Free Republic

“Trade Compliance” is a subset of regulatory compliance, focused primarily on export controls and the Customs rules concerning importing and duty assessment. Outside of the occasional discovery of illegal Chinese copies of branded gym shoes, or the even rarer news story about a company caught selling technology to the Iranians or North Koreans, this specialty rarely makes the mainstream news. An exception occurred as April, 2024 came to an end: the Federal Trade Commission announced a record fine against an American retail chain, Williams-Sonoma, and its subsidiaries (including Rejuvenation, Goldtouch, and the Pottery Barn family), for violations of the FTC’s...

In yet another state – this time Arizona – Democrats in power have doubled down on the use of lawfare (the tyrannical abuse of the criminal justice system to harass political opponents), by indicting 18 prominent Republicans for alleged crimes in 2020. In this case, it was a classic example of Sol Wachtler’s famous 1985 statement: “If a district attorney wanted, a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich.” A grand jury is assembled of regular citizens, usually non-experts, non-lawyers, who don’t need to even try to determine guilt; their job is just to believe a prosecutor’s claim that there...

Like many of you, I both attend and lead many a presentation. Some are sales-focused, some are just project updates; some are intended to be educational. One of the more disturbing things I’ve noticed throughout my career has been how political points creep into such presentations. Sometimes it’s formal – “this is the company-mandated slide on diversity hiring.” Sometimes it’s more subtle – “Here are some interesting statistics about our business: so many sites, so many employees, so many solar panels” – and so forth. I’ll share two recent ones. One of my vendors now includes a slide showing a...

April 15 is usually Tax Day in the United States – the day by which your individual federal tax return has to have been filed, if you’re to avoid a late penalty. And if you’re in one of the many states with its own statewide income tax – 43 at last count – that usually shares the same deadline. By what right does the government take this money from us? That’s an easy one. The Constitution says it can. To be specific, the 16th Amendment authorized the federal government to collect income taxes, so it’s been legal for 110 years....

Are you a betting man? As we look at the next six to nine months, as Americans, we know the many possibilities surrounding the coming election. President Trump could be returned to office, or Joe Biden could remain in place, or one or both could somehow be replaced on their respective party’s tickets. Anything is possible. We see the polls, which say President Trump is ahead. We also know our history, the history of the American electorate often voting against their own interest, and we know of the corrupt political machines famous for fabricating votes and stealing elections. All the...

The Biden-Harris regime should be embarrassed. The latest inflation numbers are out, and they don’t look good. Core inflation – a general inflation estimate tool that leaves out volatile things like gasoline, food and beverages – is up 3.8% per year. And that means that when you add in those cleverly-removed items – you know, all the things you really spend your money on, day in and day out – your real inflation level is still well over 10%. And that’s now, after it’s settled down a bit from the double-digit nightmare levels of the first two years of the...

The Democratic Party and its spokesdroids have, for several holidays in a row now, warned people about the “difficult conversations” they were going to have around the Thanksgiving table, or the Christmas table, or at any other holiday gathering when large families would be together. The official line has been that Republicans – or more specifically, “MAGA Republicans” – would pick fights with family members who admitted to voting for President Trump, especially if they ever dared to say that modern elections are anything other than “the cleanest and most honest election in the history of the universe.” Generally speaking,...

"Di Leo: The Cheap Mercedes and the Beautiful Bridge" I am told that there is a saying in the used car business: “Nothing is more expensive than a cheap Mercedes.” That’s not to say that it’s not possible to get a good price on a used Mercedes. It probably is. But the buyer must remember that people who buy new luxury cars are people who can afford the repairs on them. And even though that used car may be cheaper than a new car, once it’s in your possession, everything else that goes wrong, from brakes to HVAC, from shocks...

What Values Are On The Ballot In 2024? by John F. Di Leo We hear candidates talk about their values – their parties’ values – their supporters’ values – and of course, America’s values – all the time. We used to be able to reasonably sure what those values were, by listening to their speeches and reading their party platforms, but it’s not always that easy anymore. In recent years, particularly since the twin assaults of the sexual revolution and the carbon dioxide fantasy overwhelmed the Democratic party, it has been harder to get a clear reading on the values...

Reading a campaign speech in Milwaukee this week, Joe Biden boasted of a plan to spend some $36 million on a stretch of 6th Street, just west of downtown Milwaukee. His speechwriter had him listing such federally funded benefits as bike lanes, newly planted trees, and bus lanes to make 6th Street a prettier place to be. And sure, it might at that. Trees are always lovely for pedestrians, though they can obstruct the view of pedestrians, drivers, and bicyclists alike. And bicycles and buses are always generically popular, even though in Milwaukee they each tend to have about the...

