Free Republic

One of the perils of being well-off is the constant risk that the federal government and/or your friendly state and local tax collectors will figure out new and different ways to snatch more of your wealth. Especially wealth that you earned the old-fashioned way: by inheriting it. To raise your paranoia to the appropriate level, here are two new things to worry about. Few noticed when the House of Representatives in May overwhelming passed the imaginatively named “Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act of 2019.” The vote was 417-3. Senate passage was thought to be a mere...

The price of bitcoin tumbled Monday after President Trump Opens a New Window. tweeted Thursday that he was “not a fan” of cryptocurrencies and criticized Facebook’s Opens a New Window. Libra digital currency that’s set to launch next year. Bitcoin price briefly hit below $10,000 just after midnight Monday, a two-week low for the leading digital coin, Coindesk’s data Opens a New Window. showed. The cryptocurrency appeared to rebound slightly to bring it past $10,000 as of Monday morning. It’s unclear what caused the sudden price drop, but it comes just days after Trump took to Twitter to slam cryptocurrencies....

When China’s central government chose Shenyang Machine Tool, a state-owned manufacturing behemoth in the northeastern province of Liaoning, to undergo a programme of reform two years ago, it probably imagined it would provide a yardstick for the broader regeneration of the region as a whole. It could not have been more wrong. While the provincial authorities reported growth of 6.1 per cent in the first quarter, which was on a par with the national figure, little of that upturn came courtesy of Shenyang Machine Tool. In fact, the company’s decline, coupled with years of losses due to mismanagement and political...

BEIJING--China's gross domestic product rose 6.2% in the second quarter from a year earlier, the slowest pace in at least 27 years, according to official data released on Monday. The result was the slowest since the first quarter of 1992 when the earliest quarterly data was available, according to Wind. In the first quarter, China's GDP grew 6.4% from a year earlier.

A record 157,005,000 people were employed in June, the most since February and the 19th record of Trump's presidency, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday. And the economy added a strong 224,000 jobs in June, well above the estimate of 160,000. The unemployment rate, the lowest in 50 years, ticked up a tenth of a point to 3.7 percent. In June, the nation’s civilian noninstitutionalized population, consisting of all people age 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution, reached 259,037,000. Of those, 162,981,000 participated in the labor force by either holding a job...

U.S. employers added 224,000 jobs Opens a New Window. in June, beating Wall Street Opens a New Window. ’s expectations of 160,000 likely quelling some concerns about an impending economic slowdown on the heels of a worse-than-expected month for job creation. The unemployment rate ticked up slightly at 3.7 percent, while the labor force participation rate was also little unchanged at 62.9 percent. Average hourly earnings, meanwhile, rose by 6 cents to $27.90. Over the year, average hourly earnings have increased by 3.1 percent, slightly missing expectations of 3.2 percent growth. Fox News Posted at 9:15 am on July 5,...

The U.S. added 224,00 jobs in June, the Labor Department reported Friday, exceeding expectations amid heightened concerns about the health of the economy. The unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 3.7 percent, but the strong June jobs gains are welcome news for economists after a May jobs report that fell far short of initial predictions. This developing report will be updated.

Peace. Trump said this week that if he hadn’t been elected, the U.S. would be at war with North Korea. That’s a stretch, but he has demonstrated repeatedly that he is not eager to use America’s military overseas. Prosperity. The single most reliable indicator of whether an incumbent president will be reelected is whether the economy is doing well. Under Trump, the economy is going gangbusters—in fact, better than most economists predicted was even possible. With unemployment at record lows and the stock market at record highs, there isn’t even a hint of inflation. Trump stimulated an economy Sovereignty. If...

President Donald Trump likes to keep score. Well, here's a score for him: America, zero; while the rest of the world keeps tallying up free trade points. That's right; while American consumers have been waiting for well over a year to see some resolution to the various trade disputes started by Trump, other countries have agreed to lower their tariffs against each other and signed free trade agreements with one another. Meanwhile, American consumers and exporters are drowning in a sea of high tariffs. Let's recap. For the last year and a half, the president has unilaterally imposed tariffs...

President Donald Trump likes to keep score. Well, here's a score for him: America, zero; while the rest of the world keeps tallying up free trade points. That's right; while American consumers have been waiting for well over a year to see some resolution to the various trade disputes started by Trump, other countries have agreed to lower their tariffs against each other and signed free trade agreements with one another. Meanwhile, American consumers and exporters are drowning in a sea of high tariffs. Some of Trump's supporters have argued that the president is actually a free trader who wants...

