Free Republic

NEW YORK — A little freedom goes a long way, especially when it comes to reducing poverty. The Atlas Network recently recognized several free-market think tanks that have helped move people dramatically from disadvantage to entrepreneurship to employment and toward prosperity.The Atlas Network supports and/or collaborates with some 500 pro-liberty organizations in the USA and 95 countries. On principle, Atlas Network does this with strictly private funds. These three think tanks have distinguished themselves in combating poverty and improving the atmosphere for human flourishing in developing nations.The Atlas Network bestowed the $100,000 Templeton Freedom Award for 2019 to the Foundation...

The only thing that rivals President Trump’s tally of kept promises is the endless list of inaccurate predictions his critics have made about the U.S. economy.  Of course, we heard these apocryphal predictions even before Donald Trump won the 2016 election. For instance, in October 2016, the far-left publication Politico boldly declared that “Wall Street is set up for a major crash if Donald Trump shocks the world on Election Day and wins the White House.” The ability of Trump’s critics to predict our economic future hasn’t improved with age. Throughout 2019, numerous so-called “economists” and “experts” have taken a...

For all the media brouhaha over an imminent recession in 2019, President Donald Trump’s economy has continued to stupefy prognosticators going into the new year. The Wall Street Journal reported Jan. 1 in a piece headlined “The Bull Market is Charging into 2020,” that stocks across the globe “closed out one of their best years over the past decade, defying money managers who began 2019 expecting the bull market to be upended by threats from the U.S.-China trade fight and a slowdown in growth.” Stock indexes in the U.S., as well as Brazil and Germany, were up more than 20...

One of the promises President Trump made to American voters is that he would shrink the federal government. With the latest announcement that the National Security Council is set to lose as many as 330 people, the President is closing in on that goal. The National Security Council has been at work in Washington, D.C., since 1947. Congress created it at the beginning of the Cold War to coordinate policy between the various government national security entities, such as the military and the CIA. President Truman was unenthused, resenting Congress's impingement on his ability to handle foreign affairs. Nevertheless, he...

Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, that nation’s top trade negotiator, will visit Washington this week to sign the “phase one” trade deal with the U.S., the South China Morning Post reported Monday. The newspaper, citing a source briefed on the matter, said Beijing has accepted the U.S. invitation for a deal signing in Washington, and the Chinese delegation will stay in the U.S. for a few days until the middle of next week. The South China Morning Post is run by Alibaba but is often criticized for being biased in favor of the state. The two countries have been working...

At first glance, 2019 was a rough year for anyone in favor of an economy and society guided from the bottom up by people with the freedom to exchange, cooperate and think as they choose. The highly visible left flank of the Democratic Party, fully embracing socialism in name and approach, erupted with proposals that would drastically change the country in ways they intend and many more in ways they do not. Meanwhile, the Republican Party’s debt from its Faustian bargain with President Donald Trump began to come due.

In a 1981 interview on Today with Phil Donahue, a 39 year old Bernie Sanders says he is "not a capitalist." Sanders had just won his first term as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont. In explaining his case for Socialism he says, "Do I believe the profit motive is fundamental to human nature? The answer is no. I think the spirit of cooperation - that you and I can work together is better than compete against each other and destroy each other."

President Trump’s tax reform has delivered more than a trillion dollars of stimulus to the American economy through corporations repatriating profits held overseas in order to avoid penalties that the tax law had imposed on bringing home the funds earned abroad. Bloomberg reports: Corporations have brought back more than $1 trillion of overseas profits to the U.S. since Congress overhauled the international tax system and prodded companies to repatriate offshore funds, a report showed Thursday. (snip) Investment banks and think tanks have estimated that American corporations held $1.5 trillion to $2.5 trillion in offshore cash at the time the law was enacted. Before the overhaul,...

For decades before President Donald Trump’s tax plan took effect, U.S. corporations with foreign subsidiaries had no (sane economic) choice but to keep their overseas profits abroad. After all, they’d face double taxation if they wanted to bring them home. Their profits were already taxed by the foreign country they’re operating in, and then to repatriate those funds would’ve required them to pay the U.S. corporate tax rate, which was then among the highest in the world. By year end 2017, right before Trump signed his Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), upwards of $2.5 trillion in cash was parked...

BEIJING (AP) - China’s imports of soybeans surged in November following the announcement of an interim trade deal with the United States. Imports rose 53.7% over a year earlier to 5.4 million tons, according to customs data. Imports of U.S. soybeans more than doubled from the previous month to 2.6 million tons, according to AWeb.com, a news website that serves the Chinese farming industry.

Stocks climbed on Thursday, hitting new record highs, as the market rallied into the end of 2019. Stocks have been piling up new records as the market wraps up 2019. The S&P 500 has risen 2.9% this month and 8.6% this quarter, bringing the year-to-date gains to 29%. The benchmark has a chance at scoring a historic year: It is less than one percentage point away from posting the best annual performance since 1997.

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang is on to something: Americans could use a big "freedom dividend" -- that is, a guaranteed source of income on which they can rely month after month, free from the uncertainties of the job market and employment. But like many Democrats' ideas, Yang's otherwise brilliant insight is corrupted by an ideology that strangely sees the government as the engine of wealth creation and distribution. Yang's plan to provide a universal basic income of $1,000 per month to every American over age 18 sounds pretty good. All that money could go toward education, health care, job...

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...