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VAUVERT, France Olivier Gibelin tilts a glass of deep red wine, sniffs and sips at a table set between tall concrete vats of fermenting grape juice in his rustic stone winery here. The air is heavy with an odor of yeast. "Do you want to try what will be going into your tank?" he asks ruefully, pouring a visitor a glass. "If my grandfather could taste what I'm turning into alcohol, he'd turn over in his grave."

Paris – French winemakers got some long-awaited good news this week: their wines are selling well in the United States. Or at least some of them are. Fat Bastard, for instance, is highly popular, and so too are Wild Pig, Red Bicyclette and Pont d’Avignon. Those four were among the labels on display at Vinexpo, a wine fair in Bordeaux, and they set the tone for the debate about how French vineyards confront a crisis that has resulted in a lake of unsold Gallic wine of 2.5 million hectolitres (66 million gallons). It has two causes. At home, the French...

Paris – French wine exports sank again in the first quarter of 2005 confirming a downward spiral which has plunged the sector into crisis and brought thousands of wine-growers out onto the streets in protest. "Global over-production in 2004, which is put at between 10 to 20 million hectolitres, is pulling prices down and adding to the problems of French wines which are being asked to become simpler in taste to meet growing world consumption," said Louis-Regis Affre, an official from the French Federation of Exporters of Wines and Spirits (FEVS). Apart from champagnes and sparkling wines, exports of French...

President Trump on Saturday sought to smooth over his prickly relationship with French President Emmanuel Macron as he arrived in France for the G7 summit – telling reporters he loves French wine, hours after threatening to slap tariffs on the export. “I love French wine,” the president told reporters sitting opposite Macron for a lunch after his arrival in Biarritz. “We actually have a lot in common, Emmanuel and I,” he said. “We’ve been friends for a long time and every once in a while we go at it just a little bit, not very much, but we get along...

There are three negative supply shocks that could trigger a global recession by 2020. All of them reflect political factors affecting international relations, two involve China, and the United States is at the center of each. Moreover, none of them is amenable to the traditional tools of countercyclical macroeconomic policy. The first potential shock stems from the Sino-American trade and currency war, which escalated earlier this month when President Donald Trump’s administration threatened additional tariffs on Chinese exports, and formally labeled China a currency manipulator. The second concerns the slow-brewing cold war between the U.S. and China over technology. In...

Against the dictatorship of church ladies The Church has lost its manly spirit. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the recent protests at St. Francis Church in Portland, Oregon.The ultra-progressive, borderline-heretical parish was recently assigned a new priest, Fr. George Kuforiji, who tried to restore theological and liturgical orthodoxy. For instance, the newly-minted pastor stopped using the gender-neutral terms assigned to God by the parishioners and instead began using Our Lord’s preferred pronouns: He, Him, etc. Fr. Kuforiji did away with folk music during the liturgy and took down a banner outside the church that said, “Immigrants and Refugees...

President Donald Trump said the U.S. will hike tariffs on most imports from China as his trade war with Beijing escalates. The U.S. will raise duties on $250 billion in Chinese goods to 30% from 25%, and increase tariffs on another $300 billion in products to 15% from 10%. Earlier, China announced new tariffs on $75 billion in U.S. goods — and Trump ordered U.S. companies to find an “alternative” to operating in China.

On May 28, 1993 Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12850. This improper EO changed the way the U.S. made trade deals with China and led to the loss of tens of millions of American manufacturing jobs. The story of how this was done not only proves that the Clintons are behind the loss of American jobs, but shows how Bill Clinton established a Democratic strategy for manipulating foreign policy that was copied by both Hillary while she was Secretary of State and Obama while he was president. At the time, U.S.-China trade relations were conditioned upon China’s humanitarian treatment of...

Our Country has lost, stupidly, Trillions of Dollars with China over many years. They have stolen our Intellectual Property at a rate of Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year, & they want to continue. I won’t let that happen! We don’t need China and, frankly, would be far....... better off without them. The vast amounts of money made and stolen by China from the United States, year after year, for decades, will and must STOP. Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing.... your companies HOME and making your products in...

China said Friday it will impose new tariffs on $75 billion worth of U.S. goods and resume duties on American autos. The Chinese State Council said it decided to slap tariffs ranging from 5% to 10% on $75 billion U.S. goods in two batches effective on Sept. 1 and Dec. 15. That happens to be when President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs on Chinese goods are to take effect. It also said a 25% tariff will be imposed on U.S. cars and a 5% on auto parts and components, which will go into effect on Dec.15. China had paused these tariffs...