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Commerce Department imposed duties of more than 400% on steel imports from Vietnam, accusing some businesses of shipping products from the Southeast Asian nation to evade the levies in a further escalation of tension between the two trading partners. In three preliminary circumvention rulings on Vietnamese steel, the Commerce Department said certain products produced in South Korea and Taiwan were shipped to Vietnam for minor processing before being exported to U.S. as corrosion-resistant steel products and cold-rolled steel. Customs officials have been ordered to collect cash deposits at rates as high as 456.23% on imports of...

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a record on Wednesday, notching its fourth straight session of gains.

Chinese President Xi came to the summit with serious economic and political challenges domestically. President Trump was in a stronger negotiation position. So what happened? U.S. President Trump and Chinese President Xi held their highly anticipated summit at the Group of 20 meeting in Osaka, Japan on Saturday. Was it a successful meeting? That depends on whom you ask. On the surface, the outcome of the summit is positive. Both countries called a truce on the trade war, so there won’t be further deterioration of trade relations between the two world’s largest economies for a while. Both sides also agreed...

President Donald Trump said Monday that trade talks with China, which had stalled out in May, have “already begun” following his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit over the weekend. The renewed talks were being held by phone, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. The president added that any deal between the two economic superpowers would need to be somewhat tilted in the U.S.′ favor. Trump and Xi had agreed during a bilateral meeting at the summit in Osaka, Japan, to hold off on imposing new tariffs on imports of each other’s goods and to...

The solid economy is doing little to bolster support for President Donald Trump. Americans give Trump mixed reviews for his economic stewardship despite the growth achieved during this presidency, according to a new survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Nearly two-thirds describe as “good” an economy that appears to have set a record for the longest expansion in U.S. history, with decade-long growth that began under Barack Obama. More people consider the economy to be good today than did at the start of the year. But significantly fewer approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, even...

How do Democrats sell their policies when the economy is doing well and unemployment is at 50-year lows? By avoiding the subject. At least, that’s what Democrats did during the two nights of debating. The very first question asked in the first debate, by Savannah Guthrie, was about whether the Democrats’ far-left agenda would risk the economic growth we’ve been enjoying. “Seventy-one percent of Americans say the economy is doing well, including 60% of Democrats,” she said. “What do you say to those who worry this kind of significant change could be risky to the economy?” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the...

The U.S. economy broke a record for its longest expansion ever Monday. Economic expansion has continued for more than 10 years. Growth is now in its 121st month since the Great Recession ended in June 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. The economy set its previous 120-month record between March 1991 and March 2001. That growth period ended after the dot com bubble burst. The rate of growth, however, has been slower than during other periods of economic expansion. For example, during that previous record-holding period in the 90s, the average growth was 3.6 percent per year....

President Reagan was the left's most hated POTUS, evah, until President Trump. He was an outsider with no fedgov or foreign policy experience. A pro-life Christian conservative and an America-loving patriot. His anti-Communist, anti-USSR rhetoric was inflammatory, reckless and dangerous. His name-calling ("evil empire'), inexperience, war-mongering and direct confrontational (and bungling) style was going to bumble us into a nuclear conflagration. His tone was the worst. And his photo op meetings and one-on-one summits with dictatorial soviet leaders produced no immediate tangible results. Total failures. And then (unexpectedly and shockingly) the walls began crumbling... followed by a complete collapse. Now...

Asia Pacific markets mostly rose in Monday morning trade after U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to hold off on slapping additional tariffs in an effort to resume trade talks. Mainland Chinese shares surged in early trade. The Shanghai composite added 1.74% while the Shenzhen component skyrocketed 2.65%. The Shenzhen composite also added 2.424%.

Vietnam and the European Union signed a free trade agreement on Sunday, opening opportunities to further boost trade between the euro bloc and one of Southeast Asia’s biggest manufacturing nations. The agreement, which was signed by European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmstrom and Vietnamese Trade Minister Tran Tuan Anh in Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital, will eliminate almost all tariffs for goods traded between Vietnam and the EU’s 28 member countries. “It is a special day for relations between the EU and Vietnam. The agreement has opened a new horizon for the development of both sides,” Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc...