Free Republic

Both GOP senators from Texas are joining other republicans in breaking ranks with the president over a tariff threat to Mexico. Senator Ted Cruz says it is a game of chicken on who will blink first. “I understand that the president is frustrated with congressional democrats refusing to do their job,” Cruz said. “That being said, this is the wrong solution to the crisis.”

The import price index FELL 0.3% last month. It's down 1.5% for the year. That didn't stop NPR (and many other news sources) from doing an extended story about how tariffs on Chinese goods are hurting the poor. Even the Drudge Report had screaming headlines about how rising costs from the tariffs had ALREADY (just weeks in) cost U.S. consumers more than they'd made from the Trump tax cuts. American Public Media host Kai Ryssdall (who sounds to me exactly like the guy from the old "You Don't Know Jack" video game), hosts "The Market Report." He has spent nearly...

The Treasury Department reported a $208 billion deficit for the month of May — which is $61 billion higher than May 2018. To put that in perspective, the deficit for the entire year of 2007 was $161 billion. In the first eight months of the current fiscal year, red ink has already reached $738 billion. Even adjusting for inflation, the total annual federal deficit has exceeded that only six times in the nation’s history (five of them under President Obama). Not surprisingly, the Republican tax cuts are taking the blame for this year’s extraordinary deficits. But wait a minute. Overall...

As part of a series of sanctions, the White House announced new sanctions targeting the Iranian mullahs’ energetic petrochemical industry. Following calls of the Iranian resistance, the cries of the people to stop human rights violations, and the US commitment to fighting against Iranian Regime terrorism new sanction on the petrochemical industry starts. The new sanctions come while Washington is increasing pressures on Tehran for its ballistic missiles, terrorism, and proxy wars across the Middle East. The U.S. Treasury said Iran’s oil ministry last year awarded Khatam al-Anbiya, the economic and the engineering arm of the regime’s Terrorist Revolutionary Guards...

The prices of goods imported into the United States fell in May even as tariffs increased on goods from China. ...Imports from Asian countries outside of China also fell in price, dropping by 0.2 percent in May for a 1.4 percent decline compared with 12-months prior. This suggests that companies that have shifted production out of China are not paying higher prices, undermining one of the key assumptions behind claims that tariffs would drive up prices for U.S. consumers. Inflation in the U.S. has fallen below the Federal Reserve’s target of two percent, indicating that consumers have not been squeezed...

As President Donald Trump says his administration is moving closer to a trade deal with China, one of the major sticking points has been China’s disregard of intellectual property protections and claims dating back years about rampant Chinese theft of corporate trade secrets. The allegations are not hyperbole. One in five North American-based corporations on the CNBC Global CFO Council says Chinese companies have stolen their intellectual property within the last year. In all, 7 of the 23 companies surveyed say that Chinese firms have stolen from them over the past decade. As the Trump administration works on a trade...

For many Chinese, they would instinctively think of the fact that China had no say in shaping these rules, and is actually making a compromise when it agrees to follow them. However, when it comes to the understanding of IP rights issues, the Chinese regime has always and will always continue with its demonic mindset. On Feb. 1, the day after the US-China trade negotiations, Beijing-based Chinese media group Duowei News (with print circulation in the U.S.) published an article titled, “Lessons Learned from the Trade War: Beijing Can No Longer Bear the Shame of Having a Knife Held to...

(Snip) What’s going on? Economists point to a variety of explanations. The global economy has gotten weaker and the U.S. dollar stronger, making imports cheaper for Americans to buy and lessening the impact of tariffs. The cost of imports excluding foreign oil have fallen almost 1% in the past year. “We are importing deflation,” asserted chief U.S. economist Chris Low of FTN Financial.

Manufacturing has slipped sharply in recent months, and President Trump’s tariffs appear partly to blame.Gauges including the ISM and Markit PMI indicate either flat or contracting activity.Nearly a half million manufacturing jobs have been added since Trump took office, but only 13,000 this year.While those measures could change direction once the tariff issue is settled, current conditions show that one of the key pillars in the Trump expansion is starting to wobble.

There seems to be a growing appreciation among some on the right for economic nationalism. If the goal is global growth then the concept of comparative advantage makes free trade a clear winner. If the goal is “America First” then there are certain situations in which one could claim Mercantilism is the best thing for the USA. I contend that the USA is currently not in one of those situations in which Mercantilism is best. Mercantilism adherents believe that tariffs should be placed on high value imports and raw material exports, for purposes of a definition. They also dislike free...

