Free Republic

BERLIN — The European Union will hit back at the heart of the United States, slapping tariffs on products like Harley-Davidsons, Kentucky bourbon and bluejeans, if President Trump goes ahead with a plan to place tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, the president of the bloc’s executive arm vowed on Friday. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, made the remarks to the German news media in reaction to the proposed tariffs. Mr. Junker said the plans to tax the American goods, produced in the home states of key Republic leaders, had not yet been finalized, but amounted to treating...

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) on Thursday blasted President Trump’s move to place new tariffs on foreign-made steel and aluminum as “terribly counterproductive” and warned of retaliation from trading partners. Roberts has pressed Trump and senior administration officials in recent months to be careful in renegotiating trade arrangements so as not to invite retaliatory tariffs against U.S. agricultural exports. “Every time you do this, you get a retaliation, and agriculture is the number one target. I think this is terribly counterproductive for the ag economy,” Roberts said. Asked why Trump hasn’t appeared to heed the concerns of GOP...

POTUS Trump speaks simple truths the Establishment Media chooses to ignore. These are truths that concern real jobs for real Americans that would help to lift up a struggling Middle Class. One of those truths is how China has economically raped the United States for decades costing millions of jobs, and likely trillions in economic growth. Mr. Trump is demanding this must end and he’s 100% correct as the following excerpt from The Weekly Standard makes abundantly clear: —————- China has announced that it will soon be marketing its cars in the United States. The People’s Republic is the largest...

Back in April, President Trump slapped tariffs of around 20 percent on the Canadian softwood lumber industry. At the time, I wrote that it would cause lumber prices to rise, citing estimates that prices could increase by around 6.4 percent. Well, it turns out I was wrong, and lumber prices have not risen by around 6 or 7 percent. Instead, they’ve risen by much more since the spring—as much as 25 percent. One contributing factor for this spike is not hard to see. Tariffs are taxes on the consumer, restricting the consumer’s options when purchasing a product. The levies make...

Despite having no authorization from Congress, the Bush administration has launched extensive working-group activity to implement a trilateral agreement with Mexico and Canada. The membership of the working groups has not been published, nor has their work product been disclosed, despite two years of massive effort within the executive branches of the U.S., Mexico and Canada. The groups, working under the North American Free Trade Association office in the Department of Commerce, are to implement the Security and Prosperity Partnership, or SPP, signed by President Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas, on...

The Trump administration is taking retaliatory action against Canada over a trade dispute, moving to impose a 20% tariff on softwood lumber that is typically used to build single-family homes. In an interview Monday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the tariff will be applied retroactively and imposed on Canadian exports to the U.S. of about $5 billion a year. He said the dispute centers on Canadian provinces that have been allegedly allowing loggers to cut down trees at reduced rates and sell them at low prices. The determination that Canada improperly subsidizes its exports is preliminary, and the Commerce Department...

The 2016 election was a referendum on the imbalanced global trading system. It lost. President Donald Trump’s victory and Bernie Sanders’ insurgency both drew urgency and energy from the millions of livelihoods our trade deficits have cost. The vast U.S. trade deficit siphons away hundreds of billions of dollars each year, has cost the U.S. millions of well-paid manufacturing jobs, and has slowed U.S. economic growth to a crawl. President Trump won the election by promising to address the massive loss of American manufacturing jobs.   As Trump has rightly noted, the chronic U.S. trade deficits reflect, principally, a...

Anyone who believes Democrats own exclusive opposition to Donald Trump are completely ignoring the deliberate construct of the 2015/2016 republican primary. There are just as many -if not more- natural enemies within the Republican apparatus as there are within the Democrat group. “America-First” is antithetical to the UniParty.Again, prior to Donald Trump there was one party in Washington DC, “The UniParty”. President Donald Trump represented a second party, an independent approach toward legislative and economic priority. He was not a third choice, he was the second option.Within the ‘right-side’ of the UniParty you have Republicans. Within the republican party...

President-elect Donald Trump threatened German car makers with a big border tax of 35 percent for cars imported into the U.S. Trump criticized German auto makers like BMW and Volkswagen for producing the majority of their vehicles in Germany, not the United States. “You can build cars for the United States, but for every car that comes to the USA, you will pay a 35 percent tax,” Trump told German newspaper Bild. If the German firms decide to build factories in Mexico and plan to sell cars to the U.S., “without a 35 percent tax, you can forget that,” Trump...

