***Official Political Discussion Thread***

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...xpected-trumps-tax-bill-is-losing-popularity/

Trump and Republicans argued that cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent and allowing companies to write off more of the costs of their capital spending would unleash a frenzy of business spending, and that in turn would drive up wages as workers become more productive. So far, that hasn't happened, and surveys of business leaders don't indicate it's likely to pick up much more from here.

Morgan Stanley has an index that tracks businesses' plans for future capital spending. This week Morgan Stanley reported a drop in future plans and declared the United States “past the peak” on capital spending, a worrying sign for those waiting for a pickup.

Similarly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and audit firm RSM did a recent survey of 393 businesses and found that 38 percent planned to increase investment over the next three years.

“This is not what we expected,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM.
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*Cough*economists have been saying that Reaganomics is voodoo though*cough*
 
plansb said:
Love the dems are lazy do-nothings with no jobs theme you get from the trumpers. Back when i had a facebook i saw people posting that **** a lot. The funny thing is a lot of those people are slobs with ****ty jobs. :lol:
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Just remember that when you see these "lazy democrat", "want handouts" type comments from the likes of Huckabee, or Donald Jr., or other suspected racist rethuglicans, they are talking about black people. Democrat is their dog whistle term for us.
 
Bruh all that intellectual dishonesty would be tiring. That can't be a good way to live life, constantly purposely pretending to be stupid to make a point.
 
aepps20 said:
I find it funny how quickly Libs cry to their mothers after conservatives call them out. Huckleberry Hound just destroyed libs for being lazy good for nothings. All I see in here is whaaaaaaaaaa, Whaaaaaaaaa, WHAAAAAAAAAAAA.
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Idk how you do it, but your ability to bait a conservative to actually like your posts is grade A.

Daniel Day Aepps :nthat:
 
Mark Antony said:
Bruh all that intellectual dishonesty would be tiring. That can't be a good way to live life, constantly purposely pretending to be stupid to make a point.
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73F42F52-9723-4DFC-B9A4-676EBEE1F552.jpeg
 
Virginia GOP Candidate Incites Mob to Chant ‘Build the Wall’ in Front of Restaurant That Booted Sarah Sanders




Corey Stewart -- screenshot

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/07/vi...d-wall-front-restaurant-booted-sarah-sanders/

In a video uploaded to YouTube, the Republican challenger to Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) led a mob of protesters outside the restaurant that booted Sarah Sanders — encouraging them to chant ‘build the wall.”

In the video, candidate Corey Stewart — who is running a campaign closely aligned with President Donald Trump while advocating for keeping Confederate monuments — addresses the crowd and disparages the owner of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington for asking White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders to take her dining party and leave.

He then encouraged the American flag-waving crowd to chant President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant mantra “Build the wall” as cars drove — with some honking their horns.

On Saturday, the head of the Virginia GOP resigned rather than be aligned with Stewart.
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MalcolmNewton said:
I think he may be competing with Donald Jr for twitter d-bag of the year.


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I just put myself back through school to change careers while working 40+ hours a week. Trump lovers are demanding we bring back archaic and destructive industries because they can't learn new trades. Now that I think about it, I have not met a Trump supporter that actually works hard.
 
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-cites-car-tariff-threat-as-biggest-trade-leverage-1530466455
Trump Cites Car-Tariff Threat as Biggest Trade Leverage
Fox interview comments suggest recent steel tariffs were a dry run for bigger fight on autos
President Donald Trump said he sees his threat to impose global auto tariffs as his biggest weapon to extract concessions from trading partners, shedding more light on his broader trade policy strategy.
“You know, the cars are the big one,” Mr. Trump told Fox News in an interview broadcast Sunday. “We can talk steel, we talk everything. The big thing is cars.”

Mr. Trump was referring to a study launched by his administration in late May into whether to impose 20% tariffs on imported vehicles in the name of national security.

Administration officials have said no decision has been made on whether to actually do so, but they have suggested they are looking to make a decision before the November elections.

Mr. Trump used a similar rationale—invoking a rarely used Cold War-era law that gives the president wide discretion to block imports—to justify recently imposed steel and aluminum tariffs. His latest remarks suggest that was a kind of dry run for a bigger fight on autos.

