Free Republic

WASHINGTON; If President-elect Donald Trump thinks he’s going to impose a 35 percent tariff on companies importing goods, he might want to check with Republicans in Congress. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested Monday that Republicans would not be in favor of imposing the 35 percent tariff on foreign goods that Trump proposed Sunday in a series of tweets.  Trump may not understand how tariffs really work; it would be very difficult for the United States to impose them on specific companies that move jobs to a foreign country; or that Congress, not the president, sets them. But he...

Despite the fact that Ford Motors is under fire from President-elect Donald Trump for importing cars from Mexico, the company will soon become the first US automaker to import vehicles from India. According to a report in CNN Money, the company has said that EcoSport compact crossover, introduced for the US market at the Los Angeles auto show, will be shipped to US from India starting 2018. The report says that the EcoSport, Ford’s smallest SUV, has been built at its assembly plant in Chennai for more than 100 markets around the world since 2013. About 15 per cent of...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Commerce Department on Monday announced its preliminary affirmative determination in the antidumping duty investigation against imports of stainless steel sheets and strips from China, signaling that it may pose punitive duties on the products. The department said that such products from China had been sold in the United States at dumping margins of 63.86 percent and 76.64 percent. As a result of the preliminary affirmative determinations, the Commerce Department will instruct U.S. Customs and Border Protection to require cash deposits based on these preliminary rates. The Commerce Department launched antidumping duty and countervailing...

"The U.S. Senate approved a bill May 12 that would overhaul the process for businesses requesting tariff suspensions and reductions." "The miscellaneous tariff bill (MTB) establishes a new process for manufacturers to avoid having to pay tariffs on imported raw materials and intermediate products for which there are no suitable U.S.-based suppliers."

The US has raised its import duties on Chinese steelmakers by more than fivefold after accusing them of selling their products below market prices. The taxes of 522% specifically apply to Chinese-made cold-rolled flat steel, which is used in car manufacturing, shipping containers and construction.

The U.S. trade deficit fell more than expected in March as imports of goods tumbled to their lowest level since 2010, a potential boost to first-quarter economic growth estimates that also hints at sluggish domestic demand. The Commerce Department said on Tuesday the trade gap fell 13.9 percent to $40.4 billion, the smallest since February 2015, also as exports fell. February's trade deficit was revised slightly down to $46.96 billion from the previously reported $47.1 billion. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the trade deficit falling to $41.5 billion in March. When adjusted for inflation, the deficit declined to $57.4...

The ability of the US manufacturing sector to produce increasing amounts of output with fewer and fewer workers should be recognized as a sign of economic strength and vitality, not economic weakness. Thanks to advances in technology, the factory floor today is one with modern, advanced, state-of-the-art equipment that requires fewer employees, but with greater skills and training than in the past. The trend in US manufacturing over the last 30 years – more and more output with fewer and fewer workers – is exactly like the transformation that revolutionized US farming over the last 100 years or more. With...

President Barack Obama signed a bill Wednesday that includes a provision banning U.S. imports of fish caught by slaves in Southeast Asia, gold mined by children in Africa and garments sewn by abused women in Bangladesh, closing a loophole in an 85-year-old tariff law that has failed to keep products of forced and child labor out of America. An expose by The Associated Press last year found Thai companies ship seafood to the U.S. that was caught and processed by trapped and enslaved workers. As a result of the reports, more than 2,000 trapped fishermen have been rescued, more than...

Here’s a story which seemed to get lost in the shuffle this month, what with so many other alerts devouring the news cycle. A memo was sent out from the Obama administration early in January directing a change to how products from Israel are labeled. As Adam Kredo at the Washington Free Beacon explains, this has riled up many folks on both sides of the aisle. A memo issued earlier this month by the Obama administration directs the U.S. "trade community" and government partner agencies to explicitly label Israeli-made goods that have been produced in the West Bank.The Jan. 23...

So what would happen if a modern-day president took the Eisenhower model and, ceased crude imports. The price shock to the energy markets could take domestic crude to $140 before it broke the back of our World Crude Oil Cartel.

