Free Republic

One must only watch a few minutes of Peter Navarro’s economic hypernationalist film “Death By China” to understand why President Trump has an affinity for the man. In the movie’s opening scenes, a flag-painted cutout of the United States tumbles to the ground and is brutally stabbed with a knife. As the map gushes blood, the knife’s handle is revealed to resemble Chinese currency, and its blade is labeled “Made in China.”

The Trump administrationÂ’s new tariffs on steel and aluminum from abroad could result in more than five jobs lost for every single job gained, according to an analysis from a group that advocates free trade.The job losses will be direct and indirect, as price hikes will hit American companies that buy international steel to make screws, wires, and machines, Laura M. Baughman, president of the Trade Partnership, said Friday during a Heritage Foundation event.The Trade Partnership anticipates a net loss of 146,000 U.S. jobs, Baughman said.On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced steel tariffs of 25 percent and aluminum tariffs of...

MAPLE PARK, Ill. — Snow and sleet were falling on Eldon Gould’s 500 acres this week, but he was already looking ahead to planting season; depending on ground conditions and the temperature, that could be just several weeks away. But now the prospect of steel and aluminum tariffs was adding to the list of worries and uncertainties that come with every corn and soybean season. “It’s the retaliation risk,” Mr. Gould said from his kitchen table in Maple Park, in a region of northern Illinois where farmland runs on for miles. “The world’s already awash in grain,” Mr. Gould said,...

President Trump may have lost his chief economic adviser over the trade war he’s hatching with China. It looks, though, like he gained one recruit — Charles “Smoot” Schumer. Schumer was nicknamed “Smoot Schumer” some years ago for Utah’s Reed Smoot, a notorious protectionist. The Smoot-Hawley tariff act, passed in 1930, helped precipitate the Great Depression. America spent decades overcoming the consequences of the error. Not until Trump, though, did a president win office on such a pointedly protectionist platform. Trump announced last week he was going to start with tariffs on steel and aluminum. It humiliated National Economic Council...

Trump's tariffs are a bad idea. President Donald Trump deserves applause for boosting the prospects for this country’s forgotten manufacturing workers, particularly in the steel and aluminum industries. Democrats lately have neglected these Americans. Hillary Clinton barely campaigned among them in Michigan during the 2016 general election, and she thoroughly ignored them in Wisconsin. Alas, President Trump is doing this all wrong. He likely will hurt the very middle class that he has championed since his escalator ride onto the political stage. Trump aims to protect U.S. metal makers with new taxes of 25 percent on foreign steel and 10...

Congress is preparing assail China for protectionist policies, like a 105.4% tariff on US poultry. But anyone who thinks America is a perfect practitioner of free trade needs to wake up. The International Trade Commission lists over 12,000 specific tariffs on imports to America. Hundreds of agricultural, textile, and manufacturing items are highly protected. So are obscure items like live foxes. -Non-specific dairy products -- 20% tariff on imports -Most vegetables -- 20% tariff -Asparagus and sweet corn -- 21.3% tariff -Synthetic outerwear -- 28.2% tariff

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said on Thursday that he will introduce legislation to nix President Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum imports just minutes after they were announced. "I will immediately draft and introduce legislation to nullify these tariffs, and I urge my colleagues to pass it before this exercise in protectionism inflicts any more damage on the economy," Flake said in a statement. Trump announced that he would levy the penalties — a 25 percent tariff for steel and 10 percent on aluminum — during a White House event. Canada and Mexico are exempted amid larger trade negotiations, Trump...

March 8 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump on Thursday, joined by steel and aluminum workers at the White House, imposed his promised industrial tariffs -- 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on foreign-made aluminum. Trump signed the tariff proclamations Thursday afternoon in a meeting with industry workers and officials -- ushering in fiscal penalties that have drawn ire from world leaders and sparked fears of a possible trade war. "A nation that does not protect property at home cannot protect its property abroad," Trump said. The White House said Canada and Mexico will initially be excluded from the...

Business leaders from nearly every American industry are furious with President Trump right now. They’ve been pressuring his administration to back off from its plan to add steep tariffs on importedsteel and aluminum, which are used to make everything from cars to boats and even soup cans. But the president has waved off their concerns. On Thursday afternoon, Trump is expected to sign an order directing the Commerce Department to add the 25 percent levy on steel and the 10 percent levy on aluminum. He did say, however, that his administration will exempt Canada and Mexico from the tariffs for...

The European Union on Wednesday released its target list of retaliatory tariffs on American exports worth $3.5 billion if President Trump pushes ahead with his steel and aluminum tariffs. This is how Mr. Trump’s trade irruptions could imperil American exporters and become a destructive spiral. The EU is acting with some restraint—for now—in crafting a narrow list of items on which to impose tariffs, including bourbon, orange juice, corn, ladders and motor boats. None are vital to European industry, but they are politically shrewd in targeting exports from states represented by Republicans on Capitol Hill. The point is to punish...

