Tag: trade

Commentary: Free Traders Are Wrong – It’s Time to Try Trade a New Way

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A recent Daily Mail poll showed 54 percent of voters support Trump’s proposal to put 10 percent tariffs on most imports, from China or not. This is sacrilege to American free traders.

The free-trade globalization crowd – who saw the 80s up to early 2000s as their heyday– believe in a world that does not exist the way they say it does on paper. Do you think Germany allows Ford Mustang’s into their country tariff free? EU charges Ford a 10 percent tariff, four times what we charge their automakers.

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Commentary: Halloween Is the Night Kids in the U.S.A. Discover Economics

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Tomorrow night American kids will observe a tradition not widely celebrated in the rest of the world: Halloween. They will dress up as ghosts, witches, goblins, politicians, and other scary things, then go door to door greeting neighbors with Trick or treat! Residents will drop candy in the bags the children are carrying.

Regardless of anyone’s intention, the tradition nicely demonstrates the creativity of free exchange.

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Trump to Hold Mid-September Ohio Rally with J.D. Vance

Bradley Vasoli

Former President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday he will hold a rally with Republican Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance at the Covelli Centre at 229 East Front Street in Youngstown in the afternoon and evening of Saturday, September 17.

Trump’s arrival on behalf of Vance, who the ex-president strongly endorsed in the primary, comes as the candidate maintains a slight polling lead against Democratic opponent Tim Ryan, a congressman representing the Buckeye State’s 13th District. An August Emerson College survey showed Vance, an attorney, venture capitalist and author, with the support of 45 percent of Ohio voters while Ryan had the support of 42 percent. Another poll from the Trafalgar Group later that month showed the Republican with a four-point lead. 

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Port of Philadelphia Gets Second Infusion of Money for Modernization

The Center Square

Gov. Tom Wolf gathered with state and local officials Friday to announce $265 million in funding for the Port of Philadelphia to “continue modernization efforts and improve regional stability.”

“The port is an economic driver, not only in Philadelphia, but across the commonwealth,” Wolf said. “The port supports jobs, encourages trade, and builds connections that help businesses and communities across Pennsylvania thrive. This new $246 million investment will help the port build on its success over the past few years and will help Pennsylvania build on our commonwealth’s economic success and job growth, too.”

The money will fund the next phase of the Port Development Plan after a $300 million investment in 2016 that expanded the facility’s infrastructure and warehousing space and added three new super post-Panamax cranes at the Packer Avenue Marine terminal. The improvements, along with a new Southport Auto Terminal, ramped up cargo volumes, resulting in a 60% increase in containers arriving in the city.

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Border Agents Encountered More Than 2 Million Migrants in 2021

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U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) ended 2021 with more than 2 million migrant encounters.

December 2021 numbers released Monday showed that border patrol encountered 178,840 migrants at the southern border, a 2% increase from the previous month. The number of encounters in December 2021 was greater than the total number of encounters at the border in the previous three Decembers combined.

Of the migrants encountered in December, 23% of them were previously encountered by border agents in the last year. Single adults made up 64% of the encounters, a 4% increase from November.

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Tennessee’s Unemployment Reaches Lowest Level Since January 2020

Chris Butler

Unemployment in Tennessee reached a two-year low in December, according to new data that the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development (TDLWD) released late last week. The state ended 2021 with an unemployment rate of 3.8 percent, which was 0.2 of a percentage point lower than the rate it recorded in November. Over the past year, Tennessee’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate decreased by 1.8 percentage points from 5.6 percent to 3.8 percent.

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Securities and Exchange Commission to Crack Down on Private Companies, Heighten Disclosure Requirements

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Securities and Exchange Commission building

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) plans to crack down on private companies, forcing them to disclose financial and operation statements more frequently, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Regulators have grown more concerned over the lack of oversight regarding private fundraising for companies, the WSJ reported. The private investment market has become a popular way for companies to raise money without undergoing the regulatory scrutiny required for public trading.