While the president has talked repeatedly about moving to stymie car imports, his comments cast the threat in a new light, showing how he views the sector as his most important leverage in trying to win concessions from trading partners around the world, especially Mexico, Europe, and Japan.

In discussing ongoing talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, for example, the president said in the Fox interview that “if they’re not fine, I’m going to tax their cars coming into America, and that’s the big one.”

“The European Union is possibly as bad as China just smaller, OK,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s terrible what they did to us. European Union—take a look at the car situation. They send a Mercedes in; we can’t send our cars in.”

Mr. Trump has repeatedly complained about Europe’s 10% tariff on car imports compared with the 2.5% imposed by the U.S., but he hasn’t mentioned the 25% tariff the U.S. imposes on imports of light trucks.

Although Mr. Trump’s exploration of across-the-board auto tariffs has little precedent in modern American policy, he isn’t the first president to tangle with allies over car imports.

President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s forced Japan to accept “voluntary” export limits on cars, a move that helped prompt Japanese auto makers to build cars in the U.S. President Bill Clinton engaged in protracted negotiations with Tokyo in the 1990s to try to sell more American cars and car parts in the Japanese market.

The Trump trade team has tried to use the metals tariffs as broad leverage—to get big concessions on Nafta, to get Europe to slash its autos tariffs and boost defense spending, and to get Japan to promise to buy more American goods.

But so far at least, those countries have called the U.S. bluff, absorbing the American tariffs and, in the case of Canada and Europe, fighting back with penalties of their own.
Canadian retaliatory tariffs took effect Sunday. And Europe has claimed a victory of sorts in that tiff, when Harley-Davidson Inc., the Milwaukee-based motorcycle maker, said last week it would shift some production outside the U.S. to avoid the cost of European tariffs.

China on Sunday followed through on a pledge announced in May to cut tariffs on car imports to 15% from 25%. But in recent weeks both countries have edged closer to a full-scale trade war, and Beijing is preparing to slap an additional 25% tariff on U.S. auto imports this Friday.

Rather than back down, Mr. Trump says he now wants to raise the stakes, by adding autos to the mix.

The American car market is much bigger than the steel market, and the economies of Mexico, Germany, and Japan in particular are much more dependent on exporting vehicles to the U.S.

The U.S. imported about $29 billion in steel in 2017, compared with about $192 billion in cars. The car industry makes up nearly a quarter of the country’s $500-billion-plus trade deficit.

According to the Center for Automotive Research, an Ann Arbor, Mich., think tank, 44% of the vehicles sold in the U.S. last year were imported. The Nafta partners combined accounted for about half the imports, followed by Japan and Germany.

Mr. Trump in the interview expressed confidence that his strategy would work—that he would persuade foreign auto companies to build more in the U.S. and to export less.

“What’s going to really happen is there’s going to be no tax,” he said. “You know why? They’re going to build their cars in America. They’re going to make them here.”

But the threat to expand his trade pressure to the auto sector has spooked global markets and big business, including U.S.-based auto makers.

General Motors Co. warned Friday that global auto tariffs would hurt its competitiveness, cost U.S. jobs and result in “a smaller GM.” The statement was made in a formal comment submitted to the administration as part of the study weighing the prospect of the levies. Other auto makers have weighed in with similar warnings.

Lawmakers in Mr. Trump’s own Republican party have weighed in against the prospect, with two GOP senators—Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) and Pat Toomey (R., Pa.)—proposing legislation that would make it harder for presidents to invoke the national-security law to block imports.

“The president needs to use the national-security waiver in ways that I think visibly meet the test,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R., Mo.) said after the threat was first raised in May. “I didn’t think aluminum and steel met the test. I certainly don’t think automobiles meet the test.”

Some of Mr. Trump’s own aides have cautioned against the move. His top economic adviser, Lawrence Kudlow, said in a June interview that he had argued internally against moving ahead with tariffs on automobiles. “I am concerned. I have spoken up,” he said. “I speak up.”
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He also doubled down on his threat to sanction European companies that do business with Iran, again reaffirming the administration's intent to sabotage the EU's efforts to uphold the Iran deal by continuing to do business with and in Iran. The other signatory states including China, Russia and the UK are still committed to upholding the deal as well, at least for now, but Trump unsurprisingly did not mention sanctioning Chinese or Russian companies. Instead he chose to single out only European companies, I wonder why.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ean-companies-against-iran-ties-idUSKBN1JR1R9
Trump blasts OPEC, warns European companies against Iran ties
President Donald Trump lashed out at OPEC with a warning to stop manipulating oil markets and piled pressure on close U.S. allies in an interview that aired on Sunday with a threat to sanction European companies that do business with Iran.
The president, in an interview with Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo,” also said he would not complete a new NAFTA trade deal with Canada and Mexico until after the November congressional elections.

