Free Republic

This cohort leans Republican now more than ever; a Gallup poll this year shows they favor the GOP by a whopping 25 percentage points. It was as if the Democratic Party didn’t understand how much they needed labor. Oddly, it appears they still don’t. “The working-class voters in my county tend to wonder if the party still wants them,” says Mark Hackel, the Democratic chief executive of Macomb County, Mich., where voters favored Trump over Clinton by 11 percentage points. “They’re not really sure where they fit in.” Mike Mikus, a Democratic strategist who helped guide Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s...

Black, Hispanic Unemployment Rates at All-Time Lows The U.S. unemployment rate in September fell to 3.5%, the lowest level since May 1948, and total nonfarm payrolls increased by 136,000. The unemployment rate for black (5.5%) and Hispanic (3.9%) workers are at record lows. Forecasters were expecting a low of 120,000 to a high of 179,000. The consensus forecast was 145,000. However, the U.S. economy added more than 40,000 jobs than the last two jobs reports indicated. The labor force participation rate held steady at a very positive 63.2%, beating the consensus forecast expecting a 0.1% decline. The employment-population ratio, though...

Washington, D.C. – The United States has won the largest arbitration award in World Trade Organization (WTO) history in its dispute with the European Union over illegal subsidies to Airbus. This follows four previous panel and appellate reports from 2011-2018 finding that EU subsidies to Airbus break WTO rules. Today’s decision demonstrates that massive EU corporate welfare has cost American aerospace companies hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue over the nearly 15 years of litigation. (please see link, for full article)

The World Trade Organization ruled in favor of the United States Wednesday in a long-running dispute with the European Union over subsidies to Airbus, paving the way for the U.S. to hit the EU with $7.5 billion in retaliatory tariffs........ The U.S. and EU have been fighting since 2004 over whether their respective aerospace industry policies toward Airbus and Boeing amount to unfair practices. The WTO's ruling said the EU subsidized Airbus by giving it preferential treatment on interest rates. "The Appellate Body upheld the Panel’s findings that Airbus paid a lower interest rate ... than would have been available...

The World Trade Organization handed down a ruling yesterday that because the European Union subsidized Airbus in its competition with Boeing, the United States could impose retaliatory tariffs on $7.5 billion in EU exports to the United States. The Wall Street Journal reports on the retaliatory tariffs being planned: The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said it would impose the tariffs starting Oct. 18, with 10% levies on jetliners and 25% duties on other products including Irish and Scotch whiskies, cheeses and hand tools. As a Scotch drinker, I am not happy about this, and wonder how many...

Jumpin’ ju-ju bones – The Trump administration via U.S. Trade Rep Robert Lighthizer and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross won a massive $7.5 billion award as an outcome of the World Trade Organization agreeing with the U.S. against the EU and Airbus subsidies. The WTO arbitrators decision is final and cannot be appealed. This win sets the stage for President Trump to deploy $7.5 billion in countervailing duties against products from the EU. Keep in mind, a final WTO ruling means the EU cannot retaliate against any WTO-authorized countermeasures. The downstream ramifications are very significant. Think about it: at 25% the...

The United States will impose tariffs on $7.5 billion (€6.8 billion) worth of European imports in retaliation for illegal EU subsidies to airplane maker Airbus. The announcement came hours after the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Wednesday ruled on a 15-year-old case that the US could impose $7.5 billion in retaliatory tariffs in response to illegal EU subsidies to Airbus that hurt its American rival Boeing. Washington plans to impose a 10% tariff on aircraft imported from Europe and apply a 25% import tax on other agricultural and industrial items on October 18, the Office of the US Trade Representative...

President Sauli Niinistö of Finland played a passive-aggressive game with Donald Trump on Wednesday at the White House, peppering a joint press conference with jabs subtle enough to fly under his radar. Trump, preoccupied with spitting nails over House Democrats' latest impeachment development, hardly seemed to notice. Niinistö described his time browsing Washington's sprawling museums, noting the Smithsonian Institution's traditionalist American history collection and a ceremony he witnessed at Arlington National Cemetary. He also heaped praise on the National Museum of the American Indian and the still new-ish National Museum of African American History and Culture, spotlighting racial diversity and...

Stocks got slammed for the second day in a row on Wednesday after weak payroll numbers stoked fears that President Trump’s trade wars were slowing down the US economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by nearly 600 points, to a low of 25,974.12, after data from ADP showed that private US employers had hired fewer workers than expected. The Dow ended the day down 494.42 points, or 1.9 percent, to 26,078.62. The report, a precursor to the Labor Department’s more comprehensive jobs report due Friday, followed dismal numbers on US manufacturing Tuesday that showed activity was at its lowest...