A few days ago, DJT, in his farewell tour, was remarking about learning that 70K businesses had been off-shored, and said he thought it was a typo, 7,000, ok maybe, but 70,000? Tariffs are terrible, except when they're not, and have been long been necessary to protect infant industries until the rest of Caesar's laws in Caesar's world toughens them up to fly solo. Well, I submit that the industries offshored over the last 20 years ARE infant industries when we re-start them using tariffs. Most of the employees of closed factories are still here and could presumably start up...

Trump warned companies of “retribution or consequences” for leaving the U.S. Donald Trump warned U.S. companies of “retribution or consequences,” such as a massive tariff, if they leave the country. In a series of early morning tweets Sunday, Trump said companies with offshore factories would face a 35% tax on products they want to sell back in the U.S. “The U.S. is going to substantialy [sic] reduce taxes and regulations on businesses, but any business that leaves our country for another country, fires its employees, builds a new factory or plant in the other country, and then thinks it will...

President-elect Trump doubles down on 35% tax for businesses that ship jobs out of U.S. NEW YORK — Fresh off saving 800 Carrier factory jobs from being off-shored to Mexico, President-elect Donald Trump is renewing his threat against companies that move their operations to foreign countries. Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump The U.S. is going to substantialy reduce taxes and regulations on businesses, but any business that leaves our country for another country, 6:41 AM - 4 Dec 2016 Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump without retribution or consequence, is WRONG! There will be a tax on our soon to be...

French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy has proposed that Europe apply a carbon tax on American imports if Donald Trump pulls the United States out of the Paris climate pact. More than 100 countries have ratified the Paris global emissions deal, which was inked in December after marathon talks to cap greenhouse gases that cause global warming. “Donald Trump has said — we’ll see if he keeps this promise — that he won’t respect the conclusions of the Paris climate agreement,” Sarkozy said late Sunday on the TF1 television channel. “Well, I will demand that Europe put in place a carbon...

Another example of failing to think beyond stage one is with the tariff and quota protections given to the U.S. sugar industry... Life Savers, which for 90 years manufactured in America, moved to Canada, where wages are comparable to ours. By moving to Canada, it became more competitive because it saved itself a whopping $10 million a year in sugar costs.

In his coquettish refusal to accept the Donald, Paul Ryan says he cannot betray the conservative “principles” of the party of Abraham Lincoln, high among which is a devotion to free trade. But when did free trade become dogma in the party of Lincoln? As early as 1832, young Abe declared, “My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance. I am in favor of a national bank … and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles.” Campaigning in 1844, Lincoln declared, “Give us a protective tariff, and we will have the greatest nation...

When it comes to taxes, depending on whichever conservative you talk to they all have a different idea on what sort of tax plan would work best. Some want a national sales Tax, some want an income tax, and some even want a Tariff. So why not UNIFY under a plan that ALL of us can get behind? Here is an idea that I have been thinking about that i have never seen before. I call it the "10% Flex" Tax plan. Why is it flexible? It is flexible as it would allow congress to control what TYPE of taxes...

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.

Why a conservative economist says Trump could make America ‘the North Korea of economics’ By Jim Tankersley May 6 In his run for the White House, Donald Trump has threatened to slap tariffs on imports from China, in almost-certain violation of international rules. He has threatened to confiscate money that immigrants from Mexico wire home to their families, in order to force the Mexican government to pay for a border wall. This week, he suggested that, in an economic crisis, the government might repay only some of the money it owes to certain holders of its debt. Those threats reflect...

Tariffs as a source of federal government Revenue So there seem to be some conservatives that are scoffing at Trump talking about tariffs as part of reinvigorating domestic US Industries ... protecting them.... Yet tariffs are probably one of the most back to the founders concept that any candidate is talking about Look at the graph and then read the Wiki page you'll see that tariffs on Imports was the prime source of income for the federal government before the federal income tax system When America was young and weak, tariffs were the founding fathers tool to promote growth of...

Cheap steel from China has been blamed for distorting global markets and putting other countries' steelmakers under pressure. How have we got here and why does it all matter? China's steel industry - what's the problem? Chinese steel production has expanded hugely. Over the past 25 years, output has grown more than 12-fold. By comparison, the EU's output fell by 12% while the US's remained largely flat. The drive behind that stellar increase has been China's double-digit economic growth over the past decades. That led to ever more domestic demand for steel and the government invested heavily in the industry...