Trump Tariffs

Blurb:

President Donald Trump signed a New Year’s Eve proclamation delaying increased tariffs on upholstered furniture, kitchen cabinets and vanities for a year, citing ongoing trade talks

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed a New Year’s Eve proclamation delaying increased tariffs on upholstered furniture, kitchen cabinets and vanities for a year, citing ongoing trade talks.

Trump’s order signed Wednesday keeps in place a 25% tariff he imposed in September on those goods, but delays for another year a 30% tariff on upholstered furniture and 50% tariff on kitchen cabinets and vanities.

Blurb:

Sweeping tariff increases on imports from China and other countries without free trade agreements (FTAs) with Mexico officially took effect Jan. 1, marking a significant shift in the country’s trade policy aimed at protecting domestic industries and jobs.

The tariff modifications, published in Mexico’s Official Gazette on Dec. 30, affect 1,463 product categories across more than a dozen sectors including automotive, textiles, clothing, steel, plastics, footwear, furniture, toys, aluminum and glass. The new duties range from 5% to 50%, with the highest rates applied to vehicles from China and certain other Asian nations.

Blurb:

The resurgence of the political right in Latin America and Mexico’s recently approved tariffs were among the issues spoken about at President Claudia Sheinbaum’s Monday morning press conference.

Here is a recap of the president’s Dec. 15 mañanera.

Sheinbaum: Shift to the right won’t happen in Mexico 

Citing the victory of José Antonio Kast in Chile’s presidential election on Sunday as well as the results of recent elections in Argentina and Bolivia, a reporter asked the president about the shift to the right of “some voters in Latin America.”

Sheinbaum responded that the situation in “each country” would need to be analyzed to determine why voters in some Latin American nations have recently supported right-wing candidates and parties in large numbers.

Blurb:

Korea Zinc announced on Monday a $7.4 billion smelter project in Tennessee that will be backed by the U.S. government and which will lessen our reliance on China for critical minerals used in defense systems, electronics, and so much more that powers our modern world.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick took to X to laud the news:

Blurb:

 

Another South American country has gone “far-right” and the timing couldn’t be better for the U.S. as it seeks to secure its critical mineral supply chain.

Several weeks ago, Bolivia elected Rodrigo Paz as its new president. He promptly planned to scrap a ream of taxes as one of his first moves since becoming the nation’s first conservative leader in nearly two decades.

The government has also repaired relations with Washington after years of anti-American hostility dating back to when ex-President Evo Morales, a charismatic coca-growing union leader, kicked out the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in 2008 and cozied up to Russia, Iran and Venezuela.

The U.S. State Department has already announced agreements on nuclear cooperation and security assistance, and Paz has said his administration will allow Elon Musk’s Starlink to operate in Bolivia for the first time, after his predecessor refused to give it an operating license last year.

Blurb:

President Donald Trump says Americans won’t have to wait much longer to see direct benefits from his tariff policies. In new comments made on Monday, President Trump revealed that the administration expects to begin issuing “tariff dividend checks” as early as the middle of next year, delivering thousands of dollars to middle and moderate income households.

During remarks, Trump detailed how the United States has collected “hundreds of millions of dollars in tariff money,” which he argues has both strengthened American industry and created a surplus that can now be returned directly to taxpayers.

“We’re going to be issuing dividends later on, somewhere prior to, probably in the middle of next year, a little bit later than that, of thousands of dollars for individuals of moderate income, middle income. We’re going to pay down debt. We have a lot of money from tariffs,” Trump said.

Blurb:

BEIJING: China said on Monday (Nov 10) it would suspend for one year “special port fees” on US vessels “simultaneously” with Washington’s pause on levies targeting Chinese ships, as a fragile trade truce between the superpowers continues to take shape.

The United States and China have been involved in a volatile trade and tariff war for months, but agreed to walk back some punitive measures after presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump met last month in South Korea.

At one point, duties on both sides had reached prohibitive triple-digit levels, hampering trade between the world’s two largest economies and snarling global supply chains.

The suspension of the port fees, which applied to ships operated by or built in the United States that visited Chinese ports, began at 1.01pm (5.01am GMT) on Monday, a transport ministry statement said.

Blurb:

President Donald Trump has moved to cut U.S. fentanyl-related tariffs on Chinese goods in half, following last month’s in-person meeting with China’s leader Xi Jinping in South Korea.

Under a new executive order issued on Tuesday, the tariff will drop from 20 percent to 10 percent beginning November 10.

In the order, Trump stated:

“The PRC [People’s Republic of China] has committed to take significant measures to end the flow of fentanyl to the United States, including stopping the shipment of certain designated chemicals to North America and strictly controlling exports of certain other chemicals to all destinations in the world.”

Trump and Xi met on October 30 on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Busan, South Korea.

After the meeting, Trump said he believed Beijing would take “strong action” to stem the supply of precursor chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl.

