Free Republic

President Donald Trump signaled Thursday that he may consider an interim trade deal with China. The president told reporters he would prefer a full agreement with the world’s second largest economy. However, he left the door open to thinking about striking a limited agreement with Beijing.

President Trump needs a trade deal with China as quickly as possible to avert a sharp slowdown of the US economy, as recent polls have made clear. There won’t be any deal unless the US finds some way to walk back its efforts to keep China’s top telecommunication firm Huawei out of world markets. The summary dismissal today of National Security Adviser John Bolton increases the prospects of a deal, although the immediate motivation for Bolton’s departure most likely lies elsewhere. China and the United States seemed on track for a trade deal in early December 2018 when XI Jinping...

J.P. Morgan estimates that President Trump’s tariffs will cost American families up to $1,000 next year. We have heard this before and we’ll hear it again. But the fact is that tariffs have not yet—nor will they likely—increase the cost of living. Further, the myopic obsession with the price of goods ignores the more pressing problem: millions of Americans remain chronically unemployed, and millions more have been reduced to surviving on part-time McJobs and welfare. Turns out, cheap goods aren’t so cheap if you don’t have a job.

President Trump will delay an upcoming increase in tariffs on $250billion worth of goods from China as a 'gesture of good will'. Trump tweeted Wednesday that he would push back tariffs set to go into effect on October 1, by two weeks to October 15. He said he is doing so at the request of Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He because the People's Republic of China will be celebrating its 70th anniversary on October 1. 'At the request of the Vice Premier of China, Liu He, and due to the fact that the People's Republic of China will be celebrating their...

Beijing announced the exemption plan in May and invited interested parties to apply to have certain products added to the list. A second round of applications started last week. The commission said it “will continue to conduct the work of tariff exemption on US goods and will announce follow-up waiver lists at appropriate times”. The statement came as top trade negotiators from China and the United States prepare to meet in Washington next month in their latest attempt to resolve their trade war. Working level preparations for the meeting are currently under way. China is expected to agree to buy...

PITTSFIELD — Philip Lapointe currently works for a burger joint in Pittsfield but has previous experience in sales that he would like to put to good use. So, it's only natural that the 34-year-old Pittsfield resident would be interested in working for Wayfair, which is currently hiring sales and service consultants for its new Pittsfield call center. "I applied because they have strong wages and seem like an employee-oriented company," Lapointe said Wednesday as he left the MassHire Berkshire Career Center on North Street following an interview with Wayfair representatives. Lapointe has plenty of company in his job search. Wayfair,...

* Total US debt including all forms of government, state, local, financial and entitlement liabilities comes close to 2,000% of GDP, according to AB Bernstein. * The biggest potential load comes from entitlements, but is being pressured from rising levels of federal government debt as well. * The warnings about potential debt hazards come as the total federal debt outstanding has surged to $22.5 trillion. * A debt reform advocate says now is the time for the U.S. to tackle the issue, before recession hits. Total potential debt for the U.S. by one all-encompassing measure is running close to 2,000%...

Democrats' Platform: Ban All The Things!

One of the standard criticisms of President Trump’s trade war with China is that China has the upper hand because it is not a democracy. Meanwhile, President Trump faces voters in 14 months, so therefore it was a mistake to challenge the status quo that allows China to steal intellectual property and pay for its economic and military growth via unending half-trillion-dollars-a-year trade surpluses with the United States. Foolish Trump! The problem with this view is that it greatly underestimates the vulnerability of Xi Jinping -- or any other Chinese Communist Party head. The Politburo and its Central Committee can...

China’s exports fell unexpectedly in August, as the trade war with the United States continued to hit the world’s second-largest economy. Shipments fell by 1 per cent in the month after growing 3.3 per cent in July in dollar terms, and below the 2.1 per cent growth expected by analysts in a Bloomberg poll. Imports in the month dropped by 5.6 per cent, leaving a trade surplus of US$34.84 billion, according to China’s General Administration of Customs. July’s expansion now seems like an anomaly, likely driven by front-loading as new tariffs of 15 per cent on about US$110 billion of...

What a difference two weeks makes. Two Fridays ago, pundits seemed to be beside themselves over what was the latest flare up in the U.S.-China trade war. President Trump raised tariffs in retaliation for China’s retaliatory tariffs, he called Fed Chairman Jerome Powell an “enemy,” and the Dow plummeted 623 points while the Nasdaq closed 3% lower. Now it seems like trade deal optimism is back in the air. New formal talks between the U.S. and China have been announced for next month, and there are even high-level Chinese sources suggesting a breakthrough could occur at those meetings.

