Free Republic

Key Points President Donald Trump says he has not “made that decision yet” on whether to put tariffs on another $325 billion in Chinese goods. Trump says China’s latest round of retaliatory tariffs represent “a very positive step.” Trump confirms he will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit in Japan in late June. ============================================================ President Donald Trump said the latest round of retaliatory tariffs announced by China on Monday puts the United States in a great position and represents “a very positive step” in the ongoing trade negotiations. China retaliated Monday...

Former vice president Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden partnered with infamous mobster Whitey Bulger's nephew and former secretary of state John Kerry's stepson for his lucrative business deal with the Bank of China, according to reporter Peter Schweizer's latest book. Schweizer points to the business deal with state-owned Bank of China, a $1.5 billion private equity investment, as a possible reason why the current presidential candidate has adopted a conciliatory attitude toward China. The lucrative deal between the Bank of China and Hunter Biden's company was inked in 2013 just weeks after Joe Biden brought his son along on an...

The U.S. sneaker market is valued at $21.2 billion, according to Cowen Equity Research, and while sneakers were left off President Trump’s most recent duty list, many sneaker fans are wondering what effects a new round of tariffs could have on the booming industry. On May 10, Trump made good on his promise to raise tariffs by 15% on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports. The now 25% tariffs are meant as a punishment to China for the country's refusal to accept the Trump Administration’s latest version of a potential trade deal. Trump also ordered the Office of the United...

While many Democrats continue to push the lie that POTUS Donald Trump is a stooge of Russia their allies in the garbage American media are serving as propaganda mouthpieces for Communist China. On Monday, the Left-wing establishment press peppered the airwaves with one fabrication after another regarding the effect of POTUS Donald Trump’s latest round of tariffs on $200 billion worth of imported goods from China as a way of finally leveling the trade playing field between both countries that has long favored Beijing, and heavily. In the process, these same propagandists finally came clean about the effect of tax...

RUSH: It’s amazing. The Drive-By Media now understands the concept of tax cuts and tax increases, but it took tariffs and a tariff war with the ChiComs for the Drive-Bys to understand it. I’m being ironic and a little sarcastic. They know it and understand it. It’s just that since the Republicans own mantra of tax cuts, since that is a Republican owned belief… Democrats don’t believe in cutting taxes; Republicans do, and the Democrats know it. So whenever the concept of tax cuts comes up, the Democrats and the media have to destroy it, as they did the latest...

Key Points China will raise tariffs on $60 billion in U.S. goods in retaliation for the Trump administration’s latest decision to increase duties on $200 billion worth of Chinese products. U.S. stock indexes fall about 2% as the trade war between the world’s two largest economies escalates. ================================================================ China will raise tariffs on $60 billion in U.S. goods in retaliation for the U.S. decision to hike duties on Chinese goods, the Chinese Finance Ministry said Monday. Beijing will increase tariffs on more than 5,000 products to as high as 25%. Duties on some other goods will increase to 20%. Those...

BEIJING — Chinese exporters of all sorts of products, from power adapters and computers to vacuum cleaners, are anxiously hoping trade talks in Washington this week will yield a deal that might stave off higher U.S. tariffs on imports from China. Companies across China are bracing for a tariff hike on Friday after President Donald Trump, complaining Beijing was backtracking and the talks on a festering trade dispute were taking too long, said he would raise import duties on $200 billion of Chinese goods to 25% from 10%. Amber Chen, sales manager for a vacuum cleaner manufacturer based in southern...

Stocks fell sharply on Monday, giving back the gains from a strong turnaround in the previous session, after China decided to raise tariffs on some U.S. goods as the ongoing trade war between the worldÂ’s largest economies intensifies. The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded down 490 points, while a 2.8% drop in the tech sector pushed the S&P 500 down by 1.9%. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.6%. China will hike tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. imports, starting on June 1. The goods targeted include a broad range of agricultural products. This comes after President Donald Trump raised tariffs...

Wall Street was setting up for a tough start to the week on Monday, with Dow Jones Industrial Average futures down over 300 points as investors waited for countermeasures from China after trade talks with the U.S. appeared to end in a stalemate. How did the benchmark indexes fare? Dow futures YMM9, -1.28% fell 311 points, or 1.2%, to 25,653, while S&P 500 futures ES, +1.86% dropped 36.40 points, or 1.2%, to 2,850.50. Nasdaq-100 futures NQM9, -1.76% slid 127.75 points, or 1.7%, to 7,482.50. On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.44% rose 114.01 points, or 0.4%, to end...

