Free Republic

I'm having difficulty formulating my failing brain.Before 1913 we operated just fine (it seems) without taxes but (and so the meme goes), now everything operates BECAUSE of taxes.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite closed at record highs on Friday after the October employment report blew past estimates. The U.S. economy added 128,000 jobs last month, well ahead of the 89,000 that economists surveyed by Dow Jones were expecting. The unemployment rate ticked up to 3.6 percent as wages grew at a 3 percent year-over-year clip. The better-than-expected results came despite the pressure from a six-week General Motors strike. Helping fuel the rally was improvement in the manufacturing sector. ISM Manufacturing reading rose 0.5 percentage points to 48.3 in October, but that was below the 48.9 that economists...

(WNN) London, UNITED KINGDOM, WESTERN EUROPE: As a Buddhist myself I’ve been concerned like many others for over a decade about the treatment of indigenous Tibetans inside China, many who follow the spiritual teachings of the Dalai Lama, who received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. The changing face of modern China has had an open opportunity to bridge diversity of thought and religion within its borders over the last decade, but it has critically failed to do so. And it’s not just indigenous Tibetans who are feeling the pressures placed on them by the Chinese government today. Numerous youth...

Today it was announced by many new services that the Chinese officials have raised concerns about the impulsive nature of President Trump which has led them to believe that at this point in time it will be very difficult to a come to an amicable resolution to the trade war. Although the breaking news came across through multiple respectable news or sources, for the most part almost all of them cited Bloomberg News as the primary source of this information. Add to that is the fact that Bloomberg simply cited unnamed sources as their point of contact for this information....

U.S.-China trade talks are progressing well and the United States aims to sign an initial deal this month, top Trump administration officials said on Nov. 1, offering reassurance to global markets after nearly 16 months of tit-for-tat tariffs. Beijing’s state-run media Xinhua said the world’s two largest economies had reached “consensus on principles” during a serious and constructive telephone call on Friday between their main trade negotiators. U.S. and Chinese negotiators had made “enormous progress” toward finalizing a “phase one” agreement, although the deal was not yet 100 percent complete, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters on Friday....

If there were anyone who should be a candidate for an emergency ego intervention, it has to be CNN anchor Jim Sciutto. At a Citizen by CNN conference last week, Sciutto lectured (and hectored) the Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, Peter Navarro over the "fact" that the United States does not collect tariffs. Sciutto took the idea that the consumer and the manufacturers ultimately pay for the tariffs in the form of increased prices of imported goods to absurdly assert that the United States does not collect tariffs. It wasn't just an unfortunate slip of the tongue on the...

It may have been in the 90s Friday in Livingston for the announcement of a new $175 million wood pellet plant in Sumter County, but the weather didn’t matter to Livingston Mayor Tom Tartt. “When I heard about a $100 million yearly impact, I got chill bumps,” he said. “Can you imagine what that will mean for this community?” Biofuel company Enviva Friday announced it will build a wood pellet production plant at the Port of Epes, bringing at least 85 jobs and 180 associated jobs in logging, transportation and local services to the Black Belt county. Enviva, which calls...

The price of pork continues to surge across China because of supply shortages driven by the poor handling of African swine fever Chinese people are looking for alternatives, including dog and rabbit, as the country’s most popular meat becomes unaffordable African swine fever has swept through China’s pig population, leading to mass culls that are expected to take years to recover from. Photo: AFPAfrican swine fever has swept through China’s pig population, leading to mass culls that are expected to take years to recover from. Photo: AFP African swine fever has swept through China’s pig population, leading to mass culls...

Nobel-prize winning economist Robert Shiller believes a recession may be years away due to a bullish Trump effect in the market. According to the Yale University professor, President Donald Trump is creating an environment that’s conducive to strong consumer spending, and it’s a major force that should hold off a recession. Before the markets can take-off, Shiller stresses President Trump needs to get past the impeachment inquiry. He sees this as the biggest threat to his optimistic forecast. Yet, he’s sticking with the idea that the economy and markets should have a lot of runway left for gains if President...

Key Takeaways 1. Middle-class incomes, after adjusting for inflation, have surged by $5,003 since Donald Trump became president in January 2017. 2. These surges in income, have occurred at exactly the time when many liberal economists and media talking heads were shouting “recession.” 3. These latest income numbers also squarely contradict the claims by Democratic presidential candidates.

This is the first segment of AFGE’s 5-part series: The Secret Memo : Inside Trump’s Plan to Destroy Unions.A leaked White House memo, as first reported by the New York Times and then obtained by POLITICO, outlines President Trump’s plans to destroy public and private-sector unions, get rid of worker protections, cripple workers’ ability to organize, and increase profits for corporate special interests.This explosive 19-page document was prepared in 2017 by Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy James Sherk, who was previously a research fellow at the regressive, anti-worker Heritage Foundation.The memo, laced with familiar half-truths and outright...

President Trump lauded the partial trade agreement he struck with China this week, calling it the “greatest and best” deal in a tweet Saturday morning. As part of the deal -- which Trump and President Xi Jinping could sign as soon as next month -- China agreed to raise its agricultural purchases to between $40 billion and $50 billion from $8 billion to $16 billion and to make certain reforms on intellectual property and financial services. The U.S. will not raise tariffs on Oct. 15 from 25 percent to 30 percent. It’s still unclear whether Trump plans to halt another...

Economist Paul Krugman, the longtime defender of global free trade and a member of the failed “Never Trump” movement, now admits that globalization has failed American workers. In a column for Bloomberg titled “What Economists (Including Me) Got Wrong About Globalization,” Krugman admits that the economic consensus for free trade that has prevailed for decades has failed to recognize how globalization has skyrocketed inequality for America’s working and middle class workers. Krugman, though, writes that he and his fellow free trade economists “had no way to know” that globalization of the American economy or a surge in trade deficits “were...

On Cavuto show that the tariffs scheduled to go into effect cancelled.

The greatest share of the tariff burden falls not on American consumers or firms, but on Chinese exporters... a 25 percentage point increase in tariffs raises US consumer prices on all affected Chinese products by only 4.5% on average, while the producer price of Chinese firms declines by 20.5%. The US government has strategically levied import duties on goods with high import elasticities, which transfers a great share of the tariff burden on to Chinese exporters.

TWEET SHARE MORE 10/1/2019 Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) defended President Trump’s ongoing trade war with China, arguing that such a hardline approach is the only way to fundamentally change diplomatic relations with Beijing. “The president is correct — it’s the only way,” Burchett, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Hill.TV during an interview that aired on Tuesday, referring to Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods. “This diplomacy they’ve been doing in the past is basically us giving them our checkbook and Congress is basically gutless when it comes to China,” he added. “We need to stand up them...

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...