Free Republic

Political leaders from around the world have rallied behind Australia in the wake of China's newly imposed 200 per cent tariffs on wine which could cripple the $6billion industry. The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China - made up of more than 200 MPs from 19 countries - has urged millions of citizens to buy a 'bottle or two' of Australian wine before Christmas as a show of support. Australia's wine industry exports 39 percent of all its total product to China. The introduction of huge tariffs last week, brought in as apparent payback after Scott Morrison called for an inquiry into...

"The death rate appears not to be linked with the responses of governments..stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with the death rate." There's research from French scientists saying that government restrictions taken against the coronavirus have not reduced the mortality rate... "making a statement that it's a different court" New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's view of the Thanksgiving Eve 5-4 decision from the US Supreme Court against Cuomo's restrictions on houses of worship in the state... Breaking News: Iran reporting the assassination of a prominent Iranian physicist. Moshen Fakhrizadeh and...

The European Union is poised to move next week to impose tariffs on $4 billion of U.S. imports in retaliation for U.S. subsidies for planemaker Boeing, EU diplomats said, teeing up an eleventh-hour showdown with U.S. President Donald Trump.

In its decision, the WTO’s dispute settlement body ruled against the U.S. government’s argument that China has wrongly engaged in practices harmful to U.S. interests on issues including intellectual property theft and technology transfer. The U.S. tariffs target two batches of Chinese products. Duties of 10% were imposed on some $200 billion worth of goods in September 2018, and were jacked up to 25% eight months later. An additional 25% duties were imposed in June 2018 against Chinese goods worth about $34 billion in annual trade. The Trump administration has justified the sanctions under Section 301 of the Trade Act...

“Free Trade” isn’t. Low tariffs combined with high taxes on domestic labor is not Free Trade. It’s Subsidized Outsourcing, subsidized destruction of our industrial base and our national character. We tax domestic manufacturing in order to pay unemployment and welfare to those who lose their jobs to foreign competition. This is an evil positive feedback loop that has been crushing our working classes since the 70s. Our core cities are turning into uncivilized war zones and our college campuses into communist indoctrination centers. But at least we are subsidizing a rising fascist superpower with a terrible environmental record.

Canada has announced that it will retaliate dollar for dollar – to the tune of C$3.6bn – after the US announced a 10% tariff on Canadian aluminum. Donald Trump announced the new aluminum tariffs on Thursday at a campaign stop at a Whirlpool appliance plant in Ohio, accusing Canada of taking advantage of its trade relationship with the US. “The aluminum business was being decimated by Canada, very unfair to our jobs and our great aluminum workers,” he said. At a news conference on Friday, Canada’s deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, called the move “unwarranted and unacceptable” and said [cut]...

Europe’s Airbus said on Friday it would increase loan repayments to France and Spain in a “final” bid to reverse U.S. tariffs and jog the United States into settling a 16-year-old dispute over billions of dollars of aircraft subsidies. The European Union, France and Spain said the move to raise interest rates paid by Airbus on A350 aircraft development loans should settle the row at the World Trade Organization and urged Washington to withdraw tariffs on EU goods. “In the absence of a settlement, the EU will be ready to fully avail itself of its own sanction rights,” EU Trade...

The coronavirus pandemic and recession that followed make it hard for any other news to make it to the front page, but the end of the tragedy is in sight. Just this week, researchers at Oxford announced positive results in human trials for their vaccine. Even if we are not yet at the beginning of the end, we may be, as Winston Churchill once said, at the end of the beginning. That means it might be time, at last, for the presidential campaign to focus on more than the pandemic. By this point in the election cycle, we should be...

https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Screen-Shot-2020-05-29-at-4.53.59-PM-998x687.png President Donald Trump announced Friday that he has directed his administration to “begin the process of eliminating policy exemptions that give Hong Kong different and special treatment.” His announcement came a day after China’s People’s Congress passed Beijing’s controversial new national security law related to Hong Kong. Trump’s announcement will profoundly affect the future of Hong Kong and the U.S.-China relationship.The president’s decision was based on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s certification to Congress Wednesday that “Hong Kong is no longer autonomous from China,” a decision he said gave him no pleasure but that “sound policy-making requires a recognition...

As the U.S. works to recover from the financial fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump is preparing a “stronger” playbook than his 2017 policy platform to return the U.S. economy to its former strength, he says, which could include a payroll tax cut. During an interview with FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo on Thursday, Trump said he liked the idea of a payroll tax cut because it provides a benefit to both businesses and workers. “That’s one of the taxes that I want to see cut,” Trump said. “And by the way, we’ve already given – we’ve given the largest...

