Free Republic

On meeting with the EU's Jean-Claude Juncker last month, Donald Trump tweeted: "Both the U.S. and the E.U. drop all Tariffs, Barriers and Subsidies! That would finally be Free Market and Fair Trade." Did Larry Kudlow somehow get access to Trump's phone? We know not. But, on hearing this, Steve Forbes, Stephen Moore and Arthur Laffer broke into the "Hallelujah" chorus of Handel's "Messiah." "Amen," they thundered in The New York Times. Trump should declare "total trade disarmament" to be national policy and make free trade his "legacy" to America. Such a proclamation, they wrote, would assure Trump the...

The most murderous dictatorship in all of human history is assembling a massive battery of U.S. lobbyists and propagandists in and around Washington, D.C., sparking growing concerns across the political spectrum about its intentions and the effect this lobbying Leviathan will have on the federal government. That dictatorship, of course, is the Communist Party regime enslaving mainland China. And among the growing roster of political hacks on its payroll are top former officials including ex-House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, who played a key role in transferring America's productive capacity to Communist China in the late 1990s. Unsurprisingly, the Clintons...

Apple has benefited from cheap labor and strong supply chain in China which has helped it boost profit and get to a $1 trillion valuation, the state-backed People's Daily said. The U.S. firm should share that money with Chinese citizens, the article urged. Apple could be the target of "anger and nationalist sentiment" amid the ongoing trade war. ______________________________________________________________ Apple has benefited from cheap labor and a strong supply chain in China and needs to share more of its profit with the Chinese people or face "anger and nationalist sentiment" amid the ongoing trade war, an article in the state-backed...

HAMBURG (Reuters) - China may have to start buying U.S. soybeans again in coming weeks despite the trade war between the two countries as other regions cannot supply enough soybeans to meet China’s needs, Hamburg-based oilseeds analysts Oil World said on Tuesday.

As the trade war between the United States and China ramps up, Beijing has gone an offensive media blitz to counter the White House argument that its tariffs are causing harm to China’s economy and economic growth. Beijing’s top economic regulator told Chinese state media last week that the economy is forecast to see solid growth in the second half of the year, bolstered by buoyant local consumption. “In the first six months, consumption retained growth momentum and has played a key role in supporting economic growth as consumption has become a key element of the nation’s rebalancing act,” Liu...

BEIJING - Chinese state media are reacting to U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade actions against China in diverse ways. While denouncing the U.S. leader’s actions, Beijing is also using its media to calm markets and express concern about the impact on the Chinese economy. An editorial in the Communist Party's People's Daily said that by raising tariffs and then offering negotiations, the Trump administration is trying to use "carrot-and-stick diplomacy to bully China into unilateral trade concessions." The paper went on to say "China will eventually defeat the trade blackmail of the U.S. and it is impossible to force China...

At the center of the table in a modest, high-rise apartment in the teeming city of Shenzhen, China, a simmering pot of soup stock was surrounded by large platters featuring mushrooms, different kinds of thinly shaved meat, lettuce, potato, cauliflower, eggs, and shrimp. Folding his hands together, Jian Zhang, a onetime rural farmer who now works as an employee for a small consulting firm in the city, asked his fellow diners to give thanks for the meal — the likes of which he could have only dreamed of when growing up in a remote village in the Jiangxi province. The...

China just lost its ranking as the world’s number two stock market. After a Thursday slump, Chinese equities were worth $6.09 trillion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That compares with $6.17 trillion in Japan. The US has the world’s largest stock market at just over $31 trillion. China’s stock market overtook Japan’s in late 2014, then soared to an all-time high of more than $10 trillion in June 2015. Chinese equities and the nation’s currency have taken a beating this year amid a trade spat with the US, a government-led campaign to cut debt and a slowing economy. “Losing...

UAE and Greek companies claim world first tech allows architects to become industry’s master builders UAE-based 3D printing company Immensa Technology Labs has released the result of a joint effort with Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) to recover a series of concrete casting techniques with the aid of large-format 3D printing. In what the two companies claim is a world-first, a ‘Sensorial Adaptive Concrete Screen’ was developed with NOWlab, the innovation department of Berlin-based BigRep. The screen showcases techniques that once belonged to skilled craftsman but have had life breathed back into them through expert digital fabrication. According to a statement...

A four-party delegation of parliament’s foreign affairs committee met with David B. Cornstein, the new United States ambassador to Hungary. Hungary has started a programme to raise its defense spending to an annual 2 percent of GDP. Zsolt Németh referred to frequent complaints from Donald Trump. The president supposes that Washington pays too much into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance between a host of European countries, the US and Canada. Parties at the talks agreed that Hungary’s “unilateral dependence” on Russian energy supplies was “not healthy” and agreed on the need of diversifying energy sources, Nemeth...