I’m a free-trader and I hate tariffs — which are consumer taxes — but if ever there were a right time to impose punitive tariffs, it is now, and it is against China. President Trump is on the side of the angels on this one, and this is the right moment to shut down China’s abusive trade practices forever. Start with the basic facts: The average tariff that we imposed on China when Trump entered the White House was about 4 percent. China’s tariffs on us were about 10 percent and, even when including the 10 percent tariff that Trump...

Democratic California Sen. Kamala Harris went to great lengths to avoid agreeing with President Donald Trump on trade policy during a CNN interview that aired Sunday morning. Harris skated around the questions — she focused on how trade deals favor large corporations at the expense of the middle class — from anchor Jake Tapper during the interview that was taped in Oakland, California, earlier in the week.

“Those manufacturers who mainly sell to Europe and the United States need to start taking pain killers again,” said exporter Liao Yu, who produces bags and suitcases in Dongguan. “The cost of relocation is very high for small factories of our kind. But if you don’t move, how do you digest the tariffs? A 25 per cent [tariff] will kill everyone. Meanwhile, European and American customers are now using more suppliers in Southeast Asia to replace us. Trump is just a killer.” “We thought our products would be safe and excluded from the list [subject to US tariffs]. But Trump...

A major super PAC aligned with POTUS Donald Trump has identified six key states the president will need in order to secure his reelection next year. According to America First Action, those states are Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan, The Daily Caller reported. No doubt whatever crazy the Democrats nominate, that candidate will win the deep blue enclaves of California and New York, and may even be able to pull off a majority of votes again (though that is looking less and less likely).

The Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed a new rule Friday to make people seeking housing assistance have to prove their legal status, in a move that could oust thousands of illegal immigrants. Secretary Ben Carson said the rule would bring policy into compliance with the law, which generally tries to restrict public benefits to citizens and legal residents. “There is an affordable housing crisis in this country, and we need to make certain our scarce public resources help those who are legally entitled to it,” Mr. Carson said. When the Washington Times broke the news of the rule...

China held back from immediate retaliation for higher U.S. tariffs, unlike in past rounds, taking time to weigh its options amid uncertainty over how the Chinese economy would weather a full-bore trade conflict. A failure to break an impasse in talks in Washington on Friday opened a new phase in the trade fight after more than five months of back-and-forth negotiations. This time, some economists and analysts said, Beijing is taking stock of potential economic damage from higher tariffs.

The federal government recorded a $160.3 billion surplus in April as revenues for the month jumped to an all-time high. But even with a flood of tax receipts, the deficit so far this year is running 37.7% higher than a year ago. The Treasury Department reported Friday that the deficit for the first seven months of the budget year that began Oct. 1 totals $530.9 billion, compared to a deficit of $385.5 billion for the same period a year ago. The Trump administration projected in March that this year’s deficit will hit $1.1 trillion, up from last year’s deficit of...

As promised, goods from China will cost Americans a lot more money starting today — and selling goods in China even tougher. A last-ditch effort to avoid the imposition of tariffs failed late yesterday, resulting in a broadened trade war between two of the top global economies. At least at the moment, there don’t seem to be too many off-ramps from this conflict: The United States and China hurtled toward a defining moment in their four-decade-old relationship, with financial markets bracing for the outcome of unusually dramatic trade talks in Washington.Negotiators met into the evening on Thursday but failed...

China appealed to the United States to meet it halfway to salvage a deal that could end their trade war, with its chief negotiator in Washington for two days of talks hoping to stave off U.S. tariff hikes set to be triggered on Friday. The two sides had appeared to be converging on a deal until last weekend, when U.S. President Donald Trump announced his intention to raise tariffs with his negotiators saying that China was backtracking on earlier commitments. “The U.S. side has given many labels recently, ‘backtracking’, ‘betraying’ etc...China sets great store on trustworthiness and keeps its promises,...

After the Trump administration rattled its trade-war sabers, China has responded by proceeding with its planned visit to the US. Over the weekend, the White House threatened to impose the rest of the proposed tariffs in Chinese goods totaling $200 billion when talks on a trade deal appeared to stall. Trump advisers accused China of reneging on previously agreed positions, prompting the threats to escalate the trade war: President TrumpÂ’s top economic advisers on Monday accused China of reneging on previous commitments to resolve a monthslong trade war and said Mr. Trump was prepared to prolong the standoff to...

The diplomatic cable from Beijing arrived in Washington late on Friday night, with systematic edits to a nearly 150-page draft trade agreement that would blow up months of negotiations between the world’s two largest economies, according to three U.S. government sources and three private sector sources briefed on the talks. The document was riddled with reversals by China that undermined core U.S. demands, the sources told Reuters. In each of the seven chapters of the draft trade deal, China had deleted its commitments to change laws to resolve core complaints that caused the United States to launch a trade war:...