Free Republic

Not even 24 hours after his party lost a key Wisconsin race and underperformed in Florida, President Donald Trump followed the playbook that has defined his political career: He doubled down. Trump’s move on Wednesday to place stiff new tariffs on imports from nearly all U.S. trading partners marks an all-in bet by the Republican that his once-fringe economic vision will pay off for Americans. It was the realization of his four decades of advocacy for a protectionist foreign policy and the belief that free trade was forcing the United States into decline as its economy shifted from manufacturing to...

Representative Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) claimed Friday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” that Republican lawmakers and President Donald Trump’s voters are panicking over tariffs. Gottheimer said, “I think you’re going to see a lot of people panic and start to say, this is not what we signed up for. I did hear that from a Trump voter today who said, I did not sign up for higher costs, higher taxes. What’s going on here with all this chaos? And I think that’s what you’re going to see more of.”

Classical theory may not care where the steel mills, chip foundries, shipyards, research labs, aircraft plants, oil fields, and supply chains are, but the real world of power politics does. I spent most of my time during 20 years in Washington, D.C. working in a bipartisan manner on trade policy with the aim of keeping here, then bringing back, strategic industries. There was then a coalition of national security Republicans (on my side of the aisle) and labor union Democrats. Democrats did not want to lose the middle-class blue-collar jobs when factories closed. Republicans did not want to lose the...

GUANGZHOU, China — At his factory in southern China, hat supplier Jeffy Ma is trying to keep up with global demand as well as President Donald Trump’s seismic changes to international trade. His company, Ace Headwear, sews, embroiders and finishes golf visors, cycling headwear and baseball hats for brands such as Wilson and Fila, as well as for Major League Baseball teams. About 40% of the hats his 350 employees make are sold to the United States. “For us, the manufacturing profit is very low, so we cannot absorb so much,” Ma told NBC News last week at his factory...

The price of Lululemon’s popular leggings and yoga wear could soon jump by more than 10% because of President Donald Trump’s sweeping reciprocal tariffs, according to industry experts. The high-end athleisure brand is “in the tariffs bullseye” – with the bulk of its manufacturing sourced from countries that were among the hardest hit hard, William Blair analyst Sharon Zackfia wrote in a note to clients. Lululemon has said 40% of its products are made in Vietnam – which the US plans to hit with a 46% tariff. Another 46% of Lululemon’s garments are produced in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and...

Bitcoin rose on Friday after China retaliated against President Donald Trump’s tariffs, while stocks continued to crater following their worst day since 2020. The price of the flagship cryptocurrency rose more than 2% to $83,959.19, according to Coin Metrics. Earlier, it rose as much as $84,717.51. Most of the major cryptocurrencies were also in the green Friday. Solana and dogecoin jumped about 6% each. Most crypto-related stocks fell again, however, with Coinbase down about 6%. The bitcoin proxy MicroStrategy advanced nearly 4%. Meanwhile, spot gold fell 2.4% to $3,037.30 an ounce, while U.S. gold futures were down 2.05% at $3,057.90....

Thailand will negotiate with the United States on tariffs, Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said on Thursday, hours after US President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on imports from many countries to the US. 'We won't let it get to where GDP will miss the target,' Ms Paetongtarn told reporters. 'We have a strong plan.' 'We have prepared several steps, including sending our permanent secretary to talk with them. … I think we can still negotiate.' Deputy Finance Minister Julapun Amornvivat said the government was not surprised to be hit with tariffs, though the 36% level was higher than anticipated. 'We...

JERUSALEM: Israel is in talks with its main ally the United States to reduce tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump as part of a global salvo, according to the finance minister.Trump hit friends and foes alike with his sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs this week, making his announcement just a day after Israel lifted all of its remaining customs duties on US imports. Trump reserved some of the harshest duties for major trade partners, while goods from Israel, a top beneficiary of US military aid, were hit with a 17 percent tariff. “The Ministry of Finance is maintaining an ongoing dialogue...

China struck back against President Trump’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs Friday by slapping the US with its own 34% tariff on imports and announcing curbs on some key rare materials — further heightening the trade war between Washington and Beijing. The new double-digit tariff on imports of all US products will be imposed from April 10, China’s finance ministry said. The move is in retaliation to Trump on Wednesday hitting China with a “reciprocal” 34% tariff on Chinese exports – on top of the 20% levy he imposed earlier this year. As part of the flurry of retaliatory measures, Beijing...

HANOI (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump and Vietnam's leader To Lam agreed on Friday to discuss a deal to remove tariffs, both leaders said after a phone call that Trump said was "very productive", as Hanoi escalated its campaign to dodge duties of 46%. Days before Trump's announcement on reciprocal tariffs that hit Vietnam hard, the country had already cut several duties as part of a series of concessions to the U.S., which also included pledges to buy more American goods such as planes and agriculture products. "Just had a very productive call with To Lam, General Secretary of the...

