Free Republic

The U.S. trade deficit tumbled nearly 15 percent in January as imports fell and exports rose. Shipments of American goods to China skidded to the lowest level in more than eight years as the world’s two biggest economies remained locked in a trade war. The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the gap between the goods and services that the United States sells and what it buys from other countries dropped by 14.6 percent to $51.1 billion in January from $59.9 billion in December. Exports rose 0.9 percent to $207.3 billion, and imports dropped 2.6 percent to $258.5 billion. The deficit...

Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with veterans after attending a wreath laying ceremony with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron at the Arc de Triomphe monument, in Paris, France March 25, 2019. Francois Mori/Pool via REUTERSy Marine Pennetier PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus signed a deal worth tens of billions of dollars on Monday to sell 300 aircraft to China, coinciding with a visit to Europe by Chinese President Xi Jinping and matching a China record held by U.S. rival Boeing. The deal between Airbus and China's state buying agency, China Aviation Supplies Holding Company, which regularly coordinates headline-grabbing deals during...

President Trump has made a lot of ill-advised nominations. But perhaps no single choice could inflict more long-term damage than the one he announced Friday: Stephen Moore, Trump’s pick to join the Federal Reserve Board. Moore’s many economic claims over the years have revealed him to be, shall we say, easily confused. A decade ago, as the Fed was battling deflation (that is, price declines ) during the financial crisis, Moore preposterously fearmongered that hyperinflation (that is, out-of-control price increases ) was nigh: Americans could soon be carting “wheelbarrows full” of cash a la Weimar Germany. Moore has also repeatedly...

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) The Democrat presidential nomination battle is already a three-ring circus, and the far left elements of the Democrat base are going to make sure it stays that way. Yesterday, ex-Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, who is struggling to gain a foothold in the race, found himself in trouble with the social justice warrior crowd when his effort to imply that a woman may well win the nominating contest fell flat with the humorless left. The first mistake Hickenlooper made was accepting CNN’s invitation to get a little (very little, given CNN’s dwindling audience)...

President Donald Trump has a low approval rating. He is engaging in bitter Twitter wars and facing metastasizing investigations. But if the election were held today, he’d likely ride to a second term in a huge landslide, according to multiple economic models with strong track records of picking presidential winners and losses. Credit a strong U.S. economy featuring low unemployment, rising wages and low gas prices — along with the historic advantage held by incumbent presidents. While Trump appears to be in a much stronger position than his approval rating and conventional Beltway wisdom might suggest, he also could wind...

Every time I try to walk away Somethin’ makes me turn around and stayI can tell you why Liberals want so badly to take Trump down that they will destroy the country to do it. They support killing full term viable and even newborn babies. They’re pushing socialism. They would turn the US into Venezuela. Or Connecticut. They are promising to give away your wealth. They want to pack the Supreme Court.Progressive activists are pushing 2020 Democratic presidential candidates to commit to increasing the number of Supreme Court justices in order to dilute the current conservative majority. The recently created, aptly named “Pack the...

President Trump has promised an economic boom that will last for years to come, but he’s unlikely to get one without the help of Congress to pass major new legislation, according to estimates by Trump’s own economic team. To achieve about 3% growth for the next decade, Trump would need a big infrastructure bill, more tax cuts, additional deregulation, and policies that transition more people off government aid and into full-time jobs, according to the 2019 Economic Report of the President, released Tuesday by Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers. There’s skepticism that Trump will be able to get all of...

BEIJING — Since the 2009 global financial crisis hobbled most of the world’s developed countries, China has been the economic locomotive pulling the rest of the world behind it. As the economies of Europe, the U.S. and Japan stagnated, China went from strength to strength. It surpassed its Asian rival to the east a decade ago in total gross domestic product to become the world’s second-largest economy, with its sights trained squarely on the United States. Indeed, judged by what economists call purchasing power parity — the idea that services such as a haircut are valued equally — Beijing already...

Beijing cannot indefinitely continue to accumulate wealth and technology by exploiting America’s open markets. A prompt solution of the U.S.-China trade dispute requires a rebalancing on bilateral trade accounts — drastically lower Chinese sales to the U.S. and sharply increasing Chinese purchases of American goods and services. China’s regulatory changes are a different matter. Financial markets should stop fretting about the U.S.-China trade problem — that’s a peripheral issue and a purely trading event. Only the Fed can crash Wall Street. (Please see full article at the link)

President Trump's proposed budget released Monday appeared to call on Congress to cut $818 billion from Medicare over 10 years, despite a long-standing promise from the president that he wouldn't touch the popular program. The budget does not outline specific cuts to Medicare, nor does it propose a cost-saving plan along the lines of an idea from former House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to give beneficiaries subsidies to buy private coverage. Instead, the budget envisions spending reductions through Congress passing prescription-drug legislation and through efforts to reduce improper payments to healthcare providers. "He's not cutting Medicare in this budget," Russell...