“When they’re big firms, they can have a huge impact on thousands of people’s lives with absolutely no visibility for investors, employees and their unions, regulators, or the public,” SEC Commissioner Allison Lee told the WSJ. “I’m not interested in forcing medium- and small-sized companies into the reporting regime.”

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Commentary: The Republican Party’s Multiethnic, Working-Class Coalition Is Taking Shape

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In the 2016 Republican Party presidential primary, decades of dissonance between the party’s aggrieved grassroots and its blinkered elite spilled out into the open. For years, the chasm widened between the GOP’s heartland base, the river valley-dwelling “Somewheres” from David Goodhart’s 2017 book, The Road to Somewhere, and the party’s bicoastal “Anywhere” rulers. The foot-soldier Republican “Somewheres,” disproportionately church-attending and victimized by job outsourcing and the opioid crisis, felt betrayed by the more secular, ideologically inflexible Republican “Anywheres.”

Donald Trump, lifelong conservative “outsider” and populist dissenter from bicoastal “Anywhere” orthodoxy on issues pertaining to trade, immigration, and China, coasted to the GOP’s presidential nomination. He did so notwithstanding the all-hands-on-deck pushback from leading right-leaning “Anywhere” bastions, encapsulated by National Review magazine’s dedication of an entire issue to, “Against Trump.” Trump’s subsequent victory in the 2016 general election sent the conservative intellectual movement, as well as the Republican Party itself, into a deep state of introspection.

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New Construction Career School Breaks Ground in Hamilton County

Kaitlin Housler

A new construction vocational facility for high school students and adults broke ground in Hamilton County on Thursday. Next week, workers will officially begin the building process of the Construction Career Center in Chattanooga’s Avondale neighborhood.

The old, vacant Mary Ann Garber School at 2225 Roanoke Avenue in Chattanooga is being renovated in order to house the new college-level vocational training center for 11th and 12th-grade students as well as adults in the community.

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China Fails to Purchase Amount of U.S. Goods Promised in Phase One Trade Deal, Report Finds

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China came $73.1 billion short of the total amount of U.S. goods it promised to purchase in the phase one trade deal between the two nations, according to a Peterson Institute for International Economics report.

While it agreed to purchase $173.1 billion in U.S. goods by the end of 2020, China purchased just $100 billion worth of goods, according to import data analyzed by the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE). In January 2020, former President Donald Trump and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He signed the phase one trade deal, which was aimed at resolving long-running China-U.S. trade disputes, and in February the deal went into effect.

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New Durable-Goods Orders Rise Again in June

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New orders for durable goods posted a second consecutive month of rebound in June, rising 7.3 percent following a gain of 15.1 percent in May. The two gains followed drops of 18.3 percent in April and 16.7 percent in March. If transportation equipment is excluded, new orders for durable goods increased 3.3 percent in June following a 3.6 percent rise in May. Durable-goods orders had been holding above the $200 billion level since May 2011 before posting sharp declines in March and April (see first chart). New orders for June are back above the $200 billion threshold, totaling $206.9 billion, but are still 21.9 percent below June 2019.

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Armstrong Williams Commentary: It’s Time to Talk About Recession

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Is America in a recession? It’s an unpopular question to ask, but it has now been over 3 months since COVID-19 restrictions were initiated and it is time for us to get realistic about where we are economically so that we can take the proper steps to minimize further damage to our economy. At this point, the unfortunate reality is that regardless of what we do, it is likely that it will take at least several years to see a partial recovery of economic loss and the time that it will take for a complete recovery remains unknown at this point. 

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Tech Leads the Way as US Stocks Head for a Third Month of Gains

The Associated Press

Stocks closed higher on Wall Street Tuesday, extending the market’s recent winning streak after another strong showing by technology companies.

The S&P 500 rose 0.4% and is on pace for its third straight monthly gain. The Nasdaq composite, which is heavily weighted with technology stocks, climbed to an all-time high for the second day in a row. Bond yields rose, another sign of increasing confidence in the economy.

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Stock Indexes Move Higher on Wall Street After a Shaky Start

The Associated Press

Stock indexes are higher on Wall Street in choppy trading Monday as investors weigh the risks that rising coronavirus cases could pose to hopes for an economic recovery.

