President Joe Biden is examining a range of options for what to do with the current tariffs on China, according to Reuters. For months, the administration has considered cutting tariffs on Beijing to relieve inflation in the US, but has alternatively thought about additional penalties as China carries out military drills in the waters surrounding Taiwan.
US President Joe Biden has signed an executive order banning imports of Russian energy, a move matched by UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss soon after – both aiming to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. During a Tuesday press briefing, Biden said his new executive decree will ban all imports of Russian oil, liquefied natural gas and coal to the US, arguing the measure will “deal another powerful blow to Putin’s war machine” following several rounds of previous sanctions. Though the restrictions will be phased in gradually, the order also bars Americans from investing in any projects...
President Trump was elected on an anti-trade agenda in 2016, and promised that tariffs and protectionist measures could restore the US manufacturing sector. After winning the White House, the president imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods meant to discourage imports in pursuit of this goal. He has described himself as a “tariff man” and said that “trade wars are good and easy to win.” How is this rhetoric holding up? Well, a new Wall Street Journal data analysis sheds light on the trade war’s results so far. They aren’t pretty. “President Trump’s trade...
Iran responds to the assassination of Soleimani by launching several missiles at Iraqi bases housing US soldiers. There have been no reports of US casualties and some reports of Iraqi casualties. After the attack, Tweets by Trump and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif suggest the countries are ready to deescalate. [Link] US News Trump’s trade war is enriching lobbyist and big business. Big businesses can afford well-connected lobbyists to push the government to give trade war exemptions to their products. Small businesses are unable his lobbyists to get exemptions. [Link] ICE agents...
Click here for Part 2 For the audio version, check out my podcast A Boy Named Pseu where you can download it on all podcast platforms. (read starts at 8:54) Read full piece here. If bitcoin is dead, then the President didn’t tweet about it Governments have officially recognized bitcoin as a threat to the modern financial system. In an article from The Daily HODL, Congressmen, French Hill and Bill Foster, wrote a letter in September urging the Fed to “consider creating a national digital currency as the rise of crypto and projects like Facebook’s Libra threaten paper money.” The open...
The Hill: A large majority of voters — 84 percent — are concerned about the prospect of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, according to a Hill-HarrisX poll released on Monday. That's more than those who expressed concern over other foreign policy issues, including North Korea’s use of ballistic missiles, U.S. election security, Turkey’s military action in Syria and President Trump’s ongoing trade war with China. Voters across party lines expressed concern over Iran's nuclear capabilities. Of those polled, 89 percent of Democratic voters said they were either very or somewhat concerned...
Campaign for Liberty Chairman Ron Paul issued the following statement regarding the Federal Reserve’s announcement that it will be reducing interest rates for the first time in a decade: “The Federal Reserve’s reduction of its benchmark interest rate from 2.25% to 2% is a textbook illustration of a popular definition of insanity: taking the same actions over and over again and expecting different results. Since the stock market meltdown of 2008, the Fed has unsuccessfully tried to pump up the economy via historic low interest rates and Quantitative Easing. As anyone except those who...
Scott talks to Doug Bandow about North Korea, China, Russia, and the rest of eastern Europe. Bandow holds out hope for the negotiations with North Korea, but fears the dangerous rhetoric coming from neoconservatives about America's relationship with China. They are not America's enemies, he explains, they just want their own region to be free of U.S. influence. Discussed on the show: "China Isn’t an Enemy and Hawks Shouldn’t Turn It Into One" (The American Conservative) "Forget the U.S.-China Trade War: Is a Conflict Over Taiwan the Real Threat?" (Cato Institute) "The Latest Balkans...
Mike Swanson joins Scott to talk about President Trump's latest tariff announcement against Mexico. Trump and his team may think these trade policies are good for the economy, says Swanson, but they may also just be using the trade war as a way to shift blame elsewhere, should the U.S. have a bad recession during Trump's presidency. Yet another possibility is that Trump knows protectionism is deleterious overall, but believes the effect may be worse on countries like Mexico and China, so that if the world economy takes a hit, America may come out better than others, and still be able to...
I'm reading about Chinese consumers switching away from Apple because of nationalism and the trade war. Then, rumors that the trade war is hurting the Chinese economy more than they admit. So, here's what's happening: regular folks are having a tough time. And when there's a bully ruining your day or worse, you get mad at them. This leads to wanting to punch back. This is the people's war. The government uses this, sometimes it's forced to do something on account of this. Yet, when a government like Trump's targets the Chinese economy, their target is the other government. A poke in...
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