Trump administration moves to end work permits for spouses of skilled foreign workers

China’s central bank governor on Sunday affirmed an official promise to avoid manipulating its currency to boost exports, an issue he said American and Chinese negotiators discussed in their latest talks aimed at ending a tariff war. Yi Gang gave no indication the two sides reached agreements beyond previous commitments produced by meetings of the Group of 20 major economies. He spoke at a news conference during the annual meeting of China’s ceremonial legislature. “We stress that we will never use the exchange rate for competitive purposes, nor will we use it to boost China’s exports,” Yi said. Yi took...

Assume for a moment that America fully embraces free trade, and it works exactly as planned: we offshore all our low-margin production to developing countries, and this indeed frees-up our population to work in lucrative industries like product design, finance, management etc. While this may make America richer (in the short term), it will not necessarily make Americans richer. Why? Not everyone can be an engineer, investment banker, or lawyer—most people just aren’t smart enough, and many more don’t have the personality for it. It’s harsh, but true. Charles Murray explains in his seminal book The Bell Curve that human...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's 2020 budget proposal will include $100 million for a global women's fund spearheaded by his daughter Ivanka Trump. In a statement to The Associated Press, Ivanka Trump noted that Friday was International Women's Day and stressed the initiative was "working towards our goal of economically empowering 50 million women in developing countries by 2025." She says the budget includes "a new $100 million commitment" for the fund.

The first two years of Donald Trump's presidency haven't exactly been filled with stellar ratings from the public. Trump's approval rating in Gallup has never -- not one time -- been above 50% since he was sworn into office. His overall job approval number in the Real Clear Politics' average is below 44%. Almost six in 10 people disapproved of how Trump has handled the Russia investigation in a CNN-SSRS poll last month. On and on it goes -- bad numbers following bad numbers, leaving the poll-obsessed Trump to cherry-pick a piece of data here and there that suggests he...

As POTUS Donald Trump prepares to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss a deal to end the current trade war between the world’s two biggest economies, the American political commentariat has panned it as another opportunity for China to ‘pull one over’ on this ‘hapless, bumbling president.’ Citing Trump’s ‘inability’ to come to terms with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un over denuclearization, they have left Americans who still listen to them with the impression that now it’s China’s turn to embarrass him and the United States — and at the president’s own resort at Mar-a-Lago. But the reality...

No incumbent president pulling 55 percent on the economy and unemployment can be counted out for reelection, however anemic his overall job approval might be.In fact, this poll is a reminder of how solid Trump’s 2020 prospects would look if he was a bit less … Trumpy, for lack of a better word.It’s mostly Republicans driving that number but he’s at 53 percent approval on the economy and 56 percent on unemployment among independents, a group that gives him an overall job approval of just 35 percent. Those are also the only two out of 14 categories tested in...

Full headline: Winning: Trump, Xi close to ‘trade deal’ as Chinese farmers warn government they’ll need subsidies to compete with U.S. farm productsAs official Washington preoccupies itself with the latest alleged “crisis” involving some aspect of the Trump administration, the White House has been quietly but steadily making progress on its key trade objectives. Last year POTUS Donald Trump announced that his negotiators had reached a deal with Mexico and Canada to rework NAFTA into a new United States Mexico Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA). The agreement awaits action in the U.S. Congress and the legislatures of the other two countries,...

There’s been no end to the complaints on the left (and portions of the right as well) about President Trump’s use of tariffs to attempt to craft better trade deals for the United States. The results have been a mixed bag thus far, with some efforts delivering results (see: Mexico and Canada) and others seeming to fall short (the auto industry is a good example there). But some of the greatest consternation on display around punditry panels has been caused by the President’s aggressive stance toward China, arguably our largest trading partner. Trump’s complaints about their habitual theft of...

President Trump, in an expletive-laden speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Saturday, accused FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team of trying to take him out with “bulls---” and accused a top Clinton aide of not having recovered “from getting his a-- kicked.” Trump accused his opponents of moving away from a narrative of Russian collusion as Mueller prepares to file his report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. He said that the report was being produced “by people who weren’t elected.” “Unfortunately you put the wrong people in a couple of positions and they leave people...