Trump, who is spending the weekend at his golf property in New Jersey, said in a tweet on Saturday that Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud had agreed to produce more oil.

The White House later walked back the president’s comments, saying the king said his country can raise oil production if needed.


Oil prices rose on Friday on worries that U.S. sanctions against Iran would take away significant volumes of crude oil from world markets while oil demand worldwide increases.

Rising gasoline prices could create a political headache for Trump ahead of the November elections by offsetting Republican claims that his tax cuts and rollbacks of federal regulations have helped boost the economy.

On Fox, Trump directed blame at the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, of which Saudi Arabia is a member. Asked if someone was manipulating oil markets, Trump said: “OPEC is and they better stop it because we’re protecting those countries, many of those countries.”

The president also had tough words for other U.S. allies. Earlier this year, to the chagrin of European partners, Trump said he would pull the United States out of the Iran nuclear agreement secured by world powers.

He said in the Fox interview that European companies would face sanctions if they traded with Iran now.


“Of course. That’s what we’re doing, absolutely,” he said.

Trump will leave for a trip to Europe later this month for a meeting with NATO allies, whom he has criticized sharply for paying too little for their joint defense.

Trade tensions are likely to overshadow that trip. Trump has imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum in response to what he calls unfair trade practices from Europe, Canada, and other allies around the world, who have responded with retaliatory sanctions in kind.

On trade, the president said in the Fox interview that he was not happy with the North American Free Trade Agreement and would not agree a new one until after the November elections.

“I want to wait until after the election,” he said.
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Should be advocating for this man for president and not anyone associated with the kaedashians/Jenners....





Or is amaerica already cursed by association?
 
https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-gop-fundraiser-to-stop-hush-payments-over-affair-1530477047
Top GOP Fundraiser to Stop Hush Payments Over Affair
Elliott Broidy says ex-model’s lawyer breached $1.6 million deal that was arranged by Michael Cohen
A top Republican fundraiser will stop making payments to a former mistress who signed a hush-money agreement that was negotiated last year by Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s longtime lawyer.

Elliott Broidy, a Los Angeles venture capitalist and former Republican National Committee official, agreed to pay former Playboy centerfold Shera Bechard $1.6 million—in eight installments, beginning late last year—to keep quiet about her affair with the married donor, The Wall Street Journal reported in April.

Now Mr. Broidy, who worked on the RNC with Mr. Cohen, will withhold the third installment of $200,000 that was due Sunday, in response to an alleged breach of the nondisclosure agreement, according to Chris Clark, a lawyer for Mr. Broidy.

Mr. Clark said Ms. Bechard’s lawyer at the time of the agreement, Keith Davidson, improperly discussed the hush-money agreement with another lawyer, Michael Avenatti, who has replaced Mr. Davidson in representing Stephanie Clifford, a former adult-film star. Ms. Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels, got a $130,000 payment arranged by Mr. Cohen to keep quiet about what she said was a 2006 sexual encounter with Mr. Trump.

“Elliott specifically was paying for confidentiality that would shield his family from the embarrassing mistake he made,” Mr. Clark said. “We can prove there was an intentional breach that renders the contract null and void.”

A spokesman for Mr. Davidson said the lawyer hasn’t breached any agreement. “Any accusation to the contrary is false and defamatory,” said the spokesman, Dave Wedge, adding that Mr. Davidson “looks forward to addressing these matters in the proper venue, which is the court room, not the press.”

Peter Stris, Ms. Bechard’s current lawyer, said he would “take immediate action” to protect her from “any inappropriate conduct by Keith Davidson, Michael Avenatti, or Elliott Broidy.”

Mr. Cohen couldn’t be reached for comment.

