Free Republic

A majority of voters say they support slapping a 10 percent tariff on all imports, according to an exclusive new poll, in a boost to President Donald Trump's plan for reducing U.S. reliance on foreign producers. According to the latest J.L. Partners/DailyMail.com 2024 poll, 24 percent of likely voters strongly support the policy proposal while another 30 percent tend to support it. 'European capitals and businesses might be quaking in their boots at the idea of Trump 2.0 on tariffs, but the American people welcome the policy.' The poll tested the opinions of 1,005 likely voters on March 21. It...

President Joe Biden’s administration will continue exempting a number of China-made medical products from United States tariffs even as the Chinese coronavirus crisis exposed the nation’s over-reliance on foreign countries for vital supplies. Late last week, the Biden administration announced that certain medical products made in China would continue to be exempted from U.S. tariffs. The tariff exclusion would have ended at the end of May but now they will be in place until at least the end of November.

President Joe Biden’s administration is considering providing tariff exemptions for more than 500 products made in China — a potential boon to corporations who continue offshoring to the communist country. This week, United States Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai said the administration would continue to preserve tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese products first imposed by former President Donald Trump.

When President Joe Biden meets with European leaders next week, he will commit to dropping tariffs protecting U.S. steel and aluminum and resolving other trade disputes this summer. ...Bloomberg’s indicated the surrender of metals tariffs was practically a done deal. Bloomberg, CNBC, and Reuters said they had reviewed a draft statement that would be issued at the conclusion of an EU-U.S. summit in Brussels set to begin on June 15.

President Joe Biden and his European Union counterparts will commit to ending outstanding trade battles next week at an EU-US summit in Brussels on June 15, as globalists eager to get back to ‘business as usual’ seek to unravel tariffs related to a steel and aluminum conflict which came to a head under the Trump administration – contributing to over $18 billion in US and EU exports subject to steep levies. According to Bloomberg, which has seen a draft of the conclusions, the allies will agree to resolve disagreements – including a nearly two-decade old aircraft dispute which involves illegal...

Soaring lumber prices are holding back a U.S. housing market. The number of building permits issued in March rose 2.7% month over month to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 1.766 million. The uptick is a mere blip on the radar compared with the 19.4% increase in housing starts, which grew at their fastest pace in nearly 16 years. Typically, building begins within two months of issuance, according to the National Association of Home Builders. Some developers have "held back on projects on the expectation that prices will soon fall back," wrote Matthew Pointon, senior property economist at the research...

Many people in the UK are fearful of the imposition of WTO-allowed tariffs on future UK exports to the EU. As an American, this is somewhat of a mystery as American exports to the EU are already subject to EU-imposed WTO-level tariffs. There is no audible bellyaching whatsoever in the USA about EU-imposed WTO-level tariffs on American exports to the EU. To allay UK fears, I wish to point out that the effect of EU tariffs on the incomes of UK citizens could be offset by UK Treasury compensatory payments to impacted UK citizens paid out when they retire, financially...

India banned 118 more mostly Chinese apps on Wednesday, a move that could intensify simmering tensions between the two countries following a recent deadly skirmish at a disputed Himalayan border site, and raising concerns about the longer-term impact of $82 billion of trade. The latest apps include Tencent Holdings Ltd's popular videogame PUBG. India imported $65.3 billion worth of goods from China in the fiscal year ended March 2020, and exported $16.6 billion, according to the country's Commerce ministry... India has also been planning to impose higher trade barriers and raise import duties on around 300 products from China and...

U.S. President Donald Trump, in a Fox News interview airing Sunday, raised the possibility of decoupling the U.S. economy from China, a major purchaser of U.S. goods. In a video excerpt, Trump initially told interviewer Steve Hilton “we don’t have to” do business with China, and then later said about decoupling: “Well it’s something that if they don’t treat us right I would certainly, I would certainly do that.”

Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden says if elected, he would not tear down the parts of the barrier along the U.S. Southern border built during the Trump administration — but he would cease construction. "There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration, No. 1," he told NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro during an interview... "I'm going to make sure that we have border protection, but it's going to be based on making sure that we use high-tech capacity to deal with it. And at the ports of entry — that's where all the bad stuff is happening," the...

