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Australia's economy minister on Wednesday (Mar 25) called on China to drop punishing trade tariffs if it wants to thaw frozen relations, after Beijing sent a message signalling it is ready to improve ties. China - Australia's biggest trading partner - imposed tariffs and disrupted more than a dozen key industries, including wine, barley and coal, as relations deteriorated sharply in the past two years. Canberra had irked Beijing by calling for an independent probe into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic and by banning telecoms giant Huawei from building Australia's 5G network.

CNN)US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday criticized the Trump administration's tariffs on China and voiced support for lifting some of the levies, in part to ease very high inflation pressuring the US economy. "Some of the tariffs that were imposed by President Trump in retaliation for China's unfair trade practices, some of them, to me, seem as though they imposed more harm on consumers and businesses," Yellen said during a press conference in Germany ahead of a G7 summit with finance ministers.

Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance, running against Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), says the nation’s ruling class is interested in preserving its “managed decline” of the United States by weakening former President Trump’s tariffs on China. During an exclusive interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Daily, Vance detailed how Washington, DC, lawmakers, bureaucrats, and corporate special interests have kept the U.S. in a “managed decline” for decades while profiting for themselves. “I use this phrase a lot on the campaign trail, managed decline,” Vance said. “It feels sometimes like our leaders are just slowly allowing the country to slip into...

President Joe Biden said that cooling prices are his top domestic priority, even as Wall Street braces for another inflation report north of 8%. The president also said that the White House is in the middle of a review of tariffs imposed against China during former President Donald Trump’s tenure and could opt to drop them. Wall Street is eager to read the Labor Department’s upcoming report on April inflation , which the government will publish Wednesday morning at 8:30 a.m. ET. President Joe Biden said he could drop some of the tariffs imposed against Chinese imports to help control...

Politicians, the Federal Reserve, and Fed and administration apologists like to claim that the inflation we face is caused by supply constraints. This claim goes against the facts on the ground. According to the World Trade Organization, even though there was a collapse in trade at the beginning of the pandemic, trade in intermediate goods -- critical inputs in finalized products -- quickly recovered despite port and shipping bottlenecks. Sure, it increased at a slower rate than before, but trade was still rising. In addition, data from the main U.S. ports show that after declining at the beginning of the...

Food prices are continuing to rise at an alarming rate. The 8.8% year-over-year increase (March 2022 compared with March 2021) is the largest in more than 40 years. Over the past seven months, each month’s year-over-year food price increase has been above 4% and each successive month has been higher than the previous month (starting at 4.6% in September and reaching 8.8% in March). This upswing in food prices is being reflected across multiple food categories, from fresh fruit (10.1%) to fish and seafood (10.9%). Skyrocketing food prices are regressive and particularly damaging to low-income Americans, as they spend a...

Former President Donald Trump has endorsed best-selling author J.D. Vance, a vocal national populist, in the Ohio Republican Senate primary race. [cut] This is not an easy endorsement for me to make because I like and respect some of the other candidates in the race — they’ve said great things about “Trump” and, like me, they love Ohio and love our Country. I’ve studied this race closely and I think J.D. is the most likely to take out the weak, but dangerous, Democrat opponent — dangerous because they will have so much money to spend. [Emphasis added] However, J.D. will...

President Biden’s administration has eliminated United States tariffs on more than 350 products made in China, nearly all of which could be made in the U.S. The Section 301 tariffs on billions of dollars worth of China-made products were imposed by President Trump after a decades-long free trade consensus in Washington, D.C., that has eliminated 3.7 million American jobs from the U.S. economy from 2001 to 2018. Late last week, Biden’s U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai announced that after an extensive review process on nearly 550 China-made products subject to U.S. tariffs, the administration would eliminate tariffs on 352...

President Joe Biden’s administration has eliminated United States tariffs on more than 350 products made in China, nearly all of which could be made in the U.S. or other countries. The Section 301 tariffs on billions of dollars worth of China-made products were first imposed by former President Trump after a decades-long free trade consensus in Washington, D.C., that has eliminated 3.7 million American jobs from the U.S. economy from 2001 to 2018.

The US has agreed to ease Trump-era tariffs on UK steel and aluminium shipments, resolving an issue that had strained relations between the allies. The move follows earlier deals with the European Union and Japan over the controversial taxes, which were imposed by former President Donald Trump in 2018 in the name of national security. In exchange, the UK will suspend extra taxes it had put on US products such as bourbon and Levi's jeans.

