Free Republic

Economists across the political spectrum predicted that President Donald Trump’s trade negotiations would end in disaster. Now that his August 1 deadline has passed without the sky falling — and with multiple advantageous deals completed — it’s time to seriously reevaluate the flawed arguments the experts made against his strategy. Many, it turns out, made basic errors in economic reasoning. On the left, Nobel laureate and Columbia professor Joseph Stiglitz declared in January that Trump’s policy was “very bad for America and for the world,” while University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers called it “impressively destructive.” On the right, prominent...

The oil market is shrugging off President Donald Trump’s threats to impose heavy tariffs on countries that buy Russian energy exports. Trump has given Russia until Friday to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine. If Moscow does not comply, the U.S. will impose 100% “secondary tariffs” on countries that buy Russian exports, the president has said. This would in theory force countries to choose between buying Russian oil or trading with the U.S. India, China and Turkey are the most exposed as the three biggest importers of Russian oil. Trump on Wednesday targeted India with a 25% tariff for buying...

He further indicated that he would not impose retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has declined to personally call President Donald Trump to resolve the ongoing trade dispute, telling Reuters that to do so would be a "humiliation.""The day my intuition says Trump is ready to talk, I won't hesitate to call him," he told the outlet. "But today my intuition says he doesn't want to talk. And I'm not going to humiliate myself."He further indicated that he would not impose retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. Trump slapped the South American nation with a...

Had the American people not rallied around President Trump as odious phony prosecutions engulfed him during his presidential campaign, he may not have been re-elected president and instead endured a terrible fate. In South America this week, we are seeing how bad it could have been. Late yesterday, Brazil's manic, freakish, version of Judge James Boasberg, Justice Alexandre de Moraes, ordered Brazil's equivalent of President Trump, former President Jair Bolsonaro arrested for questioning the 2022 Brazilian presidential electoral result, that, as with President Trump, he was mysteriously defeated in by a narrow margin after showing significant strength on the campaign...

The United States' 15% tariff on EU goods could reduce the value of alcohol sales by almost $2 billion and put 25,000 U.S. jobs at risk, a group of 57 alcohol industry groups wrote in a letter sent to President Trump on Tuesday. The letter was signed by organisations representing major European producers, including Diageo and Pernod Ricard, U.S. whiskey and wine producers, as well as glass suppliers, retailers and restaurants. Washington and Brussels agreed last month to a 15% import tariff on most European Union goods after talks that halved the threatened rate and averted a bigger trade war....

The U.S. ISM Non-Manufacturing PMI for July 2025 fell to 50.1, narrowly avoiding contraction territory but signaling a near-stagnant services sector. This 0.7-point drop from June's 50.8 and a 1.4-point miss relative to forecasts underscores a fragile economic backdrop. With price pressures surging to 69.9—the highest since October 2022—and employment indices contracting for four of five months, the data paints a stark picture of stagflationary risks. For investors, this creates a critical inflection point to reassess sector allocations and prioritize resilience over growth. The Stagflationary Catalysts The July report highlights three key drivers of the slowdown: 1. Tariff-Driven Inflation: The...

President Donald Trump suggested on Sunday that his administration could distribute dividends from tariff revenues to Americans with certain income levels.Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One, Trump said that a distribution of dividends to selected U.S. households is possible, even as the government works to pay down the national debt.“We have a lot of money coming in, much more money than the country has ever seen, by hundreds of billions of dollars,” he said. “There could be a distribution for dividends to the people of our country. I would say for people that would be middle-income people and...

A 25% tariff on shrimp from India is shaking up the seafood industry and drawing praise from Texas shrimpers and one Gulf Coast congressman. “Our domestic shrimpers, including those in my district, have struggled to compete against the unprecedented amount of foreign shrimp that has been imported into our country for far too long,” said U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX). “By imposing a 25% tariff on imports from India, President Trump is demonstrating that the United States of America won’t be taken advantage of … I applaud President Trump’s decisive action that puts American shrimpers first.” The White House announced...

China’s leadership, including Xi Jinping, is now openly admitting to a crisis of industrial “overcapacity,” a problem they have termed “involution.” This counterproductive and “disorderly competition” is causing destructive price wars, particularly in the massive auto industry. While Beijing is attempting to use dictatorial measures, such as price controls, to address the issue, experts argue that this approach will fail.

India said it had no plans to stop buying and reselling Russian oil despite an announcement by President Trump on Monday that he would “substantially” increase the 25 percent tariffs he imposed on Indian goods because of the practice. India’s foreign ministry called the targeting of New Delhi “unjustified and unreasonable,” and said the United States had once actively encouraged the oil imports Mr. Trump now seeks to punish.