Mr. Avenatti said: “I’m neither going to confirm nor deny what information I have about this, whether it’s all been disclosed yet, or where I learned it. But I would encourage Ms. Bechard to disclose everything she knows about this situation to the public.”

The action by Mr. Broidy, 60 years old, also makes the Bechard agreement the third hush-money contract this year to unravel that involved Mr. Davidson and either Mr. Trump or Mr. Cohen, who until recently was the president’s personal lawyer. Any effort by Ms. Bechard to use the legal system to enforce the nondisclosure agreement could shine more of a light on how Mr. Cohen maneuvered to protect the secrets of his high-profile clients.

Mr. Davidson also negotiated six-figure payments during the 2016 presidential campaign for Ms. Clifford and Karen McDougal, another former Playboy model who said she had a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump more than a decade ago. Both women have sought to extricate themselves from contracts brokered by Mr. Davidson.

Federal agents in New York raided Mr. Cohen’s home, office and hotel room in April and are investigating his role in those deals and whether they violated campaign-finance or other laws, according to people familiar with the matter. The president and the White House deny that Mr. Trump had sex with either Ms. Clifford or Ms. McDougal. Mr. Cohen has said he has done nothing wrong.

The Journal has reported that Ms. Bechard, Playboy’s Miss November 2010, said Mr. Broidy impregnated her during a relationship that spanned more than a year. Mr. Broidy gave more than $160,000 last year to the RNC, and in March, he helped organize a fundraiser in Los Angeles that Mr. Trump attended, the Journal reported. Mr. Broidy acknowledged the consensual relationship and said she told he she had been pregnant.

The Broidy deal came about after Ms. Bechard hired Mr. Davidson to represent her. Mr. Davidson called Mr. Cohen, whom he dealt with in the agreements involving Ms. Clifford and Ms. McDougal, to see if he knew Mr. Broidy, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Cohen then called Mr. Broidy. “It’s your lucky day, because you have a big problem, and I can help you solve it,” Mr. Cohen told him, according to the people familiar with the conversation. Mr. Broidy, aware of Mr. Cohen’s reputation as a fixer for Mr. Trump, hired him, one of the people said.

The initial demand Mr. Cohen conveyed from Ms. Bechard was for more than $5 million, according to a person familiar with the matter; the parties eventually settled for $1.6 million, payable over two years.

The contract said any potential claims relating to the alleged pregnancy were excluded from the agreement, the Journal has reported. Ms. Bechard later said she had an abortion, people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Broidy has said that was her decision alone.

Months after the agreement was signed, Mr. Avenatti, the lawyer for Ms. Clifford, appeared to reference it in an April 12 tweet: “In last 18 mos, Mr. Cohen negotiated yet another hush NDA, this time on behalf of a prominent GOP donor who had a relationship with a LA woman, impregnated her and then made sure she had an abortion. The deal provided for multiple payments across many months.” The tweet didn’t mention Mr. Broidy or Ms. Bechard by name.

The Journal reported the details of the agreement the following day. Mr. Broidy resigned that afternoon as national deputy finance chairman of the RNC, a title Mr. Cohen also held until relinquishing it in June, citing investigations of him.

Mr. Clark, Mr. Broidy’s lawyer, said Mr. Broidy and his representatives later spoke to people who said they had knowledge that Mr. Avenatti learned of the hush-money deal from Mr. Davidson, prompting the tweet.

Ms. Bechard changed lawyers after the deal became public.
Click to expand...
 
Ours are set to begin on July 6th.
Note: The US has an overall trade surplus with Canada, however Trump lied about and/or failed to comprehend the numbers. It seems likely based on his comments that he wouldn't know there are different categories of trade deficits such as goods and services.
https://apnews.com/834f23eed9504f0f...on-US-goods-from-ketchup-to-lawn-mowers-begin
Canada tariffs on US goods from ketchup to lawn mowers begin
Canada began imposing tariffs Sunday on $12.6 billion in U.S. goods as retaliation for the Trump administration’s new taxes on steel and aluminum imported to the United States.

Some U.S. products, mostly steel and iron, face 25 percent tariffs, the same penalty the United States slapped on imported steel at the end of May. Other U.S. imports, from ketchup to pizza to dishwasher detergent, will face a 10 percent tariff at the Canadian border, the same as America’s tax on imported aluminum.