President Donald Trump took a lot of heat from the mainstream, business and free-market Republicans for implementing tariffs against China and other countries. The common criticism was that it was a populist, anti-free market move. They pointed to it as evidence that he is a populist, not a conservative (I recently addressed the differences between populists and conservatives, showing the accusation to be a red herring). The MSM jumped on it even more, declaring — as if they are the authority — that Trump was going against Republicans. Was he? Look at history. The Founding Fathers imposed tariffs. The first...

A total of 140 House Republicans and Democrats are lobbying President Joe Biden to cut United States tariffs on billions of dollars worth of China-made imports. Last month, Breitbart News exclusively reported how Reps. Darin LaHood (R-IL), Jackie Walorski (R-IN), Ron Kind (D-WI), and Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-WA) were courting lawmakers to sign their letter to U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai — urging her to allow more “made in China” imports to avoid U.S. tariffs. The Section 301 tariffs on billions of dollars worth of China-made products were first imposed by former President Trump after a decades-long free trade...

As a candidate for the U.S. Senate seat in Arizona, businessman Jim Lamon has claimed that he will put America First and stand up to Communist China. But when it comes to his business practices, he clearly has no intention of putting his money where his mouth is. Fund Real News Lamon has said that he will “defeat the Communist Party,” and that as a Senator, he will see to it “that goods coming into the U.S. are not made with cheap slave labor, unfettered environmental pollution, and unsafe working conditions.” He has even claimed that his own company, Depcom...

Solar panels aren’t as environmentally friendly as you may think. And now an industry group is saying looming tariffs will cripple the industry... ...a group is claiming China-made panels are coming via countries like Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand in order to skirt tariffs. In August, the American Solar Manufacturers Against Chinese Circumvention (A-SMACC) asked the Commerce Department to investigate "unfairly traded" imports from Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam of solar cells and modules that are "unlawfully circumventing antidumping and countervailing duties on China."... ...This has triggered a response from the SEIA, claiming that tariffs would cripple the industry....

NEW YORK – Never before in US political history has the whole of the American business community—more than thirty major business organizations—spoke with one voice as it did in an August 5 appeal to the Biden administration to eliminate tariffs on imports from China. No entities in American politics are timider than business lobbies, most of whose work involves quiet lobbying for administrative relief and legislative tweaks. Such a high-profile intervention suggests that the business organizations believe that a deal is already underway. A deal is likely because inflation could poison the Democratic Party’s chances at 2022 mid-term elections and...

(Reuters) - Nearly three dozen of the United States' most influential business groups have asked President Joe Biden's administration to restart trade talks with China and cut tariffs on imports, the Wall Street Journal reported https://www.wsj.com/articles/business-groups-call-on-biden-to-restart-trade-talks-with-china-11628212436?mod=latest_headlines on Thursday. (Please see link for full article)

The United States is pursuing every avenue to ensure that countries suspend or roll back discriminatory digital services taxes, but will keep tariffs as an option if that does not happen, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Wednesday. Yellen told the Senate Finance Committee she had engaged in “very constructive” bilateral conversations with the Irish finance minister on the issue, and believed the entire European Union would ultimately support an increase in global minimum taxes, as proposed by the United States. She said she was hoping for progress on the tax issue, which is being negotiated under the leadership...

When President Joe Biden meets with European leaders next week, he will commit to dropping tariffs protecting U.S. steel and aluminum and resolving other trade disputes this summer. ...Bloomberg’s indicated the surrender of metals tariffs was practically a done deal. Bloomberg, CNBC, and Reuters said they had reviewed a draft statement that would be issued at the conclusion of an EU-U.S. summit in Brussels set to begin on June 15.

Implementing a border levy to price carbon-intensive imports and protect European industries will be “extremely complicated,” warned Jonathan Pershing, a member of the US climate envoy’s team. “I do note that it’s extremely complicated to think about the structure of a border tax,” Pershing told participants at a EURACTIV debate last Friday (7 May). “I don’t disagree in principle that it has value, but I think that it’s got enormous complexity,” he warned. The carbon border adjustment mechanism, due to be revealed in July, aims to put a price on imports from countries where it is cheaper to pollute, as...

President Joe Biden’s proposed infrastructure legislation has the political class seemingly locked in a debate about what “infrastructure” means. Biden and Democratic leaders—backed by a majority of the U.S. population—believe that “infrastructure” is more than just roads and bridges and encompasses all the structures that help modern society function. Their new bill reflects that understanding, including improvements to water pipes and the electrical grid, universal broadband access, charging stations for electric vehicles, physical upgrades to schools and universities, and—perhaps most innovatively—home care for the elderly and disabled, support for families with children, and expanded access to health care. Republican elected...