Blurb:

The U.S. Supreme Court appeared fairly skeptical of President Trump’s implementation of numerous “emergency” tariffs in a pair of key cases before the bench on Wednesday.

The nation’s highest court held oral arguments in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc. The cases center around the legality of Trump’s implementation of tariffs using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which grants presidents the power to “deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat.”

As The Federalist previously described, the president “did so in response to existing ‘unfair trade practices’ that lead to trade deficits, as well as to punish countries like China for failing to ‘blunt the sustained influx of synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, flowing from the [People’s Republic of China] to the United States.’” Invoking language contained in IEEPA, Trump reasoned that these problems represent an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the country.

Blurb:

News roundup:

Supreme Court justices appear skeptical of Trump’s tariffs, but some may give leeway

ICE to open call center to help track migrant children for removal

FAA is cutting flights at 40 major airports amid government shutdown

Inside Trump’s “uncomfortable” breakfast with Republican senators

Trump sways some Republican senators on filibuster changes

Democrats tap the brakes on ending government shutdown

St. Paul, Minnesota, Elects Mayor Who Admitted, ‘I Am Illegal in This Country’

Immigration Rights Activists Ask Los Angeles Dodgers to Decline White House Visit over ICE Raids

Trump Highlights Economic Bright Spots in American Business Forum Speech

GOP Sen. Kennedy to Introduce Bills to Withhold Pay from Lawmakers During Government Shutdown

FDNY Commissioner Hands In Resignation Less than 12 Hours After Mamdani Win, Other Top Officials Expected to Follow Suit

Chinese scholars charged with smuggling biological materials into US under research cover

Mamdani’s socialist and Muslim backers, including Sarsour and Wahhaj, take victory lap

Justice Department charges third man in connection to alleged Halloween terror plot

15-year-old Florida boy guns down classmate after victim bumped him in school hallway: sheriff

Bomb Threats At NJ Polling Stations Connected To Russian Email Address

Trump Announces Major Decision On Nuclear Weapons

Pressure Mounts For Dem Governor To Call In National Guard After Spate Of High-Profile Murders

And that’s all I’ve got, now go beat back the angry mob!


from amgreatness.com

Blurb:

China will begin easing an export ban on automotive computer chips vital to production of cars across the world as part of a trade deal struck between the US and China, the White House has said.

The White House confirmed details of the deal in a new fact sheet after Xi Jinping and Donald Trump met in South Korea this week.

The nations also reached agreements on US soybean exports, the supply of rare earth minerals, and the materials used in production of the drug fentanyl.

The deal de-escalates a trade war between the world’s two largest economies after Trump hit China with tariffs after he entered office this year, leading to rounds of retaliatory tariffs and global business uncertainty.

Blurb:

Shares of Europe’s biggest carmakers rose Monday as fears over an industry shortage of semiconductors appeared to recede.

China on Saturday said it would consider some exemptions for Nexperia chip exports. It had previously blocked Nexperia semiconductors from leaving the country after the Dutch government seized control of Nexperia, owned by the Chinese company Wingtech.

The standoff between the Netherlands and China had prompted automotive groups to raise the alarm over a worsening chip shortage.

Blurb:

In a stunning act of political miscalculation, Canada aired a deceptive tariff ad featuring President Reagan to taunt Donald Trump — prompting Trump to retaliate by raising tariffs on Canadian goods. To call it “stupid” is far too generous; it was a reckless act of self-sabotage.

The person responsible for this misleading ad is Doug Ford; the premier of the province of Ontario. Ford thought that this attack ad would scare President Trump into retreating from his tariff policy. Ford was dead wrong. In response to this attack ad, President Trump has suspended trade negotiations with Canada, and has also increased tariff’s on Canada by an additional 10 percent. Doug Ford is a clown.

Blurb:

Recently, in an unprecedented move, Ontario’s provincial government intruded in American politics by trying to divide the Republican Party regarding tariff policy.  They did this knowing that there are two strands of GOP thought on tariffs: a pro-free trade belief, and a pro-tariff belief, which the Canadians hope to exploit in their ongoing trade battles with the U.S.

Which brings me neatly back to the issue of higher tariffs.  Once again, I am analyzing this as a political issue, and not as an economic one.

The historical GOP was a big fan of tariffs.  Abraham Lincoln brought them over from the “American System” of the Whig party, of which he was a prominent proponent.  In 1896, the GOP doubled down on them under William McKinley, whom President Trump has praised.

Blurb:

SINGAPORE: Chinese state oil majors have suspended purchases of seaborne Russian oil after the United States imposed sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, Moscow’s two biggest oil companies, multiple trade sources said on Thursday (Oct 23).

The move comes as refiners in India, the largest buyer of seaborne Russian oil, are set to sharply cut their crude imports from Moscow to comply with the US sanctions imposed over the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

A sharp drop in oil demand from Russia’s two largest customers will put a strain on Moscow’s oil revenues and force the world’s top importers to seek alternative supplies and push up global prices.