Free Republic

ARLINGTON, Va.—Americans for Prosperity (AFP) today issued the following statement from Dan Pearson, AFP Trade Policy Fellow, on the Biden administration’s decision to suspend tariffs previously imposed on billions of dollars of EU goods stemming from the Boeing-Airbus dispute. The move has prompted the EU to follow suit, setting the stage for settlement of the dispute and further opening trade markets. The suspension will last four months while the countries attempt to resolve the matter: “Again, we applaud the Biden administration for moving to reduce burdensome tariffs and put an end to the trade war that has harmed American businesses,...

The Trump administration forced a lot of conservatives to rethink issues. For me, I had to revisit the topic of tariffs. Initially, I was knee-jerk hostile to tariff schedules. We should support free trade at all costs, right? That was what Milton Friedman told us, and that is what we should be fighting for. After four years of Trump, I realized that Pat Buchanan and other economic nationalists had a good point about tariffs. Indeed, every nation needs to take steps to ensure that essential industries remain strong and thrive in the home country. In times of war or a...

ARLINGTON, Va.—Americans for Prosperity (AFP) today issued the following statement from Dan Pearson, AFP Trade Policy Fellow, on the Biden administration’s decision to suspend tariffs previously imposed on a number of UK products stemming from the Boeing-Airbus dispute. The suspension will last four months while the countries attempt to resolve the matter: “It is encouraging to see the Biden Administration provide relief from these tariffs. In addition to the benefits Americans will experience from this move, we are hopeful this will lead to a lasting settlement of the dispute between the US and the UK and EU. Freer trade increases...

Chinese foreign affairs minister Wang Yi urged the United States to meet four requirements from Xi Jinping’s regime at the Lanting Forum, a video conference organized by the Chinese foreign affairs ministry on Feb. 22. The requests include: ending support for Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet; resuming the U.S.-China dialogue; ending the tariffs on Chinese products and sanctions on Chinese enterprises; and removing all restrictions on China’s news agencies and cultural entities such as the Confucius Institutes. After President Joe Biden announced that he won the presidential election, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his senior diplomats urged the United...

Let’s go back just a few years ago to the world as President Donald Trump had remade it. He had canceled or pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership “treaty” (which was not a treaty because the Senate had never ratified it); ended America’s participation in the Paris Climate Agreement; renegotiated a new NAFTA along lines far more favorable to the United States, and entered into negotiations with the Chinese aimed at forcing them into a fairer trading arrangement.

House Republicans and Democrats are joining retail corporations to ask United States Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer to reduce tariffs on China in the midst of the Chinese coronavirus crisis. The National Retail Federation (NRF) is circulating a pre-written letter asking Lighthizer to reduce U.S. tariffs on China and extend tariff exemptions so certain corporations continuing to make their goods in China are exempt from having to pay significant costs to export their products back into the U.S. marketplace.

Joe Biden just confirmed that President Trump has forever altered the American foreign policy framework - once dominated by a pro-free trade bipartisan consensus closely guarded by the deep state - by confirming that he will not immediately move to scrap the 'Phase 1' trade deal or - and this is critical - move to remove the controversial tariffs imposed by Trump, according to a report in the New York Times.In an interview with - who else? - NYT columnist Thomas Friedman, Biden discussed how his administration will approach foreign policy, though Biden insisted his top priority was getting a...

Political leaders from around the world have rallied behind Australia in the wake of China's newly imposed 200 per cent tariffs on wine which could cripple the $6billion industry. The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China - made up of more than 200 MPs from 19 countries - has urged millions of citizens to buy a 'bottle or two' of Australian wine before Christmas as a show of support. Australia's wine industry exports 39 percent of all its total product to China. The introduction of huge tariffs last week, brought in as apparent payback after Scott Morrison called for an inquiry into...

"The death rate appears not to be linked with the responses of governments..stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with the death rate." There's research from French scientists saying that government restrictions taken against the coronavirus have not reduced the mortality rate... "making a statement that it's a different court" New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's view of the Thanksgiving Eve 5-4 decision from the US Supreme Court against Cuomo's restrictions on houses of worship in the state... Breaking News: Iran reporting the assassination of a prominent Iranian physicist. Moshen Fakhrizadeh and...

The European Union is poised to move next week to impose tariffs on $4 billion of U.S. imports in retaliation for U.S. subsidies for planemaker Boeing, EU diplomats said, teeing up an eleventh-hour showdown with U.S. President Donald Trump.

