Free Republic

National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow denounced Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Sunday after the 2020 White House candidate said President Trump was "taking credit for a recovery that started under [former President Barack] Obama." "What Mr. Booker and some others are saying is simply not true factually," Kudlow told Fox News' "America's News HQ". Kudlow spoke two days after the publication of the April jobs report, which showed that the American economy added 263,000 jobs last month while the unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent, the lowest since 1969. Despite the rosy numbers, Booker insisted that the boom's effects were...

A sharp sell-off will start the week on Wall Street after President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the U.S. will hike tariffs on goods imported from China, casting doubt on recent optimism that the world’s two largest economies were close to a resolution to their trade battle. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures lost 400 points after falling as much as 479 points earlier Sunday evening. S&P 500 futures dropped 1.3% shortly after their open Sunday evening, while Nasdaq-100 Index futures dropped 1.5%. Trump said in a tweet Sunday afternoon that the current 10% levies on $200 billion worth of...

President Donald Trump said Sunday that tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods will increase to 25% on Friday, despite repeated claims by the administration in recent weeks that trade talks with Beijing were going well. The tariff rate on those goods was originally set at 10%. Trump had originally threatened to increase the tariffs at the start of the year, but postponed that decision after China and the US agreed to sit down for trade talks. In addition, Trump threatened to impose 25% tariffs on an additional $325 billion of Chinese goods “shortly.”

The Nasdaq on Friday closed at a record, and the S&P 500 narrowly missed its own, as investors bought stocks following an April employment report that came in hotter than expected, underscoring consistent labor-market strength. The Nasdaq Composite Index COMP advanced 127.22 points, or 1.6%, at 8,164, buoyed by gains in e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc., which helped the technology-laden index to carve out a fresh all-time high and recover from a three-session stumble. The S&P 500 index climbed 28.12 points, or 1%, at 2,945.64, barely missing its own closing record at 2,845.83. All 11 S&P 500 sectors finished in positive...

As news circulated Tuesday that President Donald Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., are eyeing a $2 trillion infrastructure spending package, the House Republican Study Committee introduced a budget proposal that recognizes that America’s $22 trillion—and rapidly growing—national debt is unsustainable, and that Congress must change course. “Preserving American Freedom,” the Republican Study Committee’s comprehensive fiscal 2020 budget proposal, would rein in Washington’s spending addiction by prioritizing core constitutional functions. By reducing inappropriate and wasteful spending and right-sizing the federal government, the committee’s proposal would balance the budget in six years and start...

Justin Amash has a challenger in Michigan's 3rd Congressional district.

PITTSBURGH — In his first official event as a 2020 presidential candidate, Joe Biden skipped past the primary on Monday and went right to the general election. From the atmospherics of his first campaign rally to the substance of his speech, the former vice president delivered a carefully calibrated message: While his rivals are chasing the Democratic nomination, Biden plans to pursue a mission focused on Donald Trump. “If I’m going to be able to beat Donald Trump in 2020, it’s going to happen here,” Biden told a packed crowd at the Teamsters Local 249 banquet hall. Biden offered an...

Albert Einstein once wrote that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Were he alive today, he would be repeating the line to anyone who would listen, especially the reporters on cable news channels such as CNBC. He might add that the world’s policymakers always approach oil market disruptions in the same way: predicting there will be no impact on prices. Einstein would then point out that the policymakers are consistently wrong. A hefty price boost has followed every disruption. The world has experienced nineteen oil market disruptions over the...

German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told Chinese Vice Premier Liu He on Saturday that he hoped the US-China trade dispute that has slowed global growth would soon be over. For months, the world’s two largest economies have been locked in a trade war that has cost them billions of dollars and rattled global markets. The row has also taken its toll on businesses from Germany and other European countries that are operating in China, Altmaier was quoted by state media as saying. The 9-month trade dispute between Beijing and Washington has disrupted supply chains, upset global markets and involved both...

Hispanics for Trump A national immigration analyst says President Donald Trump's popularity is continuing to grow among Hispanic Americans – a segment of the American population that's projected to become the largest voting minority in the 2020 presidential election. "Latinos are paying attention to what President Trump is doing," says Maria Espinoza, national director of The Remembrance Project, adding that they're also welcoming "the results of his America First policies." The Remembrance Project, a Texas-based not-for-profit, honors and remembers Americans and legal residents who have been killed by illegal aliens. Trump's approval among Hispanics is certainly seen in the polls,...

President Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on imported washing machines has had an odd effect: It raised prices on washing machines, as expected, but also drove up the cost of clothes dryers, which rose by $92 last year. What appears to have happened, according to new research from economists at the University of Chicago and the Federal Reserve, is a case study in how a measure meant to help domestic factory workers can rebound on American consumers, creating unexpected costs and leaving shoppers with a sky-high bill for every factory job created. Research to be released on Monday by the...

REAL PROPERTY PROTECTION AMENDMENT Governmental financial impositions of any year with respect to any residential property without water frontage shall not exceed 1/40,000 the average annual federal civilian salary as of the end of the penultimate calendar year times the sum of their square footage of finished living space and linear footage of public road frontage. EMPLOYMENT/INCOME PROTECTION AMENDMENT Federal/state employer/income taxation may be levied at no more than 24/20ths of the rates of January 1, 2019 on any person/entity having an annual income of less than the average annual federal civilian salary as of the end of the penultimate...

The U.S. trade deficit fell for the second straight month in February, and the politically sensitive deficit in the trade of goods with China narrowed. The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the gap between the goods and services that the United States sells and what it buys from the rest of the world dropped 3.4% to $49.4 billion in February, the lowest since June. The deficit had slid 14.6% in January. Exports climbed 1.1% to $209.7 billion on a surge in shipments of civilian aircraft, passenger cars and medicine. Imports rose 0.2% to $259.1 billion. The goods deficit with China...

The European Union has drawn up a list of $20 billion worth of U.S. products it could tax in an escalating feud over plane industry subsidies, the EU’s executive commission said Wednesday. The commission said the EU could tax the products, which range from aircraft parts to frozen fish, from early next year in retaliation for U.S. financial support to Boeing that it says hurt Europe’s Airbus. The extent of the EU punitive duties will depend on a ruling by the World Trade Organization. Earlier in this dispute, the EU sought permission to target $12 billion worth of U.S. products....

For American families, Tax Day is more than just a paperwork nightmare, it’s also a day when they look back to consider how their budget has been stretched by taxes and to consider where all that money has gone. This year, there is an insidious tax that many Americans have no idea they’ve been paying. That’s mostly because instead of being referred to as a tax, it’s been cloaked in the jargon of international trade. This tax is a tariff, and over the last 10 months Americans have been paying tariffs in record numbers as a part of a multi-front trade...

Amid an ongoing tariff conflict with China and a retaliatory tariff dispute with Mexico and Canada on wide-ranging issues between plumbing to steel tariffs, US President Donald Trump had set off another set of rivalry and a new front of his trade war against European Union by imposing a tit-for-tat tariffs worth of $11 billion of EU products, raising tensions over a long-running transatlantic aircraft battle. (please see link for full story) Please note I am not familiar with this source. They seem professional, but the site says .org, rather than .com, and the author apparently does not use their...

Trade agreements have been greatly successful at lowering trade barriers around the world. But they're not without their flaws. Each agreement, in practice, tends to retain some counterproductive protectionist policies and may even export some bad policies. The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), or "new NAFTA," is no different. As soon as President Donald Trump got into office, he threatened to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement. He imposed metal tariffs on steel and aluminum for the stated purpose of forcing Canada and Mexico to renegotiate the 25-year-old trade agreement. The result was the USMCA. Assessing the impact of...

U.S. producer prices increased by the most in five months in March, but underlying wholesale inflation was tame. The Labor Department said on Thursday its producer price index for final demand rose 0.6 percent last month, lifted by a surge in the cost of gasoline. That was the largest increase since last October and followed a 0.1 percent gain in February. In the 12 months through March, the PPI rose 2.2 percent after advancing 1.9 percent in February. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the PPI would climb 0.3 percent in March and increase 1.9 percent on a year-on-year basis....

The head of the European Central Bank warned that global friction over trade — such as U.S. threats to impose more tariffs — is holding back the economy as he underlined the bank’s readiness to deploy more stimulus if needed. Mario Draghi said Wednesday that an improving jobs market and rising wages were helping the economy in the 19 countries that use the euro but uncertainties like trade disputes and Brexit are hurting it. “Global headwinds continue to weigh on euro area growth,” he told a news conference after the central bank kept its key interest rates and policy promises...

There’s a term called “zeroing” at the heart of this World Trade Organization decision that supports President Trump, Secretary Ross and USTR Lighthizer. When an industry product like Canadian softwood lumber is shipped into the U.S. for sale at a lower price than exists in Canada, the U.S. Commerce department calls that “dumping“. If the Canadian product is the same or higher in the U.S. as it is in Canada there is no dumping. No dumping is a “zero” or normal price differential; hence “zeroing”.