If you have Dove soap or Axe deodorant in your bathroom, Lipton tea or Breyers in your kitchen, you're buying Unilever products. The huge British-Dutch multinational made $60 billion last year and is known for its leftist politics. But Unilever may have gone beyond virtue signaling to election interference. Unilever is one of the biggest foreign companies to join the Facebook boycott by leftist pressure groups. The boycott’s goal is to suppress conservative speech on social media, especially by President Trump, before a presidential election, by convincing advertisers to withhold ads from Facebook until it complies. While Facebook already censors...

President Trump on Thursday renewed threats to slap new tariffs on Chinese goods as retaliation for China’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak... Trump’s tariff threat triggered a selloff on Wall Street. By market close on Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had fallen 622 points. In an interview on Friday, top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the U.S. would hold China “accountable” for the virus. “On the China business, it’s up in the air. They are going to be held accountable for it. There’s no question about that. How, when, where and why — I’m going to leave...

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross appears on Fox Business to discuss the status of the U.S-China trade “negotiations” :::nudge-nudge, wink-wink::: and highlights the ‘phase-1’ fulcrum is China committing to the $50b Ag purchase without condition. Secretary Ross also notes the December 15th date just happens to be “good timing” if the U.S. team is “forced” to put more tariffs on China. LOL.

The greatest share of the tariff burden falls not on American consumers or firms, but on Chinese exporters... a 25 percentage point increase in tariffs raises US consumer prices on all affected Chinese products by only 4.5% on average, while the producer price of Chinese firms declines by 20.5%. The US government has strategically levied import duties on goods with high import elasticities, which transfers a great share of the tariff burden on to Chinese exporters.

Tariffs on Chinese goods ‘could go to 50 per cent or 100 per cent’, Michael Pillsbury says. But the American leader is not pursuing ‘cold war 2.0’, and US-China decoupling would be a ‘consequence of no agreement’ by Beijing, he says. The United States is set to ramp up the pressure on China if a trade deal is not agreed soon, a key White House adviser said... Described by US President Donald Trump as “the leading authority on China”, Michael Pillsbury said in an interview in Hong Kong on Thursday that Trump had been “remarkably restrained in the pressure he...

This is funny in so many ways; especially for CTH readers who have a far better-than-ordinary understanding of the big picture Trump goals around China.(1) CNBC tweeted this story last night (note the date/time). (2) It is written exclusively from the perspective of the Goldman Sachs analysts who represent the U.S. multinational position. (3) However, the article was actually written on May 12, 13, 2019.What is funny about CNBC pushing this story, NOW, is how the claims within the CNBC story can be fact checked; and their predictions are, well, absurd (especially in hindsight).   Keep in mind this was written...

So much production in industries like steel is based on demand for more production, but should that demand falter, the whole system could come crashing down... Consider crude steel production, a test-tube example of how command economies get it wrong. In the mainland this stood in June (2017) at an all time monthly record of 73 million tonnes, five times the total production in all of Europe. Why is so much steel needed? ...to build more steel mills ...to build more shipyards, ...so that more ships can be built to carry more iron ore, ...to build more shipyards... What we...

China’s exports unexpectedly fell in August as shipments to the United States slowed sharply... Beijing is widely expected to announce more support measures in coming weeks to avert the risk of a sharper economic slowdown as the United States ratchets up trade pressure, including the first cuts in some key lending rates in four years. On Friday, the central bank cut banks’ reserve requirements for a seventh time since early 2018 to free up more funds for lending, days after a cabinet meeting signalled that more policy loosening may be imminent... China’s August exports to the United States fell 16%...

Not, that I want to get too political, but this video that is playing all across China pretty much says it all. ItÂ’s all about the Trump Trade War. And it shows how the Chinese feel about it. This post is about a movie that is playing all over China this Summer. It is allegorical. While it is a story about a British Boxing champion, and his involvement within China, there are very CLEAR parallels about what is going on in the Trump Tariff situation. China has this alligorical movie about the Trump USA trade war with China that has...

Home Depot’s suppliers are trying to head off some of the increased costs from rising tariffs by moving at least some of their production out of China, executives told investors Tuesday. “I’m not aware of a single supplier who was not moving some form of manufacturing outside of China,” said Ted Decker, executive vice president of merchandising. “So we have suppliers moving production to Taiwan, to Vietnam, to Thailand, Indonesia and even back into the United States.” CEO Craig Menear said the tariffs on Chinese goods are projected to have a “cost impact” on U.S. sales of about 2%, or...