During the course of his remaining five and a half years in office, President Trump will come to an understanding with China. Trade will be only a part of it. There will be established a concord, or state of agreement, between the two most powerful nations in the world. It will result in a peaceful 21st century. Trump will cut the part on trade sometime between now and the election fifteen months from now. He'll time it so he receives the maximum political benefit. It will ignite the markets, and the economy will assure him of re-election. The sticking point...

Go to 91:44 to hear for yourself. CNN's transcript of Lemon's CNN Tonight from 8/19 is here: http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1908/19/cnnt.02.html The rest of the transcript is rather interesting, but this is what I transcribed of Sellers' words (the money quote I heard on the way home via radio on Loesch's show with Sergio Sanchez hosting): "Well first of all, I don't think any democrat...I..I know Joe and myself both are not hoping that the country goes into a recession. Ah, we don't want individuals to suffer more than they are. But what we are saying is that the proverbial chickens are coming...

In response to recent volatility in the stock market, rising prices (and declining yields) for U.S. Treasury bonds, and difficulties in the trade relationship between the United States and China, some pundits and politicians are forecasting a recession in the U.S., timed to coincide with the 2020 presidential election. The increasing volume of these forecasts is driven partly by partisan hopes that an economic slowdown gives Democrats the best opportunity to defeat President Trump next year. But hopes of this kind do not make for sound economic forecasts. None of the major institutional forecasters is looking ahead to a recession...

The popular narrative goes that because President Trump launched a trade war against China, China has retaliated by tariffing agriculture products from red states that voted for Trump. False. You’ve all seen the headlines: “China is hitting the U.S. where it hurts: Soybeans,” and “China takes aim at America’s soybean farmers,” and “Soybean farmers are still paying for Trump’s trade war” (all from CNN).The popular narrative goes that because President Trump launched a trade war against China, China has retaliated by tariffing America’s chief export to China—agricultural products—which happen to mostly come from red states that voted for Trump. China...

Fake Science: Where did it come from? Well as they say, follow the money:Also contributing to the emergence of Fake Science is the use of science as a cudgel in policy wars, a primary tactic of what is known as Post-Normal Science. Think of it as sociology on steroids, identifying as science.And there will be no more questions because the science is settled.Ooh ooh ooh! Do Fake News next MOTUS!Posted from: MOTUS A.D.

On Tuesday, the markets bid higher following a statement from the U.S. Trade Representative’s office that tariffs will commence on September 1st, but that some products will be delayed until December 15th. To wit: “…some tariffs will take effect on Sept. 1 as planned, ‘certain products are being removed from the tariff list based on health, safety, national security and other factors and will not face additional tariffs of 10 percent. Further, as part of USTR’s public comment and hearing process, it was determined that the tariff should be delayed to December 15 for certain articles.” The only part the...

CNN reports that President Trump’s aides persuaded him to delay the imposition of the latest round of protective tariffs, previously scheduled for September, until December 15, 2019. How? They claimed new tariffs would “ruin Christmas.” Peter Navarro, Trump’s director of trade and manufacturing policy, defended the move saying that this was Trump’s, “Christmas present to the nation.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only would tariffs not perceptibly increase the price of toys, this schizophrenic shift in policy empowers the president’s political adversaries and enriches greedy multinational corporations and China. It is fairly obvious to anyone who has...

Listen up, Trumpophobes. It’s not so hard to understand the president’s appeal. Try going to one of his rallies and, instead of turning up your nose at the Walmart people, listen and learn. The abuse of President Trump and his supporters that passes for analysis from his opponents is a strategic error. The more abuse, the more Trump’s base is energized to turn out on Election Day. At his Thursday-night rally to launch his 2020 New Hampshire campaign, he broke Elton John’s all-time attendance record with a crowd of 11,500 inside the Southern New Hampshire University Arena. It wasn’t just...

Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" that "both sides will lose" President Trump's trade war with China and that it is "a fool’s errand to think you’re going to be able to get China to change the fundamentals of their economic model by poking them in the eye with some tariffs."

A rumor spread when legendary football coach Lou Holtz announced that he was leaving the University of Minnesota to accept the head coaching job at Notre Dame. The rumor? That he had been offered a lifetime contract. When he was asked about it by the press, his response was classic Lou Holtz. He said yes, he had been offered a lifetime contract. But, he added that we needed to understand what a lifetime contract means in big time college football. He said, “It means that I cannot be fired, during the third quarter, of a game in which we are...