President Donald Trump said his hard-fought trade deal with China was now of secondary importance to the coronavirus pandemic and he threatened new tariffs on Beijing, as his administration crafted retaliatory measures over the outbreak. Trump's sharpened rhetoric against China reflected his growing frustration with Beijing over the pandemic, which has cost tens of thousands of lives in the United States alone, sparked an economic contraction and threatened his chances of re-election in November.

MP Materials, which runs the sole operating rare earths mine in the United States, is an unusual victim in the year-long tit-for-tat trade war between the two largest economies on the planet, as the conflict looks set to open up a new battlefront over technology. The operator of the Mountain Pass mine in California said it will kick-start its own processing operation by the end of 2020, after China last week more than doubled an import duty on concentrates to 25 per cent effective June 1. MP exports pellets – ground-up ores that contain oxides of rare earth elements –...

White House Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro confirmed Wednesday the administration is working on an executive order to eliminate the government’s reliance on foreign-made medical supplies. The “Buy American” order comes on the heels of concerns expressed by senators during their Tuesday meeting with President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill. [snip] The order would prevent federal agencies from purchasing medical supplies, including face masks, gloves and ventilators, from China. [snip] China has prevented the export of surgical face masks, severely limiting supplies in the U.S. and countries around the world. “China has managed to dominate all aspects...

The most important question raised in the Democratic Party’s South Carolina debate did not concern such foolish measures as Medicare-for-All, reparations for slavery, or Joe Biden’s imbecilic exaggeration about murder statistics (150 million murders in the USA? Really?). The key issue of the day was only mentioned in passing, by Michael Bloomberg, of all people, and it was immediately set aside… and of course, he got it wrong. Michael Bloomberg tried to make a case for his nomination, on the grounds of his own extensive business experience… and his own long and happy collaboration with Mainland China. He talked about...

President Trump knew that it was unreasonable and unsafe for the US economy to be so dependent on China. He was ridiculed for his tariffs which now appear to have prevented a major economic catastrophe due to US companies moving their operations out of China over the past couple years. Last night, Melissa Francis from FOX Business Network, was on Tucker Carlson Tonight and she shared this observation: Because he [President Trump] started this trade war that was costing companies money, they went out and set up different ways that, well maybe we can get this from here, here’s our...

BEIJING -- China on Friday suspended more punitive tariffs on imports of U.S. industrial goods in response to a truce in its trade war with Washington that threatened global economic growth. Financial markets have welcomed announcements by both sides of reductions in penalties on each other’s goods, though they have yet to resolve much of the conflict that erupted in 2018 over Beijing’s technology ambitions and trade surplus. Goods affected by the latest reduction include industrial components and medical and factory equipment, according to the Finance Ministry. It gave no details of the value of goods affected but said penalties...

BEIJING—China will grant exemptions on retaliatory duties imposed against 696 U.S. goods, the most substantial tariff relief to be offered so far, as Beijing seeks to fulfill commitments made in its interim trade deal with the United States. The announcement on Feb. 18 comes after the Phase 1 trade deal between the two countries took effect on Feb. 14 and is the third round of tariff exemptions China has offered on U.S. goods. China has committed to boosting its purchases of goods and services from the United States by $200 billion over two years as part of the agreement, and...

The annual 2019 trade figures for the United States came out last week, heralding some encouraging news. America’s enormous international trade deficit actually declined slightly from 2018. This was the first decrease in six years, with the deficit in goods and services dropping 1.7%, to $616.8 billion. Better yet, America’s bilateral trade deficit with China fell for the first time in four years, dropping a hefty 17.6%, to $345.6 billion. These are promising numbers and they show that tariffs on Chinese products are successfully moving the needle on U.S. trade flows. In fact, America’s 2019 imports from China actually fell...

"Hello Goodbye" by the Beatles, a number one song from early 1968 here in the USA. That's around the time my father left the factory to higher paying and longer lasting government employment as inflation kicked in here in the USA. Lyndon Johnson was ramping up government with Medicare and Medicaid and the cost of medical care was beginning to skyrocket, debt was beginning to accumulate and wow here we are 23 trillion dollars plus later. The 2021 federal budget proposed by President Trump adds another 966 billion to that. Well the currency is devalued and its easy to tell...

French winemakers hit by US tariffs imposed in a transatlantic trade war over airplane subsidies on Tuesday demanded help from their government and European planemaker Airbus. French wine exports to the US have plunged since President Donald Trump in October imposed 25 percent tariffs on a range of European delicacies in retaliation for EU subsidies of Airbus, arch-rival of America’s Boeing. The French finance ministry last week announced that wine exports to the US — the second-biggest export market for French wines after Germany — had fallen by 44 percent in value from October to November. On Tuesday, the vice-president...