Trump had enraged Canada and other U.S. allies by declaring imported steel and aluminum a threat to America’s national security and therefore a legitimate target for U.S. tariffs. Canada is the United States’ second-biggest trading partner in goods, just behind China.

Speaking Sunday in Leamington, Ontario, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau thanked Canadians for standing united against President Donald Trump’s sanctions. He urged Canadians to “make their choices accordingly” in considering whether to buy American products.

The selection of Leamington, known as Canada’s tomato capital, was no accident. The town is home to a food-processing plant that supplies tomato paste and other products to French’s, a major competitor of Kraft Heinz. Heinz left Canada and sold its Leamington plant in 2014, after 105 years of Canadian operations.

The new Canadian tariffs, which took effect at 12:01 a.m. Sunday, are hitting a long list of U.S. consumer goods, including ketchup and other Kraft Heinz products.

As part of his combative America First approach, Trump has repeatedly attacked the trade policies of the United States’ northern neighbor, citing Canada’s triple-digit tariffs on dairy products, which account for only about 0.1 percent of U.S.-Canada trade. The United States, in fact, last year enjoyed a $2.8 billion overall trade surplus with Canada.

Trump has also tried to pressure Canada and Mexico into agreeing to rewrite the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement to shift more auto production and investment to the United States. But that effort has stalled, and Trump said Sunday that he didn’t expect a deal that he could support until after the U.S. midterm elections in November.
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Edit:
We are also threatening to hit back with countermeasures in the event of Trump pushing ahead with car tariffs.
Excerpt:
Plus, the Commission says imposing tariffs on European cars could elicit “countermeasures” from the U.S.’s other trading partners: “The impact will be aggravated significantly by the likely countermeasures of US trading partners over a significant volume of trade,” the Commission warns.
“Early studies, based on the experience of the steel and aluminium Section 232 investigations, estimate that up to 294 billion USD of US exports … (equal to 19% of US total exports in 2017) could be subject to countermeasures across sectors of the US economy. These would further amplify the negative effect on GDP.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/trump-tariffs-eu-warns-washington-of-harmful-impact-on-us-of-car/
EU warns Washington of ‘harmful’ impact on US of car tariffs
European Commission says impact of tariffs on US GDP would be ‘in the order of 13-14 billion USD.’
The European Commission has warned the United States that imposing tariffs on European cars “will be harmful first and foremost for the US economy.”

The Commission’s warning was part of a response — seen by POLITICO Brussels Playbook — to a U.S. request for comment on the issue. The response was dated last Friday and sent to the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security.


The 11-page document states that the EU’s internal analysis “shows that an additional import tariff of 25 percent, applied to automobiles and automotive parts, would in first instance have a negative impact on US GDP in the order of 13-14 billion USD, and the current account balance of the US would be not affected positively.”

U.S. President Donald Trump recently threatened to hit imports of European carswith a 20 percent tariff if Brussels doesn’t remove tariffs and other trade barriers in an escalating row.

European car makers produced 2.9 million vehicles, or 26 percent of American car production, in the U.S. last year, according to the document. Even without Chrysler — which is, as the Commission notes, “one of the traditional US ‘big three’ manufacturers” but is now of “European ownership” — production by EU-owned companies in the U.S. “still amounts to 16 percent of national production and 1.8 million vehicles.”

The document also reminds Washington that European companies that produce in the U.S. often import needed parts for their American factories, and also export large portions of their final product: “EU companies based in the US export a significant part of their production, thus contributing substantially to improving the US trade balance, which is a priority of the administration,” the paper states.

“Around 60 percent of automobiles produced in the US by companies with exclusive EU ownership are exported to third countries, including the EU. Measures harming these companies would be self-defeating and would weaken the US economy,” the document adds, arguing that cars would become more expensive and harder to sell.

Plus, the Commission says imposing tariffs on European cars could elicit “countermeasures” from the U.S.’s other trading partners: “The impact will be aggravated significantly by the likely countermeasures of US trading partners over a significant volume of trade,” the Commission warns.

“Early studies, based on the experience of the steel and aluminium Section 232 investigations, estimate that up to 294 billion USD of US exports … (equal to 19% of US total exports in 2017) could be subject to countermeasures across sectors of the US economy. These would further amplify the negative effect on GDP.”
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