In its decision, the WTO’s dispute settlement body ruled against the U.S. government’s argument that China has wrongly engaged in practices harmful to U.S. interests on issues including intellectual property theft and technology transfer. The U.S. tariffs target two batches of Chinese products. Duties of 10% were imposed on some $200 billion worth of goods in September 2018, and were jacked up to 25% eight months later. An additional 25% duties were imposed in June 2018 against Chinese goods worth about $34 billion in annual trade. The Trump administration has justified the sanctions under Section 301 of the Trade Act...

“Free Trade” isn’t. Low tariffs combined with high taxes on domestic labor is not Free Trade. It’s Subsidized Outsourcing, subsidized destruction of our industrial base and our national character. We tax domestic manufacturing in order to pay unemployment and welfare to those who lose their jobs to foreign competition. This is an evil positive feedback loop that has been crushing our working classes since the 70s. Our core cities are turning into uncivilized war zones and our college campuses into communist indoctrination centers. But at least we are subsidizing a rising fascist superpower with a terrible environmental record.

Canada has announced that it will retaliate dollar for dollar – to the tune of C$3.6bn – after the US announced a 10% tariff on Canadian aluminum. Donald Trump announced the new aluminum tariffs on Thursday at a campaign stop at a Whirlpool appliance plant in Ohio, accusing Canada of taking advantage of its trade relationship with the US. “The aluminum business was being decimated by Canada, very unfair to our jobs and our great aluminum workers,” he said. At a news conference on Friday, Canada’s deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, called the move “unwarranted and unacceptable” and said [cut]...

Europe’s Airbus said on Friday it would increase loan repayments to France and Spain in a “final” bid to reverse U.S. tariffs and jog the United States into settling a 16-year-old dispute over billions of dollars of aircraft subsidies. The European Union, France and Spain said the move to raise interest rates paid by Airbus on A350 aircraft development loans should settle the row at the World Trade Organization and urged Washington to withdraw tariffs on EU goods. “In the absence of a settlement, the EU will be ready to fully avail itself of its own sanction rights,” EU Trade...

The coronavirus pandemic and recession that followed make it hard for any other news to make it to the front page, but the end of the tragedy is in sight. Just this week, researchers at Oxford announced positive results in human trials for their vaccine. Even if we are not yet at the beginning of the end, we may be, as Winston Churchill once said, at the end of the beginning. That means it might be time, at last, for the presidential campaign to focus on more than the pandemic. By this point in the election cycle, we should be...

https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Screen-Shot-2020-05-29-at-4.53.59-PM-998x687.png President Donald Trump announced Friday that he has directed his administration to “begin the process of eliminating policy exemptions that give Hong Kong different and special treatment.” His announcement came a day after China’s People’s Congress passed Beijing’s controversial new national security law related to Hong Kong. Trump’s announcement will profoundly affect the future of Hong Kong and the U.S.-China relationship.The president’s decision was based on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s certification to Congress Wednesday that “Hong Kong is no longer autonomous from China,” a decision he said gave him no pleasure but that “sound policy-making requires a recognition...

As the U.S. works to recover from the financial fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump is preparing a “stronger” playbook than his 2017 policy platform to return the U.S. economy to its former strength, he says, which could include a payroll tax cut. During an interview with FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo on Thursday, Trump said he liked the idea of a payroll tax cut because it provides a benefit to both businesses and workers. “That’s one of the taxes that I want to see cut,” Trump said. “And by the way, we’ve already given – we’ve given the largest...

President Donald Trump said his hard-fought trade deal with China was now of secondary importance to the coronavirus pandemic and he threatened new tariffs on Beijing, as his administration crafted retaliatory measures over the outbreak. Trump's sharpened rhetoric against China reflected his growing frustration with Beijing over the pandemic, which has cost tens of thousands of lives in the United States alone, sparked an economic contraction and threatened his chances of re-election in November.

MP Materials, which runs the sole operating rare earths mine in the United States, is an unusual victim in the year-long tit-for-tat trade war between the two largest economies on the planet, as the conflict looks set to open up a new battlefront over technology. The operator of the Mountain Pass mine in California said it will kick-start its own processing operation by the end of 2020, after China last week more than doubled an import duty on concentrates to 25 per cent effective June 1. MP exports pellets – ground-up ores that contain oxides of rare earth elements –...

White House Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro confirmed Wednesday the administration is working on an executive order to eliminate the government’s reliance on foreign-made medical supplies. The “Buy American” order comes on the heels of concerns expressed by senators during their Tuesday meeting with President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill. [snip] The order would prevent federal agencies from purchasing medical supplies, including face masks, gloves and ventilators, from China. [snip] China has prevented the export of surgical face masks, severely limiting supplies in the U.S. and countries around the world. “China has managed to dominate all aspects...