Free Republic

The Wall Street Journal has been against Trump’s trade tariffs, and any chance they get they will put blame on the tariffs for bad things, even when it is obvious they are not to blame. On Thursday they had a front-page story which attributed a wave of Chapter 12 bankruptcies (50 total in the U.S.) partially to small tariffs put in place by Trump in 2018. Any business reporter with a brain knows that those small tariffs had nothing to do with bankruptcies that occurred in 2018. Those farmers had to be struggling with too much debt for years, and...

The U.S. trade deficit fell to $49.3 billion in November, the first decline after five straight months of increases. But on a year-over-year basis, the gap rose by 10.4 percent. The U.S trade deficit with its global partners fell in November for the first time after five straight months of increases as the shortfall with China and several other countries declined. Tightening the balance between imports and exports has been a major goal of the Trump administration, which last year started levying tariffs in an effort to close the gap. A release from the government Wednesday showed the gap had...

Videos at link. The White House took a victory lap Friday after the Labor Department announced 304,000 jobs were created in January, some 139,000 more than economists anticipated. “Three hundred-thousand new jobs plus, 3.2 percent increase in wages, participation rates went up, hours worked went up, it doesn’t get much better than this,” National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said in a video posted to the White House Twitter page. “I hate to say I told you so folks,” he added. “We’re going at 3 percent plus, and I don’t care, you can line up 8,000 pessimistas, and they’re wrong....

Full title: Newt Gingrich: Democrats and Never Trumpers will put Trump back in the White House in 2020 -- Here's whyAs you listen to the liberal media, the Never Trumpers and the left-wing Trump haters chatter on about President Trump’s current situation, remember these two numbers — 35 and 49. The first number was President Ronald Reagan’s approval in January 1983. The second number was the number of states Reagan carried 22 months later. I am not predicting President Trump will carry 49 states. This is a different environment, and the tribalism that divides the country is deeper than it...

Actual headline: POTUS Trump’s tariff strategy is working: China’s Communist Party increasingly worried about internal stability as economy slows As the Trump administration signals publicly that there is a ways to go before it reaches an equitable trade arrangement with Beijing, there are growing signs that China’s Communist Party is concerned that the ongoing trade war and decline in the country’s GDP could spark widespread unrest. On Thursday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the U.S. and China had “miles and miles” to go before reaching a deal, though a trade delegation from Beijing was headed to the United States in...

The former chief of the top Chinese lender to foreign countries pleaded with the government to avoid a tit-for-tat trade war with the United States, according to the transcript of a just-published speech from September. The speech by Li Ruogu, the one-time head of the Export and Import Bank of China (China EXIM), the massive state-owned lending institution that provides funding to foreign companies for the purchase of Chinese-made goods and services, provides new details regarding the Communist government’s internal struggle over how to react to and deal with the Trump administration’s aggressive tariff regime, the South China Morning Post...

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...