The S&P 500 rose 0.4% in midday trading after an initial slide of 0.6% following weakness in overseas markets as the global tally of infections approaches 9 million. The price of gold rose, a signs of caution in the market. Bond yields were mixed.

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Commentary: COVID-19 Proves America Needs Economic Nationalism

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by Spencer P. Morrison   Reports of a deadly new virus began trickling out of China in December. The infection spread rapidly. By March 12, the World Health Organization deemed COVID-19 a global pandemic. The next day President Trump declared COVID-19 a “national emergency” that would require the “full power of the federal government” to handle. Many assumed this meant building temporary hospitals to care for COVID-19 patients. Others thought the government would provide local authorities with emergency medical supplies. Some imagined we would develop a vaccine. Instead, the government shut down the economy and forced Americans to “social distance” – destroying more than 36 million jobs and at least $2 trillion in economic output – while it scrambled to buy basic medical equipment from China, of all places. At the behest of academics, bankers, and “conservative” pundits like Ben Shapiro and Bill Kristol, America has offshored the bulk of its manufacturing industry to countries like China, Japan, and Mexico – countries that do not put America first. This has made America vulnerable to the biological, political, and economic contagions emanating from less developed parts of the world. The American people will not be safe until we embrace the wisdom of tariffs…

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Commentary: Export Bans and the Re-Emergence of the Nation-State

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The COVID-19 pandemic has served to upend many long-held policy assumptions, but none so clearly as the theory that international trade rests purely on economic incentives, and that those economic incentives will always override a country’s more base instincts to act in its own interest because of the cost to global profits.

Responses from countries around the world to COVID-19 have significantly fractured this argument. It can no longer be said with unshakable confidence that nations will sidestep their own economic objectives, interests, and policies for the sake of a more profitable international economic integration.

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Mexican Protesters Block Border Traffic, Tell Americans to ‘Stay At Home’

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In a seemingly-paradoxical turn of events, Mexican protesters on Wednesday blocked incoming traffic at the U.S. southern border, demanding their government do more to restrict American travel into their country.

A group of about a dozen protesters, holding signs and wearing face masks, used two vehicles to block southbound traffic coming out of a U.S.-Mexico port of entry near Nogales, Arizona, according to a report from the Arizona Republic. The protesters said their stunt was meant to highlight the dangers posed by incoming U.S. residents who may carry the coronavirus.

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Commentary: China’s Post-Virus Plan to Destroy America’s Economy

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The virus that originated in Wuhan, China poses a double threat to America.

The first is to our health as the virus spreads through the U.S. population. The second is to our economy as more businesses, schools, and events shut down to slow the spread of the contagion.

We must not underestimate the economic threat because the Chinese Communist Party is using the pandemic to achieve its goal of supplanting the United States as the world’s leading economic, diplomatic, and military power.

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State Department Suspends Visa Services Across the World

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The State Department is suspending visa services in most countries across the world, the Trump administration’s latest response to mitigating the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

In a statement released late Wednesday, the State Department announced it’s cancelling all routine immigrant and nonimmigrant appoints at embassies and consulates in numerous countries. The suspensions became effective immediately, and no specific date was provided on when services would begin again.

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Forgotten Founder Pelatiah Webster: America’s First Economist

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by Lawrence Reed   Everybody knows who America’s first president was, but can you identify the country’s first economist? If any man or woman deserves that description, it is surely the one who wrote this and so much more: I propose . . . to take off every restraint and limitation from our commerce. Let trade be as free as air. Let every man make the most of his goods in his own way and then he will be satisfied. His name was Pelatiah Webster. Largely forgotten today, he was regarded as “the American Adam Smith” after his death in 1795 at the age of 68. His wisdom, especially on trade and money matters, deserves a renewed appreciation today. Webster was born in Lebanon, Connecticut, in 1726. Twenty years later, he graduated from Yale and became a minister in Massachusetts. By 1755, however, the lure of entrepreneurial opportunities took him to the business world of Pennsylvania. He was an almost instant success as a merchant, amassing a small fortune in the process. His reputation as an authority on matters of trade, finance, and currency was unmatched by anyone in the 13 colonies on the eve of the American Revolution. The…