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) Tired of all this WINNING yet? – This damn Trump economy just will not cooperate with all the Democrats and their media toadies who keep rooting for a recession. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report released on Friday showed the Trump economy adding another 130,000 new jobs even as the economy approaches full employment. FED Chairman Jerome Powell called the report another sign of a growing and healthy economy, indicating that he sees no sign of any recession on the horizon. Democrats everywhere recoiled in horror. Other highlights of this...

JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC: And Rick Tyler, here we go with the Republican Party again, here in the state of Alabama, a state I know well and love, but you can go around the country and see the Trump effect on one Republican Party after another, and it is truly distressing all in support of a president who says he's going to seize private lands and told his aides to do it illegally and he would pardon them. From a president who ordering private companies to move out of other countries, a guy who's running up the biggest debt ever, some...

Did Beijing blink? Just days after massive new tariffs went into effect on both sides of the US-China bilateral trade relationship, China announced it would send a team of negotiators to Washington next month. “Serious” mid-level talks would begin almost immediately in an effort to wind down the trade war, China also announced: China said Thursday its trade representatives will fly to Washington in early October to resume negotiations with the United States, raising the possibility that both sides might arrest a recent deterioration in the bilateral relationship that has cast a shadow over the world economy.China’s top trade...

Once upon a time in America a presidential campaign was decided on the phrase “Rum, Romanism & Rebellion.” It was not exactly true, but it worked. Now, 125 years after that controversial campaign and election, the slogan shaping up for Democrats running against Donald Trump is another Triple R — “Russia, Race & Recession.” None of that is exactly true, either

Several offices within the Trump administration are studying a policy that would lower taxes for investments such as stocks and real estate, according to a senior administration official. The Treasury Department, the White House Office of Management and Budget, and the Council of Economic Advisers are studying the possibility of indexing capital gains to account for inflation, according to the senior official. The review includes a look at the distribution table for savings to investigate whether the reform would disproportionately benefit wealthy people who are able to invest more of their money.

Doug Ogden doesn’t know what to do. The 75-year-old retired law enforcement officer is disgusted by President Donald Trump. But he can’t imagine voting for a Democrat in 2020, either. A self-described independent in South Carolina, Ogden doesn’t recognize the modern-day Democratic Party. “The state of the Democratic Party is wild against wilder,” says Ogden, standing with his arms crossed at a recent town hall meeting for Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg. “It scares me.” At the core of Ogden’s concern is a broader question about the direction of the Democratic Party and its values in the age of Trump....

President Trump and other mercantilists are hoping that his tariffs will drive U.S companies out of China, perhaps even back to the United States. They can keep hoping. It’s not likely to happen. In a further escalation of his trade war, on August 23 Trump “ordered” U.S companies to leave China, or even return to the United States. This prompted a debate among legal scholars as to whether he even has the authority to do that. Regardless of whether he does or doesn’t, it is unlikely to have any impact. A proviso is called for here. Some U.S companies are...

Gov. Kay Ivey joined executives of DaikyoNishikawa US (DNUS) and local leaders at a groundbreaking event to officially launch construction on the auto supplier’s $110 million manufacturing plant in North Alabama. The DNUS facility, which will produce plastic automotive parts for the Mazda Toyota Manufacturing U.S.A. (MTMUS) assembly plant, will employ approximately 380 people at full production. The groundbreaking ceremony was held at the site on the MTMUS campus where construction crews are poised to begin work on DNUS’ first U.S. manufacturing plant. “I’m proud to welcome another great Japanese company, DaikyoNishikawa, to Sweet Home Alabama, and I know that...

President Trump deserves enormous credit for his exceptional commitment to free speech at the G7 summit in Biarritz, France. Foreign leaders, like our own illiberal, liberal activists, are chomping at the bit to introduce ever more online censorship. At the G7, European leaders introduced a measure that would have drafted tech companies into the role of government censors, forcing them to police online content and remove anything that bureaucrats deem to be insensitive. Emmanuel Macron struggled in vain to conceal his disappointment as he announced that the United States had refused to sign on to his pet G7 compact, which...