Free Republic

The proper response to foreign tariffs is nothing. Here is why. 1. A tariff is a tax on your citizens. Retaliation means you tax your buyers and your producers to “punish” a foreign government. You hurt the innocent to spite the guilty. 2. Imports are the benefit of trade. Exports are the cost you pay to get them. Blocking imports means you block the benefit and keep the cost. 3. Unilateral free trade raises real incomes. It lowers input costs for businesses, speeds innovation, and forces domestic firms to win by serving customers, not by lobbying. 4. Tariff tit for...

Aluminum production in the US rises due to Trump's tariffs reducing the dumping of Aluminum in the US by foreign producers. Interview of Century Aluminum CEO by Maria on Fox Business.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mexico sent 26 high-ranking cartel figures to the United States Tuesday in the latest major deal with the Trump administration as American authorities ratchet up pressure on criminal networks smuggling drugs across the border. Those handed over to U.S. custody include Abigael González Valencia, a leader of “Los Cuinis,” a group closely aligned with notorious cartel Jalisco New Generation or CJNG. Another defendant, Roberto Salazar, is wanted in connection to the 2008 killing of a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy. Other prominent figures have ties to the Sinaloa Cartel and other violent drug trafficking groups. The transfers...

Tariffs as high as 145 percent were due to be implemented on goods from China at midnight Tuesday. The last-minute extension came hours after Trump provided a vague response to reporters on extending the deadline on Monday. “We’ve been dealing very nicely with China… they have tremendous tariffs that they’re paying to the United States of America,” Trump said during a press conference at the White House. “We’ll see what happens. They’ve been dealing quite nicely. The relationship is very good with President Xi and myself.” Trump signed a new Executive Order later on Monday. China will now have its...

At 9:45 AM PST - $578 On 07-APR-2025 - QQQ crashed to $402 - After the Democratic Party and the International Hard Left News Media did every thing they could think of to talk down the Donald Trump Economy. 176 points later...!

NEW DELHI, Aug 8 (Reuters) - New Delhi has put on hold its plans to procure new U.S. weapons and aircraft, according to three Indian officials familiar with the matter, in India's first concrete sign of discontent after tariffs imposed on its exports by President Donald Trump dragged ties to their lowest level in decades. India had been planning to send Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to Washington in the coming weeks for an announcement on some of the purchases, but that trip has been cancelled, two of the people said. Trump on Aug. 6 imposed an additional 25% tariff on...

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...