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Commentary: From Currency Manipulation to Intellectual Theft and More, Always Remember China Cheats

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by Rick Manning   China cheats. All of those who get worked up over negligible increases in U.S. tariffs on Chinese made goods, please remember this basic fact – China cheats. China manipulates their currency by artificially pegging it well below the dollar, and devaluing it further to offset tariff impacts, because they desperately want, no need, to maintain their U.S. market share to keep their economy running. China also steals U.S. company’s intellectual property and then sells that innovation around the world for pennies on the dollar. China then dumps products onto the U.S. market with the intent of driving U.S. manufacturers who are the innovators out of business so they can be sole source providers of critical component parts.  They not only do this directly from China but also utilize other countries as pass-throughs for Chinese originating goods, as well as steel and aluminum products, and this is a big problem for the world. America’s energy industry is thriving and the President’s stated goal of energy dominance is within sight, but Chinese dumping onto U.S. markets of couplings which hold together sections of drilling pipe threatens everything.  This three year old strategically targeted play by the Chinese to…

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White House: Trade Agreement with China Not Close

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by Ken Bredemeier   White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Sunday resumption of trade talks between the U.S. and China “is a very big deal,” but acknowledged there is no immediate prospect for an agreement between the world’s two largest economies. “The talks will go on for quite some time,” Kudlow told the Fox News Sunday interview show. He said the countries had reached agreement on 90 percent of a new deal by early May, before talks broke down in what has turned out to be a seven-week stalemate. U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed Saturday on the sidelines of the Group of 20 economic summit in Japan to restart negotiations. Watch the latest video at foxnews.com But Kudlow assessed that “the last 10 percent could be the toughest,” with such unresolved issues as cyberattacks, Chinese demands that U.S. companies turn over proprietary technology they use, Chinese government support for its companies and the sale of U.S. technology components to the giant Chinese multinational technology giant Huawei. Trump agreed in his meeting with Xi to ease sales of some U.S.-made components to Huawei, a policy change that some of Trump’s Republican colleagues in the U.S. disagree with because…

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US, China Leaders Agree to Resume Trade Talks

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by Steve Herman   OSAKA, JAPAN – U.S. President Donald Trump says he will hold off on imposing additional tariffs on China after a meeting with President Xi Jinping that resulted in the stalled trade negotiations getting “right back on track.” Speaking Saturday at a wide-ranging news conference at the conclusion of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Trump said he will also allow American companies to sell to Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant whose software U.S. intelligence has warned could threaten U.S. national security. As far as resolving the overall issue of Huawei, which the U.S. government wants to ban the country’s planned 5G cellular telephone networks, “we agreed to leave that to the end” of trade negotiations between Washington and Beijing. No sanctions relief The Chinese, however, are not getting relief from sanctions already imposed by the Trump administration. “At least, for the time being, we won’t be lifting tariffs on China,” the U.S. president told the news conference. “They would like to make a deal,” Trump said in assessing the Chinese following what he described as “a great meeting” with Xi on the sidelines of the Group of 20 leaders’ summit. In remarks at the start of…

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US-China Trade Dispute Triggering Production Exodus

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by Joyce Huang   U.S. tech giant Apple has reportedly asked its major suppliers, mainly China-based manufacturers from Taiwan, to consider moving 15 to 30% of their production outside of China to avoid higher tariffs imposed on U.S.-bound exports. The production migration, which analysts say is already ongoing,will hurt the tech giant’s profit margin, but also lead to massive job losses in China. They add that such shifts have also occurred over the past year among other China-based tech suppliers and the trend will continue if the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies keeps escalating. “Over the past year, to my understanding, manufacturers in the information [technology] sector, for example, [China-based Taiwanese] suppliers of personal computers or consumer electronics have moved faster than handset makers and relocated [part of] their assembly lines outside China,” says Sean Kao, senior research manager at IDC Taiwan on worldwide hardware assembly research. Caught in the Crossfire Tech companies such as Apple are caught in the crossfire of U.S.-China trade frictions and face the threat of heavy punitive taxes on their China-made, U.S.-bound products. Earlier this month, U.S. President Trump said he would decide whether to slap Beijing with further tariffs on another…

