Free Republic

President Donald Trump's approval rating has dropped to 40 percent, lower than all other presidents at this point in their terms, new polling released by Pew Research Center on Wednesday shows. Americans want Trump to govern less by executive order, listen to the courts, and don't like tariffs. Trump is losing ground with people on the fence. From February to April, his approval rating fell from 88 percent to 75 percent among people who supported him in the 2024 election but "not strongly," and from 44 percent to 31 percent among nonvoters. Of course, partisans will be partisans, and Trump...

Jefferson, who had always advised minimal government interference, contradicted his own principles by putting in place this law, which gave him extraordinary and unprecedented power over all American trade. The Embargo Act was an embargo declared by the USA, under President Jefferson, against Britain and France, the prime combatants in the Napoleonic Wars... the U.S. declared their neutrality in the faraway war, seeking to keep its trade links with European countries unharmed. However, wartime circumstances meant that both Britain and France did their best to hamper the sources of revenue of the other faction.... The worst incident in a series...

The bottom line is Jerome Powell has screwed up. No, that’s not from President Trump. That comes from legendary investor Louis Navellier.In yesterday’s Special Market Podcast in Growth Investor, Louis weighed in on President Trump’s attacks on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell:The latest criticism is, President Trump wants to get rid of Jerome Powell. Ok, well, unfortunately, I have to agree with him because Powell is fighting a mythical inflation that hasn’t occurred yet.We’re not going to have more tariffs other than the Chinese tariffs because everybody is caving. Everybody is meeting with the administration; everybody is dropping their barriers....

China has quietly exempted from tariffs some semiconductors made in the United States, in an attempt to protect its leading technology companies from a bitter trade showdown with President Donald Trump.Levies on at least eight classifications of U.S.-made microchips have been dropped to zero, instead of the 125 percent retaliatory tariff rate Beijing has imposed on all other U.S. goods, Caijing, a Chinese financial media outlet, reported Friday.The article was later deleted. But two importers who spoke to The Washington Post confirmed that certain semiconductors are now exempted from tariffs. One company in Shenzhen listed the exemptions on social media...

China claims the President Trump started the trade war against China by imposing his reciprocal tariffs: This is a complete lie. China has been waging a full-scale trade war against America for decades—President Trump just happens to be the first President to stand up to China—and they don’t like it. Case in point: China steals anywhere between $225 and $600 BILLION of American technology and intellectual property every year. Depending on the range of the estimate, this is roughly equal to—perhaps double—the value of the trade deficit in goods, which stood at $295 billion in 2024.

During an interview with WVON on Thursday, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said “the fluctuations of the market and Trump’s tariffs” have resulted in massive losses to the city “just because of the uncertainty and the chaos.” And also stated that he wants to raise taxes by imposing a financial transaction tax and expressed openness to a corporate head tax and stated that those things, along with lots of other ideas, would put “the burden on the very people that Donald Trump is trying to protect.” While discussing the city’s budget, [relevant remarks begin around 5:35] Johnson said that the budget...

China just scrapped 12,000 metric tons of pork orders from the US — the largest cancellation since 2020. That single move dragged US pork export sales to their lowest level in over six months. Lean hog futures immediately took a hit in Chicago, sliding as much as 1.6% before recovering slightly. Behind the scenes, it's not just about pork — it's about tariffs, trade power plays, and a shifting global protein map that could catch some investors off guard. The sharp pullback from China isn't random. It's a direct response to longstanding US tariffs — some dating back to Trump-era...

The vibe around President Trump’s second term has shifted, and it’s all his doing. The president entered office with a bit of a wind at his back. His polling was better than the first time around, protesters weren’t in the streets, and federal investigators weren’t after him. The GOP was more united than in 2016 and business leaders wanted to work with him, while the culture was generally heading in an anti-woke direction. Now, though, his polling is in a marked decline. His job approval rating is sliding. Depending on what poll you believe, it’s down to 44 percent (Fox...

Canada is in the midst of a national election that will determine the future of Canada and of the Canadian-American alliance. At this critical juncture, it’s essential that the United States and President Trump secure the best tariff deal with Canada. This will maximize U.S. leverage in tariff negotiations and will provide Canadians critical information about how to end tariffs on their country. While the election in Canada is next Monday, April 28, well over 7 million Canadians have already voted early, with an estimated 10–11 million Canadians yet to vote. It is essential that Canadian voters be informed which...

Fox Business senior correspondent Charles Gasparino reported on Thursday that President Donald Trump’s administration is giving insider information to Wall Street executives about ongoing trade deals. Citing “senior Wall Street execs with ties to the White House,” Gasparino wrote on X that people within Trump’s administration have alerted business leaders about an “agreement in principle with India.” He further reported that the deal could be used as a template for other trade deals the administration is working on with Japan and other countries. Markets have taken sharp hits amid uncertainty surrounding Trump’s tariffs and trade deals. “People inside the Trump...