The US plans to impose tariffs of 39% on Swiss imports as of August 7, the White House said on the night of Thursday-Friday – a rate even higher than the 31% announced by Trump in April. The tariff hike also deviates “significantly” from the draft of a joint declaration of intent which had been the result of intensive discussions between both sides in recent months, according to the Swiss government, which approved the draft on July 4. As such, a spokesman for the finance ministry spoke on Friday of “great regret” that the US intends to impose steep unilateral...

Indian officials said on Saturday that they would keep purchasing cheap oil from Russia despite a threat of penalties from President Trump, the latest twist in an issue that New Delhi thought it had settled. The defiance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government reflected increasing frustration with a relationship that was once much praised but has been souring rapidly. There is a growing sense in India that its leaders should not allow increasingly volatile American policymaking to shape its choices on vital energy supplies for its huge population, 1.4 billion people. Mr. Trump said last week that as part of...

The United States stands on the brink of an unprecedented transformer shortage that threatens to derail President Trump’s ambitious plans for AI-driven reindustrialization. With wait times for electrical transformers now stretching to 3–5 years—compared to just 4–6 weeks in 2020—manufacturers warn of "catastrophic" grid instability as power demands skyrocket from new data centers, factories, and infrastructure projects. The bottleneck stems from Trump’s aggressive trade policies, including a 25% tariff on India (the world’s largest transformer producer, making 60% of global supply) and looming 100% penalties on China (which produces another 20%). The Transformer Shortage: A Ticking Time Bomb Transformers are...

FOLLOWING US President Donald Trump’s tariff sledgehammer, the Indian government has kicked off an exercise to thrash out concessions across sectors that can be offered in the tariff negotiations later this month. Key economic ministries have been asked to see what they can still afford to offer to sweeten New Delhi’s deal when the US team is here on August 25. To reach an agreement, the Trump administration has been demanding much more than what the government has offered in its market access commitments, including lowering of tariffs across the board and removal of non-tariff trade barriers. As policymakers grapple...

When President Trump announced the terms of the pending US-EU trade deal, the world was shocked. Not only is it the biggest trade deal in history—it unequivocally puts America first. In fact, when asked what concessions America gave, EU President Ursula Von Der Leyen could not come up with a single item. Europeans went ballistic. They described this as the death-knell for the EU. Europe has been described as a collection of American vassal states (which is fundamentally accurate). Even America’s liberals went nuts—the deal was too good for America. They argued that it would undermine America’s political relationship with...

President Trump has now imposed his new tariff regime on the world, and the triumphalism is palpable in MAGA land. But maybe hold the euphoria, as this week’s reports on jobs and the economy suggest the new golden age may take a while to appear. Friday’s labor report arrived with a particular jolt, with a mere 73,000 net new jobs in July. Even more bearish were the downward revisions of 258,000 jobs in May and June. Job gains over the last three months are barely more than 100,000. The details in the report provide little solace. The jobless rate ticked...

Protests opposing President Trump dubbed "Rage Against The Regime" being held across the United States today... A Song About A Notorious Criminal Couple No Not Ghislaine And Jeffrey... Welcome to this week's attempt at media excellence you host certified Zionist since October 1973 but not certified as a Kool Aid Drinking Zionist... Rush Limbaugh operated in 'pursuit of the truth' and in that vein let's consider 'flatulence' namely cow flatulence as in 'cow farts'... Cows Consume Water That Could Be Used To Cool Data Centers And Produce Electric Car Batteries... The Anti-Russia European Union Trying To Poke Into The Balkans...

Former U.S. Rep Mike Rogers(R-MI), the Trump-endorsed Republican Senate candidate for Michigan, told Sirius XM’s Breitbart-News Saturday that President Donald Trump’s tariffs are “absolutely” already having real results as manufacturing opportunities are returning to the Wolverine State. [snip] Rogers keyed in on General Motors’ commitment to invest $4 billion in the United States, part of which will go to a facility in Michigan. He emphasized that it is “huge” that GM is bringing production back to Michigan. “And by the way, when that happens, all these small, little manufacturers get more work. This is really good for a state like...

Investors had plenty to parse Friday, including a disappointing July jobs report, President Trump's latest tariffs and earnings results from Amazon and Apple. The Dow fell a fifth straight day, booking its longest losing streak of the year.

US President Donald Trump on July 30 announced he would increase tariffs on Brazilian imports from 10 to 50 percent citing the trial of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for his alleged coup attempt following his loss in the 2022 Brazilian presidential elections. The Trump administration called Bolsonaro's prosecution "politically motivated" and imposed personal sanctions on the Supreme Court judge overseeing the former president's trial.