It is 2024, and the State of the Union is broken. It’s been that way for a while, frankly, but the Biden-Harris regime has sped up the process. Every year, a man stands before Congress and delivers a State of the Union Address, as the Constitution requires; sometimes it feels like that’s the only constitutional requirement they obey in their entire term. They cheer the good things, as they see them, and they attack the things they consider bad. Then they often either disregard the most serious threats entirely, or they blame them on their political opponents. And all too...

Log onto Facebook. Before you know it, you’ll see ads from Temu or Wish, pitching cheap products. Or open your old email account, the one that you’ve had for years, so it gets the most spam. Every other message is an offer from some unknown store, selling the sort of thing in which a person like you just might be interested. Or log onto Amazon and look for something, anything at all. Twenty percent of the hits, maybe more, will be “sponsored” items, often from a brand you’ve never heard of. Of course, you can shut down the internet, close...

The Biden-Harris regime, consistent with its record of daily lawbreaking, has just illegally canceled another $1.2 billion in student loan debt owed by about 150,000 borrowers whose individual loans were about $12,000 each. This is just the latest, on top of three years of other incremental student loan cancellations, totaling about $138 billion in unpaid student loan debt so far, owed by almost four million voters, some of which is still tied up in court, but the regime’s actions have severely jeopardized the government’s ability to ever collect, even if these illegal acts are properly overturned. In some states where...

The U.S. House of Representatives has impeached Alejandro Majorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security. The Constitution sets a very high bar for the removal of an officeholder through impeachment. Everyone is certain that this bar will not be cleared in the U.S. Senate. Many onlookers, including plenty of our Republican representatives themselves, therefore wonder, what’s the point? And you might not expect it, but this very issue is at the heart of one of the biggest disagreements in the current Republican party. There is an unwritten parliamentary rule among legislators in leadership: You never call a vote on any measure...

The American economy can’t catch a break. In addition to the massive price inflation of food, cars, housing, energy, and so many other elements, international companies are now suffering from a near-doubling of ocean transportation costs in just the past three months, due to simultaneous crises in Central America and the Red Sea that have restricted international shipping through the Panama and Suez Canals. This is adding to the cost of goods all over the world, along with damaging lead times, as longer transits cause disruptions to both factory schedules and retail offerings. For thousands of years, ocean carriers moved...

In recent weeks, it has become clear that the Biden-Harris regime is applying pressure to the Israeli government, in support of the Hamas-led terrorist cause in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli government knows that it needs to continue to hammer Gaza without letup, as they continue to discover even more weapons caches, even more terrorist tunnels, even more evidence of military sites in civilian areas, virtually every day. If Israel pulls out before the job is done, then all these months will have been for naught. There are ten million Israeli citizens – Jewish, Muslim, Christian and more – all...

It’s a presidential election year. Time to talk numbers. It is said that the United States National Debt – that is, the total debt owed by the federal government for past overspending – is now over $34 trillion. That’s bad. Federal tax revenue – that’s all kinds, from import duties to corporate and personal income taxes – every year is about $4.5 trillion. Of that, we pay about $400 billion in interest on the national debt. That’s only about one percent of the total national debt, or about 7 to 10 percent of federal revenues (why such a range? It...

The primary season begins, and thoughtful watchers of the passing scene are reminded yet again of one thing that has stuck in our craw for over 50 years now: Why do outsiders get to choose a party’s nominee for the general election? I know, this has gone without saying for so long that it may seem like a foreign concept, but it is worth reconsidering – because it wasn’t always like this. For almost the first two centuries of our Republic, there were two kinds of candidates in any election: independent candidates and those selected by a political party. You...

In an election year, candidates from both sides will generally declare that we need more domestic manufacturing, and they promise to make it happen. Different sides will propose different ways to accomplish it. Republicans will call for lower tax rates and lighter regulations; Democrats will call for open borders and higher punitive tariffs. Each side hates the other’s methods; nothing gets done. Does this really matter? There are economists, investment advisors, even politicians out there, who will say it doesn’t matter. They will say we need business, of course; but as long as there are transactions happening, that’s economic growth....

We are told that there are three tickets out of Iowa, and sure enough, when Vivek Ramaswamy came in fourth in 2024, he could read the writing on the wall, and dropped out, leaving President Trump with over 50 percent, and both Governor DeSantis and Governor Haley a very distant second and third. For her part, Nikki Haley decided she needed to show she could be decisive – presidential – in some way, despite her embarrassing Iowa showing, so she announced that she wouldn’t participate in the next debate unless President Trump showed up. A one-on-one debate between DeSantis and...