Free Republic

Mexico is going to cave, and it's not just the tariffs. We've got the Mexicans over a barrel on energy, and if we want, we can wipe their economy out. Without American energy imports, the Mexican economy collapses. This actually doesn't make any sense. Mexico is awash in petroleum and natural gas. But the Mexicans just can't get it out of the ground. American petroleum engineers were critical to the early success of the Mexican oil industry. From 1918 to the late '20s, Mexico was second only to the United States in oil production, and it was number one in...

Metapa, Mexico - Some 200 military police, immigration agents and federal police were awaiting a group of about 1,000 Central American migrants who were walking north along a southern Mexico highway on Wednesday. The group of migrants, including many women and children, set out early from Cuidad Hidalgo at the Mexico Guatemala border and was headed for Tapachula, the principal city in the region. State and local police accompanied the caravan. ...

Two in states won by Clinton and six in states that backed Trump ANALYSIS — The fight for the Senate starts off with only a handful of seats at risk. And that’s being generous. A few other states are worth your attention because of their competitiveness or questions about President Donald Trump’s impact, but almost two-thirds of Senate contests this cycle start as “safe” for the incumbent party and are likely to remain that way. Of course, a retirement or a public scandal could create a contest where one should not exist, and an implosion of the Trump presidency could...

“I’ve talked with a number of people today, all of them off the record, but I can tell you tonight, I fear for the republic,” he said. “The Republican Party is being led on, well, in the U.S. Senate, on Capitol Hill, by cowards. They don’t represent the Americans who sent them there to represent the national interests. Instead, they’re clearly led by multi-nationalists, big business and Wall Street and the lobbies that represent those multi-nationals and business interests.” As he spoke, images of Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell were displayed on the screen. Earlier Tuesday, McConnell issued a statement...

The 2.2 million diapers are being bought with funds provided in the February border spending bill for the DHS. The bill included “$192,700,000 for improved medical care, transportation, and consumables to better ensure the health and safety of migrants who are temporarily in [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] custody,” according to a congressional Explanatory Statement of the provisions. The money is also being used to fly migrants from the border to their target job sites and homes in the United States.

Tariffs are a popular remedy to maintain a favorable balance of trade and create domestic jobs. Some believe tariffs will foster a renaissance of American manufacturing, but let’s consider the facts. America has six million unfilled jobs, with almost every industry desperately trying to hire qualified personnel. Our trade surplus is widening as these trade wars progress, and international relations are very stressed. Free trade allows buyers and sellers to be winners and facilitates comparative advantage and the division of labor. For example, iPhones are designed and engineered in the United States, manufactured in China, and sold worldwide. China assembles...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mexican officials will seek to persuade the White House in talks hosted by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday that their government has done enough to stem immigration and avoid looming tariffs. U.S. authorities at the southern border with Mexico have become overwhelmed in recent years by an increase in mostly Central American families and unaccompanied minors seeking asylum to escape violence back home.

Senate Republicans pushed back on President Donald Trump -- including the threat of a veto override -- after he scoffed at the possibility that members of his own party would try to block his plan to impose a tariff on Mexico over concerns about the potential economic fallout. Senator Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican, predicted that the Senate would have enough votes to override a presidential veto of any measure that would keep Trump’s tariffs on Mexico from going into effect June 10. “You’ve heard of people who are war weary,” Cramer said. “Senate Republicans are tariff weary.” Trump,...

Congressional Republicans have begun discussing whether they may have to vote to block President Trump’s planned new tariffs on Mexico, potentially igniting a second standoff this year over Trump’s use of executive powers to circumvent Congress, people familiar with the talks said. The vote, which would be the GOP’s most dramatic act of defiance since Trump took office, could also have the effect of blocking billions of dollars in border wall funding that the president had announced in February when he declared a national emergency at the southern border, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because...

President Donald Trump is "deadly serious" about his threat to impose a 5 percent tariff on all goods from Mexico over his concerns of illegal immigration, Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, said Sunday. "He is absolutely, deadly serious," Mulvaney said on Fox News Sunday. "I fully expect these tariffs to go on to at least the 5 percent level on June 10." Trump last week tweeted the United States would impose a 5 percent tariff on all goods from Mexico "until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP." Mulvaney doubled-down...