President Donald Trump told CNBC on Monday he believes China will make a deal with the U.S. “because they’re going to have to.” In a wide-ranging telephone interview on “Squawk Box, ” Trump defended his threats to slap tariffs on Mexico and China, which he said are putting the U.S. “at a tremendous competitive advantage.” “The China deal is going to work out. You know why? Because of tariffs,” Trump told co-host Joe Kernen. “Right now, China is getting absolutely decimated by companies that are leaving China, going to other countries, including our own, because they don’t want to pay...

From The Great Betrayal jacket (1998): Pat Buchanan has seen firsthand the devastating effects of America's slavish devotion to global free trade. As a Republican candidate for president in 1992 and 1996, he met plenty of American workers who had been sacrificed to the Global Economy, and saw towns and entire regions abandoned by the industries that once supported them. While America boasts of having a strong economy - a powerful stock market, booming corporate profits, record CEO salaries - the men and women he met on the campaign trail told a far different story. With free trade now supported...

President Trump threatened more tariffs on Chinese imports if President Xi Jinping is not at this month’s G-20 meeting. The president previously threatened to put levies on another $300 billion in Chinese goods if an agreement is not reached soon. President Donald Trump confirmed on Monday that additional tariffs on Chinese goods will be levied if Chinese President Xi Jinping does not attend this month’s G-20 meeting. When asked during a telephone interview if that means the new tariffs would go into effect immediately, Trump told CNBC’s Becky Quick, “Yes, it would.” The president previously threatened to put levies on...

There’s a scene in the movie “Tombstone” where Kurt Russell’s character, Wyatt Earp, was surrounded by cowboys who told him to “turn loose” one of their partners who had just murdered the town marshal. Earp, standing alone and determined to enforce the law, had to think quickly as he was about to be rushed by several cowboys – including Ike Clanton, who had threatened him earlier against all the law stuff: “Hey Law Dog, law don’t go ‘round here.” With no options, Earp pointed his gun at Ike’s forehead and said, “You die first, get it? Your friends might get...

On Sunday, the government of Vietnam said it had identified dozens of fake “Made in Vietnam” certificates on everything from agriculture to textiles and steel produced by Chinese companies trying to circumvent U.S. tariffs. Vietnam also alleged that some Chinese exporters had been illegally re-routing orders to Vietnam since the Trump administration hiked tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods from 10 percent to 25 percent last month. The government cited an example of U.S. customs officials uncovering Chinese plywood being shipped to America through a Vietnamese company. The Southeast Asian country pledged to increase penalties on trade-related fraud, but...

LAREDO, Texas — The edges of this small border city bustle with activity as construction vehicles clear flat expanses of land for massive warehouses, and semi-trucks moving American and Mexican goods appear to cover every inch of roadway. To James Gonzalez, 33, the sterile, boxy buildings and traffic congestion only a few miles from the five bridges that connect the U.S. to Mexico represent financial success and future business opportunities. The city's fortunes, based entirely on trade between the two countries, is forever tied to the United States’ kinship with or animus for its southern neighbor. The closeness of that...

China’s exports unexpectedly returned to growth in May despite higher U.S. tariffs, but imports fell the most in nearly three years in a further sign of weak domestic demand that could prompt Beijing to step up stimulus measures. Some analysts suspected Chinese exporters may have rushed out shipments to the United States to avoid new tariffs on $300 billion of goods that President Donald Trump is threatening to impose in a rapidly escalating trade dispute. But Monday’s better-than-expected export data is unlikely to ease fears that a longer and costlier U.S.-China trade war may no longer be avoidable, pushing the...

The escalating trade impasse has turned into a boon for countries such as Vietnam, as companies increasingly switch to alternative suppliers. Vietnam is by far the biggest winner to date, having gained 7.9 percent of its gross domestic product from trade diversion. Vietnam is trailed by Taiwan, which has gained 2.1 percent of its GDP from import substitution.

The pro-mass immigration Koch brothers’ network of billionaire, donor-class organizations is readying to financially back Democrats, so long as they promise to support amnesty for illegal aliens and vote to advance free trade at all costs. In a memo to its staff, the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity (AFP) organization announced that the economic libertarian group is set to back any elected official in Washington, DC, — including Democrats — who support their agenda of amnesty for illegal aliens and endless free trade, and oppose the GOP voter-preferred economic nationalist agenda of less immigration and tariffs to protect American jobs. The...

Imposing tariffs on Mexico would also have done nothing to stop the flow of immigrants. At least not directly. However, the threat did bring President Adrés Manuel López Obrador to the table. And Mexico will be providing assistance to the US in order to stem the imposition of tariffs.