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India Hikes Tariffs on U.S. Goods Amid Deepening Trade Friction

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  India has hiked tariffs on 28 goods imported from the United States as a trade spat between the two countries intensifies. The retaliatory move came days after Washington removed New Delhi from a list of countries that have preferential access to its market. “India has put its cards on the table,” says trade expert Biswajit Dhar at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “The U.S. has upped the ante and it is also threatening to take further action. This required India to respond.” The trade spat has escalated ahead of a visit later this month to New Delhi by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who has pushed India to allow American companies more access to its markets and to lower barriers. Experts fear the growing tensions could cast a shadow over a deepening India-U.S. strategic partnership that aims at countering China’s growing influence. The American goods that attract higher tariffs beginning Sunday include almonds, apples, walnuts, chickpeas and lentils, as well as some stainless steel products. New Delhi is the largest importer of U.S. almonds and the second largest buyer of apples. The total impact of the Indian tariffs is estimated to be about $240 million. Increased deferred…

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With Mexico Deal Done, US Urges China to Resume Trade Talks

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  One down, still others to go. President Donald Trump claimed a victory after Washington and Mexico agreed on measures to stem the flow of Central American migrants into the United States. Trump called off plans to impose a 5% tax on Mexican exports, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, speaking to reporters Saturday in Fukuoka on the sidelines of a meeting of financial leaders of the Group of 20 major economies, urged China to follow suit and return to stalled negotiations. Mnuchin said he planned to have a private conversation with the head of China’s central bank, Yi Gang. In a G-20 group meeting later in the day, the two were seen exchanging friendly remarks, but there were no fresh signs Beijing is ready to compromise in the dispute over trade and technology. “From our perspective of where we are now, it is a result of them backtracking on significant commitments,” Mnuchin said. “I don’t think it’s a breakdown in trust or good or bad faith. … If they want to come back and complete the deal on the terms we were negotiating, that would be great.” Mnuchin said he had no direct message to give to Yi, who has…

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All About the Wall: The Tennessee Star Report Welcomes Back Neil McCabe from OANN to Speak About New Mexico’s Completion and the Star County Bid

Julie Carr

  On Friday’s Tennessee Star Report with Steve Gill and Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – Michael Patrick Leahy spoke with special guest and his former Breitbart colleague, Iraq war veteran and current Army Reserve Sergeant Neil McCabe of One America News Network. Back from the border, Washington-based reporter for One America News Network,  McCabe spoke to the team about the We Build the Wall team in Sunland Park New Mexico, Brian Kolfage’s plan to install his purple heart into the wall which was just completed, and how to get Mexico to stop letting people through to the United States by upping the Trump trade game and stop pretending the Mexican government has anything to do with running Mexico. Leahy: Speaking of Mexico, we are joined on the line here now by our good friend Neil McCabe with OANN. And Neil was on the ground in Sunland Park, New Mexico where the We Build the Wall team was building that wall. Neil welcome! McCabe: Hey guys. Good to be with you. Leahy: So, bring us up to speed on the latest of that wall. I…

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Experts: Tariffs in the Offing for India as President Trump Wages War on ‘Unfair Trade’

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by Michael Bastach   The Trump administration’s decision to rescind trade preferences with India could be a sign that more tariffs are on the horizon, experts say. U.S. trade officials announced Friday the end of special trade treatment on $6 billion worth of goods from India because the country has “not assured the United States that India will provide equitable and reasonable access to its markets.” Those Indian goods were exempted from tariffs under what’s called the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). Special trade treatment will end Wednesday, suggesting to trade experts President Donald Trump is expanding war against the U.S. trade deficit. “This could potentially presage a new trade investigation and, possibly, tariffs,” analysts ClearView Energy Partners wrote in a report released Monday morning. ClearView analysts said the Trump administration may be weighing a Section 301 investigation, which could lead to retaliatory tariffs if trade officials find India’s trade policies hurt U.S. commerce. Trump has criticized India’s “unfair” trade practices, which he says hurts U.S. companies and workers. “As we discussed in March, the termination of India’s duty exemptions – and especially the imposition of new tariffs – could potentially draw retaliation against U.S. coal exports, a nontrivial risk for U.S. producers,”…