Argentine President Javier Milei said during a Conservative event in Florida that his country was negotiating with Donald Trump's administration a zero-tariff deal on approximately 50 export products, aiming for a potential Free Trade Agreement (FTA) shortly. Milei's remarks came after the Republican leader slapped a 10% tariff on all Argentine goods as part of a broader protectionist policy. Speaking at the American Patriots Gala hosted by conservative groups Make America Clean Again and We Fund the Blue at Mar-a-Lago, where he received the “Lion of Liberty Award” for his commitment to freedom and free-market values, Milei outlined plans to...

Much like every other major story, the dying news media have managed to take a really interesting topic and thoroughly dumb it down to a limited set of monotonous slogans. In this case, variations of “tariffs hurt working people the most” and “the cost is passed onto consumers.”NBC News: “Trump’s new tariffs will hit lower-income households the hardest.”Associated Press: “Companies buying foreign products pay the tariffs imposed on them — and, as a result, face higher costs that are typically passed on to customers.”USA Today: “[S]ome economists predict Americans will feel the pain – at least in the short term...

The grand new American reawakening has come, Trump announced with his inaugural ‘Day of Liberation’—a Declaration of Economic Independence: [pic] Experts the world over are now butting heads over what this epochal ‘reciprocal tariffs’ package will mean for the world economy. Firstly, it must be said that the misnomered program is apparently not one of ‘reciprocal’ tariffs at all, but rather tariffs doing the job of balancing ‘unequal’ trade deficits between the US and other countries. As most know by now, Trump’s team apparently used a simple equation for determining the tariff rate: Flexport's team was able to reverse engineer...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is opposing President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs after spending his career in Washington, DC, trashing the nation’s decades-long free trade policy for allowing multinational corporations to easily outsource American jobs to low-wage countries like China and Vietnam. “As someone who helped lead the effort against disastrous unfettered free trade deals with China, Mexico, and other low-wage countries, I understand that we need trade policies that benefit American workers, not just the CEOs of large corporations,” Sanders said in a statement before using economic libertarian talking points to attack Trump’s recipricol tariffs:

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday that California will look for ways to expand trade and persuade international partners to exempt the state from global payback as President Trump’s sweeping round of tariffs have sent U.S. and global financial markets tumbling.“Donald Trump’s tariffs do not represent all Americans,” Newsom said in a video posted Friday on the social media platform X. The 40 million residents of California, he said, live in “the tent pole of the US economy” that represents 14% of the nation’s GDP and is the fifth largest economy in the world.Newsom said he had directed his administration to...

President Donald Trump on Friday said he had a "productive" call with Vietnam's leader To Lam during which Lam offered to reduce tariffs on U.S. imports to his country."Just had a very productive call with To Lam, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, who told me that Vietnam wants to cut their Tariffs down to ZERO if they are able to make an agreement with the U.S.," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. "I thanked him on behalf of our Country, and said I look forward to a meeting in the near future."

President Donald Trump announced that Vietnam wants to drop tariffs on U.S. goods entirely if a deal can be struck between the countries.

President Javier Milei on Thursday announced that Argentina will readjust its internal regulations to meet the requirements of President Donald Trump’s tariff proposals. Milei, a career economist and the world’s first and only libertarian president at press time, made the announcement during a brief speech at the “American Patriots Gala,” an event organized by the “We Fund the Blue” charity organization at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. “In this framework, and as a result of the meetings that Foreign Minister [Gerardo] Werthein had with the U.S. Department of State and the Secretary of Commerce, Argentina will move forward to...

Move over, Smoot and Hawley. President Trump has anointed himself America’s greatest protectionist, and he’s launching a global trade war to prove it. On Wednesday, Trump slapped a minimum 10 percent tariff on all imports, plus additional “reciprocal” tariffs on 60 other countries that have the temerity to sell us things we want to buy. He dubbed it “Liberation Day” to mark the freeing of Americans from the supposedly oppressive burden of trading with others.

In 1996, Nancy Pelosi stood at the House floor delivering a speech that would surprise many today. She fiercely opposed granting China Most Favored Nation (MFN) trade status. But what’s shocking is how her stance back then echoes arguments often made by Donald Trump decades later. Pelosi’s speech was filled with concerns about unfair trade practices, a massive trade deficit, and the loss of American jobs to China. Pelosi questioned the fairness of the trade relationship, asking, “Is this reciprocal?” She pointed out the striking imbalance between what the U.S. was giving and what it was getting in return. Her...