U.S. imports of foreign oil are rising again after a long decline, as the oil bust forces domestic producers to scale back. Less than a year after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries opted to continue production despite plummeting prices, member countries including Saudi Arabia and Iraq are clawing back market share they ceded to oil companies pumping in Texas and North Dakota. U.S. crude imports declined 20% between 2010 and 2014 amid the domestic energy boom but have recently started to rise again. Total crude-oil imports rose for three straight months between April and July, according to the...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a GOP presidential contender, is calling on President Obama to cancel the upcoming state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping. “Americans are struggling to cope with the fall in today's markets driven in part by China's slowing economy and the fact that they actively manipulate their economy," Walker said in a statement. “Rather than honoring Chinese President Xi Jinping with an official state visit next month, President Obama should focus on holding China accountable over its increasing attempts to undermine U.S. interests." His statement came on a turbulent day for markets after Chinese stocks tumbled, setting...

<p>Greece and its principal creditors—the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund—should acknowledge that Athens will never be able to repay the €131 billion it owes, write down its debt and let the Aegean nation exit the euro gracefully.</p>

The Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) announced that loading and unloading operations at all 29 West Coast ports would temporarily be suspended this weekend in response to union slowdowns that brought freight movements at the ports to a near standstill. PMA members stated that they cannot afford the almost $1,200 per day cost to employ International Longshore and Warehouse Union members to do little work. After Breitbart broke the story on Thursday that union members of the ILWU planned to “walk out within the week,” the PMA employer group announced they can no longer continue to pay workers the premium pay...

LOS ANGELES — Employers could lock out West Coast dockworkers in as few as five days if the two sides do not reach a new contract. That warning came Wednesday from the head of a maritime association who is negotiating a new deal with a union representing longshoremen at 29 ports that handle about $1 trillion in trade annually. Pacific Maritime Association CEO James McKenna said he wanted to avoid a coast-wide port shutdown, but employers wouldn't keep paying workers who aren't moving cargo at their normal rate if the ports become much more gridlocked. He said that could come...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba on Friday filed to sell up to $24.3 billion in stock, making it the biggest U.S. initial public offering ever. Alibaba is selling 123 million of the 320 million American Depositary Shares slated for the IPO at between $60 and $66 per share, according to a filing. Shareholders including Yahoo, Ma and executive vice chairman Joe Tsai are offering the remainder. Yahoo cut its stake in the company to 16.3 percent from 22.4 percent and SoftBank cut its stake to 32.4 percent from 34.1 percent earlier, Dow Jones reported....

We hadn’t written about the monthly EIA statistics on US oil supply and demand for a while because they’d gotten kind of dull. The big movements recorded month after month, particularly in product export growth and net import dependence, had fallen into a bit of a predictable range. That changed in June. The EIA released numbers from that month today. US petroleum import dependence in June dropped to 4.659 million b/d. That’s only the second time in the post-shale era that number had been less than 5 million b/d. And the last time the US recorded a number that low...

Since the mid-1970s, the United States has run a deficit in merchandise trade, meaning that payments for imports exceeded receipts for exports. This large and growing deficit on the merchandise trade balance reached a maximum of $883 billion in the second quarter of 2008. As a result of the recession, dramatic declines of imports in excess of exports during the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 reduced the merchandise trade deficit by 49%, to $449 billion in the second quarter of 2009. This trend of declining imports resulted in the lowest quarterly deficit level since early...

<p>Should the Russian government yank its supply of rocket engines for United States launches, critical national-security satellite missions could be delayed up to four years, experts told a joint Senate hearing Wednesday.</p> <p>United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Atlas 5 rocket is the workhorse of heavy satellite launches in the United States, but the booster requires a Russian RD-180 engine to get off the ground.</p>

On Independence Day, celebrations across the United States depend on China. The sparklers, bottle rockets and Roman candles you're using this Fourth of July almost certainly came from there. So did the professional-grade pyrotechnics that was launched above the Washington Monument on Friday night. It’s a quirky exception to “Buy American” sentiments that are otherwise going strong and picking up steam in Washington and corporate America, especially around patriotic events. After all, Congress passed a law this year requiring flags flown by the U.S. military to be made in America. Ralph Lauren, meanwhile, scrambled ahead of this year’s Winter Olympics...