Free Republic

Washington -- What do you make of it? Merry Christmas greetings have been assaulting me from every corner. The assaults began about two weeks ago. I think I was in a CVS store buying aspirin for a splitting headache. No, possibly it was at the dry cleaners, and I was picking up a sweater. The person at the counter let fall a "Merry Christmas." I, of course, reciprocated and hurried off. I would have thought nothing of it, but it has continued for two weeks. Will it even continue after Christmas Day? What does it mean? In recent years, I...

On a single day in December 2015, Gary Jones, who resigned last month as president of the United Automobile Workers, spent more than $13,000 of the union’s money at a cigar store in Arizona. His purchases included a dozen $268 boxes of Ashton Double Magnums and a dozen boxes of Ashton Monarchs at $274.50 each. “Hi Gary, Thank you & Happy New Year,” read a handwritten note from the store. The purchases, documented by a federal complaint filed against a union leader in September, were part of more than $60,000 in cigars and cigar paraphernalia that Mr. Jones and other...

President Donald Trump’s United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement is finally up for a vote this week—just in time for Christmas. After nearly a year of delay, this gift for the American people represents an opportunity for freer trade and a chance to grow our economy, reduce prices on many goods, and increase our exports to the world, creating more and higher-paying jobs in the process. As we all know, just like with other Christmas gifts, you also can get the occasional ugly sweater that you really didn’t want. The same is true here. Some compromises were made to get USMCA through Congress,...

Expect the president to ride an economic tailwind to victory, with the S&P topping 3400 by Election Day [SNIP] U.S. economy could accelerate in 2020 Keep in mind that in 2020 the U.S. will have an impeached president running for re-election, with a record number of people working and unemployment near 50-year lows (see chart). I know everything is not perfect, but historically, a good economy has been an electoral advantage for an incumbent. My job is not to make political statements but to interpret how policies affect markets and help clients to profit from those facts. So far, what...

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida — President Donald Trump spoke to thousands of students on Saturday evening at Turning Point USA’s annual Student Action Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he told the young conservatives “there has never been a better time to be young and to be American” than now. “The future of our nation is unlimited,” the president continued. “We’ve gained more than 7 million jobs since the election, including 266 thousand new jobs last month alone.” “For everyone graduating into the workforce this year, there are now more job openings than job seekers for the first time...

On Thursday, the Trump administration will host the White House Summit on Child Care and Paid Leave, convening lawmakers, local officials, parents, and industry leaders to discuss paid family leave and affordable childcare – issues vitally important to the lifeblood of the U.S. economy and the betterment of the American family. The summit, spearheaded by Senior Adviser Ivanka Trump, is yet another example of President Trump’s advocacy for working families and further underscores that the Republican Party is now the party of working families.For example, long thought to be an issue owned by the left, it is now the GOP...

WASHINGTON - After three interest rate cuts and a fresh round of record highs for U.S. stock markets, has President Donald Trump lost interest in the Federal Reserve? A count of tweets from Trump about U.S. monetary policy suggest a detente may have taken hold between an elected leader who has lambasted Fed officials with insults like “clueless” and “boneheads” and a central bank whose rate cuts have helped buffer the economy from the administration’s own unpredictable trade and tariff policies. On Wednesday, the Fed left interest rates unchanged at the end of a two-day policy meeting, and signaled it...

President Donald Trump declared a “big deal” with China to be close in a comment that sent stocks higher on Thursday ahead of a looming deadline for new tariffs. ‘BIG DEAL’As he was reportedly set to meet with his top trade advisers, Trump tweeted: “Getting VERY close to a BIG DEAL with China. They want it, and so do we!” On Sunday, tariffs on $160 billion on Chinese goods are set to kick in. There has been question if Trump will delay or cancel those tariffs if a deal isn’t reached by then. U.S. stocks jumped after Trump’s tweet, with...

The impeachment proceedings against President Trump have fueled all manner of conjecture regarding the proper discharge of foreign policy, hidden motives behind both Trump’s phone call and the ensuing investigation, and everything from the dead-cat bounce of the Mueller Report to the Kurdish policy shift. But there are a number of questions that, while they should be asked, haven’t been. (Obligatory disclaimer: None of these questions are intended to either excuse or indict the actions of Trump, the impeachment-hearing participants, or anyone else.) 1. Why is the U.S. giving $400 million to Ukraine, anyway? It makes little sense. Europe is...

Famous TV personality Steve Harvey explained to TMZ on Wednesday that President Donald Trump is doing what he said he would do after their meeting in Trump Tower back in January. "As far as doing what he promised me he'd do, he's doing it," Harvey said in Beverly Hills. "I'm working with HUD (Housing and Urban Development). I'm getting housing for underprivileged people. We're going to set up centers around the country. It's going really well, and God willing it will work out." Harvey said he wasn't happy with everything President Trump was doing, but did admit that "He's keeping...