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Commentary: Tariff Hawks Got It All Wrong When They Predicted ‘Another Great Depression’ from Trump’s America-First Trade Policies

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Donald Trump

by Robert Romano   In 2016, when President Donald Trump ran on his America first trade agenda, much of the conventional wisdom was that, if implemented, his tariffs would wreck the U.S. economy. It would have the same impact as the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Act, and so the prediction goes, lead to another Great Depression. “Trump trade plans could cause global recession: Experts,” read one confident headline on CNBC in May 2016. “If you take (Trump’s) position as real, that we would do this, then it would take the world down the road that we saw in the 1930s that we saw with the Smoot–Hawley Tariff,” Caroline Freund of the Peterson Institute for International Economics said. “The world would definitely fall into a recession.” The Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson wrote in June 2018, “The ghost of Smoot-Hawley seems to haunt Trump,” after Trump levied tariffs on steel and aluminum. Samuelson suggested, “What’s eerie is that Trump’s embrace of protectionism is now assuming the same role as Smoot-Hawley in the 1930s. By slowing economic growth, it darkens the outlook and reduces the ability of debtors to repay their lenders. So much for the lessons of history.” Other predictions have suggested, besides slowing economic growth or perhaps…

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Commentary: The Win-Win Scenario of Further ‘Retaliation’ by China

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by Robert Romano   On May 10, the South China Morning Post published a report, “Will China use its US$1.2 trillion of US debt as firepower to fight the trade war?” speculating that China might have potential leverage against the U.S. after President Donald Trump levied 25 percent tariffs on a total of now $250 billion of Chinese goods. But that’s all it is: speculation. Nothing more. China is in no danger of dumping its treasuries holdings, and even if it were, it would gain no trade advantage from doing so. Why, you ask? Because they’re a paper dragon. For starters, if you look at the $16.2 trillion public treasuries market (excluding the $5.8 trillion the U.S. government holds), China has about $1.13 trillion of that, or about 7 percent of the total. The South China Morning Post’s Karen Yeung  warns, “China could strike back by dumping its vast holdings of US government debt. Flooding the market with Treasuries would push down U.S. bond prices and cause the yields to spike. That would make it more costly for US companies and consumers to borrow, in turn depressing America’s economic growth.” So, if Beijing were to start dumping treasuries, flooding the open market, interest rates…

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Despite Further Talks, No US-China Deal Yet

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President Trump and the vice premier of China confirmed on Thursday that while significant progress has been made, there is no new trade agreement yet between the world’s two largest economies. “We’re certainly getting a lot closer,” Trump said sitting at his desk in the Oval Office with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He alongside him. Announcement of a deal could come in “the next four weeks, maybe less, maybe more” and at that time, something “monumental could be announced,” he said, adding, “We are rounding the turn. We’ve made a lot of progress.” Liu, speaking in English, praised the direct guidance of Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, adding: “Hopefully, we’ll get a good result.” Trump said if a deal can be reached, then he will hold a summit with Xi. “If we have a deal, there will be a summit,” he said. “I look forward to seeing President Xi. It’ll be here.” Intellectual property protection, as well as certain tariffs remain under discussion, Trump confirmed. “Some of the toughest things have been agreed to,” he added. Asked to make a comment by the president about the status of the negotiations, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer was more cautious, replying,…

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Steve Cortes Commentary: The U.S. Economy Is Proving Critics Wrong Yet Again