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is continuing his push against President Donald Trump's tariffs, with legislation he is co-sponsoring against them to come before the Senate next week. Paul says lawmakers should be in control of tariffs, rather than Trump, through the use of a national-emergency law. The discussion will come less than a month after Paul was one of the only two chamber Republicans to vote against his party's budget, which is seen as a key part of the president's tax cuts, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. "I don't have any bad feelings towards the president, but this is...

Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders are now live in the U.S. After an unexpected delay from the initially announced date in early April, Nintendo's hotly anticipated new console is now available to pre-order at select retailers.Major retailers Walmart, Target and Best Buy opened the pre-order floodgates at midnight ET, and the demand was significant, with website crashes and "sold out" notifications quickly appearing at all three.If you're just joining the pre-order hunt now, you haven't missed out yet. GameStop has opted for an 11 a.m. ET drop. As Nintendo warned, demand is already exceeding the supply...

President Trump continues to walk back his original tariff assault, and markets are pleased. They rose again Wednesday after Mr. Trump said he won’t fire the Federal Reserve Chairman and is likely to retreat from his highest China tariffs. Is this Mr. Trump’s François Mitterrand moment? Readers of a certain age will recall how the French Socialist President swept into power in 1981 promising a far left agenda of government control over the private economy. The market reaction was brutal. Within a year he had put socialism on pause and by 1983 he had abandoned most of it. He went...

When Matt Raboin founded his hard cider company in Wisconsin eight years ago, he wanted to buy American. But he soon found out that his needs as a small, upstart cidery couldn’t be met by any existing American bottle makers because his orders were too small. Forced to look overseas, Raboin, like many American small business owners and consumers, found the best bang for his buck in China. Now, his vulnerable business model has been disrupted nearly overnight by President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, which escalated at a dizzying rate, giving business owners little time to adapt. While...

President Donald Trump’s unprecedented tariffs, particularly on China, and recent attacks on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell caused alarm among some of his top advisers and America’s biggest CEOs, who warned of financial chaos and store shelves that could go bare, people familiar with the conversations said. The warnings — and the markets’ own volatility this week — seemed to have broken through. Trump backed down Tuesday from his threats to try to remove Powell from the job, telling reporters in the Oval Office: “I have no intention of firing him.” That prompted sighs of relief on Wall Street. A...

WASHINGTON — Many Republican lawmakers lie low when they have differences with President Trump. Sen. Rand Paul has taken the opposite approach. “Congress needs to grow a spine, and Congress needs to stand up for its prerogatives,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters, complaining that Trump relied on a national-emergency law to impose tariffs that Paul believes should be controlled by lawmakers. His comments came just days after he was one of only two GOP senators to vote against the party’s budget framework that is key to Trump’s tax cuts, saying it didn’t do enough to reduce the deficit. The libertarian...

Stock markets have risen around the world after Donald Trump said his tariffs on China would come down “substantially” and he had “no intention” of firing the chair of the American central bank, Jay Powell. The president told reporters in Washington on Tuesday he plannned to be “very nice” to China in trade talks and that tariffs could drop in both countries if they could reach a deal, adding: “It will come down substantially, but it won’t be zero.” The comments sparked a fresh rally on Wall Street, with the S&P 500 blue chip index and the Nasdaq ending the...

The Trump administration has received official trade offers from 18 countries, and its trade negotiation team has meetings scheduled with 34 countries this week, the White House announced Tuesday.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt provided an update on trade negotiations during a briefing on Tuesday.“There is a lot of progress being made. We now have 18 proposals on paper that have been brought to the trade team,” she detailed. “Again, these are proposals on paper that countries have proposed to the Trump administration and to our government.”Over 100 countries have expressed interest in making a deal, per the press secretary.“You...

The Finance Ministry of India announced on Monday that it would be imposing a 12 percent tariff on some steel products — a move apparently intended to prevent China from “dumping” large amounts of steel into the Indian market and elbowing domestic companies out of business.Indian officials had floated the potential of a 12 percent “safeguard duty” in late March in anticipation of news that the United States could impose tariffs that would lead China to see alternative markets to America for products that Americans would no longer want to buy at higher prices. President Donald Trump announced a wave...

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made significant comments about the ongoing tariff tensions with China at a closed-door investor summit on Tuesday in Washington. According to Bloomberg, Bessent told attendees that the standoff with China -- which he said was essentially an embargo -- is unsustainable and that he expects it to de-escalate. He said that while formal negotiations haven't commenced, a deal remains possible. Risk assets have rallied on this.