Free Republic

Headline: CEO: POTUS Trump’s tariffs like ‘gun to the head’ of China, forcing Beijing to negotiate or suffer MASSIVE recession and unrestThe CEO of a U.S.-based global investment firm said Tuesday that POTUS Donald Trump’s tariff regime against China is having the desired effect of both slowing Beijing’s economy while “holding a gun to the head” of a county that is used to enormous economic growth. On Monday, the Chinese government announced in response to its slowest economic growth since 1990 that it was willing to spend as much as $1 trillion to close the yawning trade deficit with the...

The ban is a huge win for the administration and lays down another marker in its effort to tighten the sanctions noose around Tehran. A top Trump ambassador is winning kudos for his part in convincing Germany to ban Iranian airline Mahan Air amid allegations 'it ran weapons to Syria.'......Iran’s Mahan Air is shut down in Germany, immediately. “Since arriving in Berlin, Ambassador Grenell has literally hit the ground running delivering on the president’s priorities,” said a key ally and senior Senate Republican aide. “At the top of that list has been to ensure Europe doesn’t circumvent President Trump on...

One month since the start of the shutdown, the Trump 2020 campaign is chugging ahead with staffing and organization -- and even fundraised off the paralyzed federal government. But the shutdown may yet prove to be a drag on the campaign and help set the tone for the race, depending on how long it endures and how it gets resolved. The campaign's internal efforts have carried on as normal, in contrast to the chaos of a "rudderless" White House, as it was described by one administration official. "The campaign has more autonomy and direction than the White House," said one...

“This is a very, very big deal,” the Florida Republican and Cuban-American said...“I think really good things are coming from this. And so, you can't minimize the impact..... ”President Trump is getting ready to place an unprecedented amount of economic pressure on Cuba’s communism regime and some of the non-U.S. companies that have invested there, according to a leading Republican lawmaker. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has signaled that Americans who decades ago had property stolen by Fidel Castro’s regime and sold to other foreign companies may soon be able to sue those companies to recoup their losses. That will...

China’s 2018 economic growth fell to a three-decade low, adding to pressure on Beijing to settle a tariff war with Washington. The world’s second-largest economy expanded by 6.6 percent over a year earlier, down from 2017′s 6.9 percent, official data showed Monday. Growth in the three months ending in December dipped to 6.4 percent — the lowest quarterly level since the 2008 global crisis — from the previous quarter’s 6.5 percent. Communist leaders are trying to steer China to slower, more self-sustaining growth based on consumer spending instead of trade and investment. But the deceleration has been sharper than expected,...

My S&P500 account has gone up pretty good in the last few weeks after a bigger hit prior. If the price of gas is going more towards $2/gallon and China is backing down on trade I certainly see it as a cause and effect The only other big thing on the horizon I see is the prospect of a big beautiful wall. Too much collateral damage without one. I'm talking drugs, violence, hit and run vehicle accidents. Gotta get better if Trump is in office for 6 more. Things will never be perfect but tell me how much China and...

BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is pushing for regular reviews of China’s progress on pledged trade reforms as a condition for a trade deal - and could again resort to tariffs if it deems Beijing has violated the agreement, according to sources briefed on negotiations to end the trade war between the two nations. A continuing threat of tariffs hanging over commerce between the world’s two largest economies would mean a deal would not end the risk of investing in businesses or assets that have been impacted by the trade war. “The threat of tariffs is not going away,...

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;...