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by Steve Cortes   The booming U.S. economy is proving the Democrats wrong yet again — liberals keep predicting a recession, but businesses just keep on hiring. According to the recently published data from the Department of Labor, nonfarm payrolls surged by 304,000 jobs in January, nearly doubling the 165,000 jobs that so-called experts predicted in light of the government shutdown. “The job market weathered the government shutdown well. Despite the severe disruptions, businesses continued to add aggressively to their payrolls,” Moody Analytics chief economist Mark Zandisaid Wednesday in anticipation of the report. “As long as businesses hire strongly the economic expansion will continue on.” Although the unemployment rate rose slightly — from 3.9 percent to 4.0 percent — that was partly because the labor force participation rate also increased to 63.2 percent, its highest level since President Trump took office. The strong private sector growth in January directly contradicted the doomsday forecasts of Democrats and the mainstream media, who spent weeks arguing that the government shutdown would negatively impact the economy. “It’s Christmas Eve and President Trump is plunging the country into chaos,” then-House Speaker nominee Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement last December. Their deliberate fear mongering…

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Despite Current Tariffs, the US Can Expect a Trade Deficit of $410 Billion with China

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Donald Trump, Xi Jinping

by Robert Romano   Last month, China reported growth of its economy in 2018 at 6.6 percent, the lowest in 28 years. The slowdown is real enough but whether it results in a grand trade deal by the U.S. and China may depend on how much pain China is really feeling at the moment. Is Beijing feeling the pinch? Currently, the U.S. is levying 10 percent tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods shipped to the U.S. that came atop a 25 percent tariff on $50 billion of goods from China. While the talks were ongoing, Trump gave China a 90-day reprieve from the 10 percent tariff also rising to 25 percent, which was supposed to happen at the beginning of the year. That’s the U.S. leverage. If the U.S. and China do not reach an agreement, then the tariff will more than double. On the other hand, 2017 set a record for the trade deficit in goods with China at $377 billion according to the Census Bureau. 2018 will be even worse. Excluding November and December data not yet available for 2018, the goods trade deficit from Jan. 2017 to Oct. 2017 was $309.3 billion. For Jan. 2018 to Oct. 2018, it…

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Leaders Skip Davos Amid Domestic Troubles, Anti-Globalist Backlash

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The World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland, that wrapped up Friday, had some notable absentees, including President Donald Trump. With a backlash against a perceived ruling elite gaining ground in many countries, analysts say some leaderssteeredclear of a gathering often seen as an inaccessible club for the world’s super-rich. Others argue it is vital they get together to discuss urgent issues like climate change and world trade. On the surface, though, it was business as usual: On a sealed off, snowbound mountaintop, world leaders rubbed shoulders with global executives, lobbyists and pressure groups. It remains a vital gathering of global decision-makers, said Leslie Vinjamuri, head of the U.S. and the Americas Program at policy group Chatham House. “They’re there to do business, they’re there to engage in an exchange of ideas. And so I think it’s still tremendously important.” President Trump stayed away because of the partial U.S. government shutdown, which ended Friday. China’s President Xi Jinping wasn’t there, neither was Britain’s Theresa May, nor France’s President Emmanuel Macron. “They’re tremendously preoccupied with the troubles they face at home, which isn’t a good sign for globalism. The criticism and the critique that surrounds Davos is extraordinary. People say, ‘You…

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China Expected to Report Slowest Growth in 28 Years

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Reuters   China is expected to report Monday that economic growth cooled to its slowest in 28 years in 2018 amid weakening domestic demand and bruising U.S. tariffs, adding pressure on Beijing to roll out more support measures to avert a sharper slowdown. Growing signs of weakness in China, which has generated nearly a third of global growth in the past decade, are stoking worries about risks to the world economy and are weighing on profits for firms ranging from Apple to big carmakers. Chinese policymakers have pledged more support for the economy this year to reduce the risk of massive job losses, but they have ruled out a flood of stimulus like that which Beijing has unleashed in the past, which quickly juiced growth rates but left a mountain of debt. Estimated 2018 GDP: 6.6 percent Analysts polled by Reuters expect the world’s second-largest economy to have grown 6.4 percent in the October-December quarter from a year earlier, slowing from the previous quarter’s 6.5 percent pace and matching levels last seen in early 2009 during the global financial crisis. That could pull 2018 gross domestic product (GDP) growth to 6.6 percent, the lowest since 1990 and down from a…

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