's worst decline.  The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong reports: Shanghai's stock benchmark ended 2018 as the world's worst market performer for a second year, falling 24.6 per cent over 12 months as an unprecedented trade war between China and the United States weighed on the Chinese economy and crimped corporate earnings. The...

**SNIP** Climate activists expressed disappointment. "Without a mandate to create a plan and a requirement that its members don't take fossil fuel money, we are deeply concerned that this committee will be just another of the many committees we've seen failing our generation our entire lives," said Varshini Prakash, the Sunrise Movement's spokeswoman. The push reflects the increasing power and visibility of liberals on Capitol Hill. Poised to be the largest of the values-based caucuses next year, the Congressional Progressive Caucus has already received a jolt of energy from members such as Ocasio-Cortez, whose political celebrity and regular posts to...

Tech-industry juggernauts Apple, Samsung and Huawei each have their own unique and strategic (yet often hilarious) way of taunting one another’s flagship devices. But amid recent events like the uncertain state of U.S. China Trade relations and arrest of the firm’s Chief Financial Officer, Meng Wanzhou, the riff between China’s Huawei Technologies Co. and U.S.-based Apple, Inc. has escalated far beyond their typical friendly-fire. Some 20+ Chinese firms have already urged their employees to boycott Apple products and, in retaliation, encourage them to buy from Huawei instead. Most firms partaking of these anti-Apple boycotts are reportedly offering their employees up...

A downturn in China's car market has wrong-footed some of the world's biggest automakers, saddling them with factories they no longer need and that are costly to retool, according to a report from the Dow Jones Newswires supplied to EFE on Tuesday. Ford Motor, Peugeot and Hyundai Motor especially mistimed recent expansions, opening new plants just as the seemingly unstoppable growth of China's auto market went into reverse.

The United States has welcomed Chinese concessions since the two declared a trade war truce in early December, but trade experts and people familiar with negotiations say Beijing needs to do far more to meet U.S. demands for long-term change in how China does business. Read more at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/china-trade-steps-seen-as-good-start-but-leave-core-us-demands-untouched-11039062

New York (CNN Business)Holiday sales grew at their fastest pace in six years, buoyed by rising wages and a drop in gas prices. Retail spending from November 1 through December 24 increased 5.1% from a year ago, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse. Shoppers spent more than $850 billion during the holidays. Unfazed by volatility on Wall Street, consumers flooded into stores and bought clothes and home decor online. Gas prices have dropped by more than 20 cents a gallon over the past month, giving shoppers extra cash for the holidays. "Consumer confidence translated into holiday cheer for retail," said Steve Sadove,...