RUSH: Looky here. “U.S. Steel to Call Back 500 Employees to Illinois Plant After Trump Announces Tariffs on Foreign Steel.” Now, I kept hearing that the U.S. steel industry was dying, that it was over, that we couldn’t bring it back, much like Obama told us during his presidency of the U.S. economy in general. And yet look at what all is happening. Everything Obama talked about regarding the economy is now rendered null and void. He was dead wrong about it, even though he was trying to make it happen. He was trying to make decline and stagnation a...

The White House said Wednesday it may exempt Mexico, Canada and other nations from tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. "There are potential carve-outs for Mexico and Canada based on national security, and possibly other countries as well based on that process” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters, adding other nations could receive exemptions as well. "That would be a case-by-case and country-by-country basis but it would be determined whether or not there is a national security exemption," she said. Sanders reiterated that President Trump plans to announce the tariffs by the end of the week.

HERE'S A HUGELY winning issue for President Donald Trump that would deal with a gross trading abuse and simultaneously advance his goal of reducing the prices of prescription drugs: Insist that foreign buyers of American pharmaceuticals--almost without exception government agencies--pay their fair share of the research and development costs of these medicines. Currently, Americans are subsidizing overseas users of our drugs. Here's how that works. The average price of successfully bringing a new medicine to market in the U.S. is about $2.4 billion. The entire approval process takes some 12 years before a drug receives its final green light. The...

President Donald Trump has had a splendid first year in office. He has the economy moving again and at a healthy pace, some 2.6 percent in the most recent quarter. Unemployment is down, the stock market is up and the economic signs are mostly healthy. Well, for the stock market that was until last week. That was the week in which the President announced his intention to slap a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum. The market tanked, and more problems are said to be coming internationally. It appears the world does not...

Donald Trump made the biggest policy blunder of his Presidency Thursday by announcing that next week he’ll impose tariffs of 25% on imported steel and 10% on aluminum. This tax increase will punish American workers, invite retaliation that will harm U.S. exports, divide his political coalition at home, anger allies abroad, and undermine his tax and regulatory reforms. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.7% on the news, as investors absorbed the self-inflicted folly. ... The immediate impact will be to make the U.S. an island of high-priced steel and aluminum. The U.S. companies will raise their prices to nearly...

ary D. Cohn, President Trump’s top economic adviser, plans to resign, becoming the latest in a series of high-profile departures from the Trump administration, White House officials said on Tuesday. The officials insisted there was no single factor behind the departure of Mr. Cohn, who heads the National Economic Council. But his decision to leave came after he seemed poised to lose an internal struggle amid a Wild West-style process over Mr. Trump’s plan to impose large tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. “Gary has been my chief economic adviser and did a superb job in driving our agenda, helping...

From Lincoln to William McKinley to Theodore Roosevelt, and from Warren Harding through Calvin Coolidge, the Republican Party erected the most awesome manufacturing machine the world had ever seen. And, as the party of high tariffs through those seven decades, the GOP was rewarded by becoming America's Party. Thirteen Republican presidents served from 1860 to 1930, and only two Democrats. And Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson were elected only because the Republicans had split. Why, then, this terror of tariffs that grips the GOP? Consider. On hearing that President Trump might impose tariffs on aluminum and steel, Sen. Lindsey...

US President Donald Trump's vow to step-up protectionist policies to boost the US car industry could lead to a 10-percent drop in profits for German automakers, Germany's Center for Automotive Research (CAR) has warned. The trade barriers would see the European Union's alliance with America "deteriorate significantly," the center's director, Ferdinand Dudenhöffer told DW. He said Trump's desire to "punish" Washington's main trading partners in Europe would inevitably end in a messy divorce that would hurt US car manufacturers more.

Donald Trump doubled down Friday on his plan for steel and aluminum tariffs, telling his advisers he won’t exempt any countries from the new blunderbuss border taxes, and issuing on Twitter one of the greatest displays of economic nonsense in presidential history. “When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win. Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore-we win big. It’s easy!,” Mr. Trump tweeted Friday morning. Let’s parse that...

The Talk Shows March 4th, 2018 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): White House trade adviser Peter Navarro; Business Roundtable President Joshua Bolten.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross; Sen. Anus King, I-Maine.FACE THE NATION (CBS): Navarro; Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.; Andrew Pollack, father of student killed in Florida school shooting.THIS WEEK (ABC): Ross; Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.; former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus.STATE OF THE UNION (CNN): Navarro; Manchin; Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio.