Free Republic

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said Monday that he's planning to introduce legislation in the coming weeks to expand the electric vehicle tax credit and link it to domestic manufacturing, calling the bill a way to help both the environment and the economy. "That's a pretty concrete application of how the Green New Deal can create jobs in the United States," Khanna, the first vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters. Under current law, people who purchase new electric vehicles can receive a tax credit of up to $7,500. The amount of the credit phases out after a manufacturer...

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy is asking President Donald Trump to grant a presidential permit to extend the Alaska Railroad into Canada, supporting a Canadian company seeking to blaze a new path for Asian-bound products. Linking the Alaska and North American rail systems, an idea more than a century old, would cut at least two days travel time for Canadian and Lower 48 cargo headed to the Far East because of shorter sea routes, supporters say. “To me it was a no-brainer,” said Sean McCoshen, chief executive of Alberta to Alaska Railway Development Corp., speaking to the Senate Transportation Committee late...

How Are Those Steel Tariffs Working? Not so good. https://t.co/z5TwS7ZcyX— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) March 18, 2019

France is blocking the launch of trade talks with the US, exasperating its EU partners who fear a restart to a trade war with President Donald Trump, diplomats said on Friday. “The French are blocking, but they are isolated,” a European source told AFP after a Friday meeting of envoys from member states ended without an agreement. The envoys are struggling to decide a mandate to launch the transatlantic negotiations given the opposition of Paris that fears domestic blowback just months ahead of European elections, set for May 22 to 26. Berlin, however, strongly wants the deal in order to...

If the trade deal with China is not "great," the United States will not accept it, stated President Donald Trump on Friday. He stressed once again that the talks with Beijing are going "very well." (Please see link for full article)

What started as an American phenomenon is now being felt around the world as U.S. oil exports surge to levels unthinkable only a few years ago. The flow of crude will keep growing over the next few years with huge consequences for the oil industry, global politics and even whole economies. OPEC, for example, will face challenges keeping oil prices high, while Washington has a new, and potent, diplomatic weapon. American oil exports stepped up a gear last year, jumping more than 70 percent to just over 2 million barrels a day. Oil traders and shale executives believe U.S. crude...

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.