President Trump Sunday derided Mexico's effort to negotiate away his threat to impose 5% tariffs, calling the nation an "abuser" of the United States and declaring, "America has had enough." “People have been saying for years that we should talk to Mexico. The problem is that Mexico is an 'abuser' of the United States, taking but never giving. It has been this way for decades," Trump said on Twitter. "Either they stop the invasion of our Country, "[W]hich they can do very easily, or our many companies and jobs that have been foolishly allowed to move South of the Border,...

Mexico’s President told President Donald Trump that America is for migrants. His disrespectful comments came after President Trump announced tariffs that would be imposed on Mexico until they stopped the flow of migrants. The New York Times reported that President Trump said Thursday that he would impose a 5 percent tariff on all imported goods from Mexico beginning June 10, a tax that would “gradually increase” until the flow of undocumented immigrants across the border stopped. The announcement, which Mr. Trump made on his Twitter feed, said the tariffs would be in place “until such time as illegal migrants coming...

Mexico's top diplomats are knocking on doors in Washington this week, looking for a compromise to avoid the 5 percent tariffs that President Trump has vowed to impose on their exports beginning next week. Trump said he would impose the tariffs and that they would escalate over time unless Mexico took unspecified steps to curb the immigration crisis at the border. Mexico Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard told reporters in Washington on Monday that the tariffs would be counterproductive in combatting mass migration from Central America, and that the economic fallout could further weaken Mexico's ability to control migration in the...

The Trump administration on Friday announced that it would allow for the year-round sale of gasoline with higher concentrations of ethanol. The action addresses a rule the Environmental Protection Agency had in place preventing the sale of so-called E15 fuel, which contains 15 percent ethanol and 85 percent gasoline, between June 1 and Sept. 15. The purpose was to prevent air pollution and curb dependence on foreign petroleum, but the ban has stopped some retailers from selling E15 at all because of the need to change out pumps.

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) Meanwhile, in news that actually matters to Americans… – While everyone else is focused on President Donald Trump’s first state visit to the future Islamic Republic of England, paying tribute to a monarchy that is doomed to fall within a generation, I thought I’d focus on something of actual substance. If you perused the Drudge Report this morning – which I still do despite his lurch off into leftist paranoia over the past year – you would find the following links at the right side of the landing page: PLANET TECH ROCKED:...

President Trump believes, not without good reason, that the Mexican government is not doing its utmost to stop the illegal flow of Central Americans crossing the U.S. border. And so he has responded with . . . a $17 billion–a–year–and–rising sales tax on Americans. The president loves tariffs. He believes that they are an effective means of protecting American firms from unfair overseas competition and a good negotiating tool as he works to reform trade agreements that he believes are disadvantageous to Americans. But the question of who ends up actually paying any given tax is complicated. The price of...

China’s oil import dependence is at 70 percent currently, so it can’t achieve this self-sufficiency in a decade or two, even if it were to start steadily reversing its declining oil production and tap more shale oil and gas resources. A PetroChina test oil well at a shale field in western China could finally mean a strong commercial potential for shale oil for the first time in the world’s top crude importer, Morgan Stanley said earlier this year. The shale boom in China, however, would be just a fraction of the U.S. shale revolution—Morgan Stanley expects Chinese shale oil production...

Sen. Mitt Romney warned Friday that President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs against Mexico were the wrong approach and could harm Americans more than they help curtail illegal immigration. “A tariff targeting Mexico that negatively impacts our own interests will only end in a waiting game of increasingly harmful consequence to the American people,” Romney said.

Donald Trump is “deadly serious” about slapping tariffs on imports from Mexico, his chief of staff said on Sunday, even though the president “intentionally left the declaration sort of ad hoc” amidst fears of damage to the US economy if he follows through on his threat. Mexico could tighten migration controls to defuse Trump tariffs threat Speaking to Fox News Sunday, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney acknowledged there are no concrete benchmarks being set to assess whether Mexico is acting to reduce numbers of migrants from Central America entering the US via Mexican territory enough to satisfy the White...

Now, a story in the Sunday Telegraph is just the latest to pose serious questions. The newspaper reports that China has been "rigging" 5G equipment testing to discredit Huawei's rivals, including Nokia and Ericsson. According to government and industry sources, "Beijing is feeding secret details of security vulnerabilities" to the testers to tip the balance in Huawei's favor. The testing encompasses "hacking techniques used to check for weak spots... vulnerabilities discovered by China’s secret state hackers have been passed to the 5G testers to ensure Nokia and Ericsson’s equipment is found to be insecure." Huawei's security issues have always been...