“Boom! These jobs numbers are absolutely incredible and breathtaking in the number of jobs being created and as you point out the historically low unemployment rate across the board,” Crowley said in reaction to these statistics in an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel this weekend. “What it shows is President Trump’s economic freedom agenda is working, literally working, as a record number of Americans are in the workforce and unemployment is at a 50-year low. Unemployment among key groups—African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and women—are at or near all-time lows. The jobs being created,...

China’s trade with the United States sank again in November as negotiators worked on the first stage of a possible deal to end a tariff war. Exports to the United States fell 23% from a year earlier to $35.6 billion, customs data showed Sunday. Imports of American goods were off 2.8% at $11 billion, giving China a surplus with the United States of $24.6 billion. Exports to some other countries including France rose, helping to offset the loss. China’s global exports were off 1.1% from a year earlier at $221.7 billion despite weakening worldwide demand. Imports were up 0.3% at...

<p>From Presidents Harry Truman to Donald Trump, the United States liberalized trade the most among developed countries. The average U.S. tariff on dutiable goods is 4.5%, with the average tariff on all goods sitting at below 2%. Meanwhile, U.S. goods face higher tariffs and many other barriers to entry abroad. Facebook still can’t operate in China, and U.S. tech giants face a “digital services” tax in France.</p>

The tariff waivers were based on applications by individual firms for U.S. soybeans and pork imports, the finance ministry said in a statement, citing a decision by the country’s cabinet. It did not specify the quantities involved. China had imposed the levies in response to tariffs launched by Washington over allegations that China steals and forces the transfer of American intellectual property to Chinese firms, known as Section 301. That includes tariffs of 25% on both U.S. soybeans and pork in July 2018 and a further 10% on pork and 5% on soybeans in September this year.

It’s that time of year again when Congress, feeling the pressure of budget negotiations and the year’s end, provokes the issue of expired or soon-to-expire energy tax credits. Congress has on the table roughly a dozen renewable energy tax subsidies covering wind, solar, electric vehicles, biofuels, and others. There’s a host of reasons why these energy subsidies should end, not least of which being Congress’ 2015 promise to phase out two “temporary” credits that have been around for decades—wind and solar. These two alone divert $23 billion and $12.5 billion, respectively, between 2018 and 2022, and will continue to burden...

Three years ago, Donald Trump began a rhetorical offensive targeting the governments of NATO nations that chronically failed to meet their allied defense financial commitments. With bombastic huff, Trump intimated that allies pay their share or America might walk. It's 2019. Few NATO members currently meet the 2% GDP defense commitment. However, several once-laggard NATO nations have increased military spending, and the alliance is stronger for it. The era of blithe freeloading has ended. Cheapskates like Germany pay a price in lost prestige. America not only hasn't walked; it is modernizing its forces. Earlier this year, President Trump began grousing...

Although the U.S. is on a record streak for job-creation, many Americans still feel like they can't get ahead — it's not their imagination. The last three decades have seen the economy churn out more and more jobs that offer inadequate pay, a group of researchers found. "The history of private-sector employment in the U.S. over the past three decades is one of overall degradation in the ability of many American jobs to support households — even those with multiple jobholders," they wrote. The group wants to popularize a new economic metric, called the Job Quality Index, that goes beyond...

On Tuesday evening, Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang celebrated the opening of his office in Manchester, New Hampshire, by squirting whipped cream into supporters’ mouths. The “uncomfortable” interaction was captured on video by ABC News reporter Christopher Donato. As shown in the video below, Mr. Yang squirts the cream into one kneeling young man’s mouth and then celebrates by shaking the bottle and joking, “That’s a full-service presidential candidate!” And he wasn’t done there, to the obvious displeasure of who appears to be the candidate’s campaign manager Zach Graumann. The businessman then squirts more cream into another kneeling male supporter’s...

President Trump’s comment that he had no deadline on a China deal has predictably thrown markets into a tizzy, as the self-imposed deadline of Dec. 15 for additional tariffs is now less than two weeks away. The market is now grappling with the likelihood of no trade deal, but the critical issue is tariffs. I asked UBS Art Cashin if traders would be satisfied with 1) no new tariffs on Dec. 15, 2) keeping additional tariffs, and 3) no deal going into the new year. (Please see link for full article)

President Donald Trump said a trade agreement with China might have to wait until after the election in November 2020. “I have no deadline, no. In some ways, I think I think it’s better to wait until after the election with China,” Trump told reporters in London, where he was due to attend a meeting of NATO leaders. “In some ways, I like the idea of waiting until after the election for the China deal. But they want to make a deal now, and we’ll see whether or not the deal’s going to be right; it’s got to be right.”...