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – With trade tensions between the U.S. and China escalating, Taiwan will adopt a two-pronged approach to assist affected industries, including efforts to ensure a smooth transfer of their production lines from China back to Taiwan or southward, Minister of Economic Affairs Shen Jong-chin (沈榮津) said Thursday. As the U.S. is set to hit US$200 billion-worth of imports from China with a hike in tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent, Shen remarked that Taiwanese businesses whose end market is the U.S. are most likely to bear the brunt of the impact, such as internet and telecommunication...

Full Title: 'Death to the dictator!' Violence on streets of Iran as police use tear gas on furious protesters, including chador-clad women, demonstrating against 'corrupt regime' ruining the country while waging ideological war abroad Protests have broken out in a number of cities against Iranian regime this week Comes after the dramatic drop of Iran's currency and other economic problems 'The nation is forced to beg while the leader lives like God,' protesters chanted 'Death to the dictator!' Violence on streets of Iran as police use tear gas on furious protesters, including chador-clad women, demonstrating against 'corrupt regime' ruining the...

Why is Trump fighting the trade war? Here's why. Critics of Trump's trade policies think everything is okay if we don't do anything. The chart below shows that everything is not okay if we don't do anything. This is a chart of capital spending in the U.S. from 1968 through to the present. It is a straightforward presentation of monthly data from the Commerce Department. There is nothing clever, nothing tricky about this presentation or about the time frame chosen. The Commerce Department started this series in 1968. It superseded another series on capital spending. http://www.americanthinker.com/images/bucket/2018-08/208085_5_.jpg Source: U.S. Department of...

Spectators claim that Satan himself appeared on stage during the opening performance of Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus (1588). The grizzly specter, it was said, drove men mad with fear. Some in attendance wanted to demolish the theater, while others wanted to hang Marlowe for his occult summoning. In spite of the controversy (perhaps because of it), the play was a hit. Today Faustus remains one of the greatest works of literature. Why? Exquisite language?—lines like “the face that launch’d a thousand ships” have haunted readers for centuries. Perhaps. But time rarely preserves art for art’s sake: what survives is...

Fewer than a third of Americans think the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is good for the country, according to a new study that comes as the Trump administration pushes to renegotiate the free trade deal with Canada and Mexico. A plurality of Americans, 36 percent, surveyed in a YouGov poll released by the Bertelsmann Foundation said it would be beneficial for the U.S. to leave NAFTA, compared to 30 percent who said it would not be beneficial. Far more respondents in Mexico, 63 percent, and Canada, 58 percent, said it would be not beneficial for their countries to...

One of the nation’s top labor leaders on Wednesday called on the Obama administration to immediately release the text of a far-reaching trade deal that spans the Pacific Rim to Latin America. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka wrote a letter to President Obama arguing that stakeholders, lawmakers and the American public need to see the final text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to start what is expected to be a long process of evaluating the deal brokered by the United States and 11 other nations. House and Senate Democrats have made similar appeals since the pact was brokered a week ago...

President Donald Trump’s most powerful weapon is what makes him Big Government Democrats’ worst nightmare and the trait that most baffles Establishment Republicans who don't have it. .... (quoting Bill Hobbs' Facebook essay) .... "Donald Trump instinctively knows almost immediately where his opponent's jugular vein is, and that is where he attacks, and that is where he exerts the most pressure and the most leverage to get the best deal." "For example, in the primary, Jeb Bush was the odds-on favorite to win. He had the money, the Establishment, the résumé, and the name. All of the other candidates tried...

President Trump mocked conservative mega-donor Charles Koch early Thursday for complaining that tariffs hurt foreign workers, telling the billionaire he is “correct.” “Charles Koch of Koch Brothers, who claims to be giving away millions of dollars to politicians even though I know very few who have seen this (?), now makes the ridiculous statement that what President Trump is doing is unfair to ‘foreign workers.’ He is correct, AMERICA FIRST!” Trump tweeted Thursday morning.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is getting an earful – on Twitter – from teachers union boss Randi Weingarten for reportedly keeping the door open to a possible Trump endorsement in 2020. Newsmax reported Wednesday that Trumka would not rule out a union endorsement for the president. “Every [candidate] will be looked at,” Trumka said. He added, “we will consider every candidate who’s running.” Trumka simply may have been stating union policy, not wanting to get ahead of an endorsement process that is nowhere close to starting, for an election more than two years out. At the same time, he noted...

Despite strong condemnations of the Trump administration for what he calls the “growing wage inequality” among Americans, AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka on Wednesday refused to rule out his union endorsing President Donald Trump for re-election in 2020. “Well, he will be looked at [for the labor endorsement],” Trumka told Newsmax, “Everyone [of the presidential candidates] will be looked at.” Pressed as to how serious he was about the AFL-CIO considering not endorsing the Democratic nominee for president for the first time since 1972, Trumka insisted “we will consider every candidate who’s running in 2020.” Recalling the last presidential race, the...