Congress asked the IRS to report on why it audits the poor more than the affluent. Its response is that it doesn’t have enough money and people to audit the wealthy properly. So it’s not going to. ================================================================ he IRS audits the working poor at about the same rate as the wealthiest 1%. Now, in response to questions from a U.S. senator, the IRS has acknowledged that’s true but professes it can’t change anything unless it is given more money. ProPublica reported the disproportionate audit focus on lower-income families in April. Lawmakers confronted IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig about the emphasis,...

Will people have to postpone - or cancel - retirement? Why is Pelosi not being asked this question?

Three years ago today, the IMF added China’s yuan to the basket of currencies underpinning its Special Drawing Rights (SDR)—its proprietary reserve accounting unit and means of extending credit to countries in need. At the time, the IMF touted it as “an important milestone in the integration of the Chinese economy into the global financial system.” Many investors took a less benign view, seeing the IMF’s move as threatening to end the dollar’s status as the world’s leading reserve currency—sending interest rates spiking and rendering US debt unaffordable. That was always a false fear, in our view, as the...

Oct. 2 (UPI) -- Private-sector hiring increased by approximately 135,000 jobs in September, beating projections but indicating a slowing in growth, a report by ADP Research in collaboration with Moody's Analytics said Wednesday. Analysts said the number and three-month average is down from this point last year, suggesting that U.S. job expansion is losing steam. The report comes ahead of employment figures that will be released in the Employment Situation Summary by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday. Economists interviewed by Dow Jones had anticipated 125,000 hires in September, but both numbers are down from the 157,000 hired in...

Congressman Mo Brooks said Thursday in Decatur he doesn't plan to run for the U.S. Senate in 2020, the use of tariffs needs to be balanced and socialism is a failed system.

In 2008, Barack Obama won 26% of the evangelical vote; in 2012, he won 21%. Hillary Clinton won 16%. If she had simply replicated Obama's performance among evangelicals, she would likely be President. In his new book, Do We Have a Center? 2016, 2020 and the Challenge of the Trump Presidency, Walter Frank, author of Law and the Gay Rights Story and Making Sense of the Constitution, warns that Democrats ignore the many lessons of the 2016 campaign at their peril. "The Democrats," Frank counsels, "are in grave trouble if they don't understand exactly what happened in 2016 and all...

Reuters reports that China will exempt some American agricultural products from its latest round of tariffs. This is welcome news—particularly for our pork and soybean producers who’ve been on the front lines of the trade war. But what does the news really mean? Did China blink? Are they throwing us a bone? Or is just part of Xi Jinping’s 200 IQ 4D underwater chess gambit to win the trade war? The answer begins and ends with the economic data. First up: pigs. China is by far the largest pork consumer on earth, and is expected to consume more than 50...

China already lost in the trade war with the U.S. Although you will never hear Chinese authorities, especially President Xi Jinping, admit it as such, the evidence is everywhere and only becoming more compelling by the day. Reuters recently reported that based on the Chinese government's own data, China's economic slowdown has worsened in August, with "growth in industrial production is at its weakest in 17-1/2 years amid spreading pain from a trade war with the United States and softening domestic demand. Retail sales and investment gauges worsened too." Despite such poor readings, Premier Li Keqiang insists that China is...

Once confined to the small scientific community of climate researchers and ecological economists, the idea of degrowth is now blazing into the mainstream. Not surprisingly, people are trying to figure out what to make of it. Is it an inspiring idea that points the way to a better economy? Or is it a mad notion that’s sure to plunge us all into poverty? Degrowth is a planned reduction of total energy and material use to bring the economy in line with planetary boundaries, while improving people’s lives by distributing income and resources more fairly. The scientific case for degrowth is...

Donald Trump is waging a nonstop, all-encompassing war against progressive culture, in magnitude analogous to what 19th-century Germans once called a Kulturkampf. As a result, not even former President George W. Bush has incurred the degree of hatred from the left that is now directed at Trump. For most of his time in office, Trump, his family, his friends and his businesses have been investigated, probed, dissected and constantly attacked.

The donor-class Koch network headed by GOP mega-donor Charles Koch is now admitting they failed to turn the American people against President Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports. In June 2018, the Koch network of organizations — which include Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Partners, and the Libre Initiative — launched a campaign against Trump’s economic nationalist policies that have helped weaken China’s economy and brought the U.S. steel industry roaring back, mostly by imposing tariffs on various foreign imports. The goal of the Koch network’s campaign was to champion free trade at all costs by claiming tariffs are increasing prices on...