Speaking from Buenos Aires, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent talks about President Donald Trump’s tariff policies, countries trying to work out new trade deals, Argentina paying off its swap line with China and the need for the U.S. to focus on central America to block Chinese expansion. WATCH:
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The Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) releases the Consumer Price Index for February [DATA HERE], reflecting a drop in the year-over-year inflation rate to the lowest level in four years.
The rate of inflation dropped significantly due to lower gasoline (-6.3%) and fuel prices, which directly impacts every middle-class worker. The ripple effects (transportation, warehousing, etc.) from lowered gasoline prices is not yet embedded in the cost of goods, that should start to surface next month.
[…] Consumer prices were up 2.4% in March from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Thursday, cooler than February’s gain of 2.8% and well below the 2.6% rise that economists expected.
Prices excluding food and energy categories—the so-called core measure economists watch in an effort to better capture inflation’s underlying trend—rose 2.8%, below forecasts for a 3% increase. That was the smallest increase in the core measure since March 2021. (read more)
For those who have travelled the MAGAnomic weeds with us, you will note this is the way overall lower inflation starts to surface under Trump policy. This is exactly what happened in 2017 and continued throughout late 2019 until COVID-19 hit. President Trump’s economic policies drop the rate of inflation, and eventually lower prices.
President Trump delivers remarks on geopolitical events, the MAGAnomic agenda and trade imbalance reset during a presidential signing session in the oval office.
Beginning with the commission of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as U.S. ambassador to Israel, President Trump walks through some executive orders on industrial capacity for shipbuilding and defense procurement. Following the executive orders President Trump begins the process to target former national security embeds who violated their oath of office, then takes questions from the media.
The question session begins at 34:00 of the video below (prompted):
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The Federal Housing and Finance Agency has released a public statement highlighting an internal review and investigation of conduct within Fannie Mae that has resulted in the termination of over 100 employees for “unethical conduct” including the “facilitation of fraud.”
If the FHMA is finding intentional fraud within the housing loan offices, those federal employees should be arrested and legally prosecuted for their conduct. It is not enough to just fire people, there has to be legal accountability. These are the government regulators for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Washington, D.C. — Today, the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency (U.S. Federal Housing FHFA) and Fannie Mae issued the following statement:
“In President Trump’s housing market, there is no room for fraud, mortgage fraud, or any other deceitful act that can jeopardize the safety and soundness of the housing industry,” said William J. Pulte, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Fannie Mae. “Since my swearing-in, we fired over 100 employees from Fannie Mae who we caught engaging in unethical conduct, including facilitating fraud, against our great company. Anyone who commits fraud against Fannie Mae does so against the American people.”
According to French media, quoting multiple corporate leaders and company directors throughout France [LINK], the leadership of France’s biggest companies told Macron to ‘get stuffed’ following the French president’s demand to divest their interests from America.
President Macron ordered 50 of the largest companies with positions in the USA to attend an emergency economic meeting at Elysée Palace. As reported by French media, “Some of us fell out of our chairs,” confided one of the 50 or so French business leaders invited.”
“We are not in an administered economy,” thunders the leader of an employers’ movement. And the CEO of a CAC 40 giant bluntly asserts: “I don’t give a damn about what Macron says. We have operations in the United States. There is no question of abandoning them just like that. We must respect our commitments to our employees, our customers and our shareholders. An opinion shared by a manager of a spirits producer: “It is out of the question to stop investing in the United States, especially in the current economic slump.” [link]
This type of reaction should not be surprising at it reflects the transparent disconnect between ideological government officials and generally pragmatic business leaders. Macron can stomp his reactionary feet, but corporate leaders and company owners are focused on the purpose of their enterprise, profit.
Rick Santelli has been known to call the baby ugly when needed. During an epic panel discussion around the motives and intentions of President Trump’s trade reset, Santelli gets passionate when describing the valid reasons for Trump’s tariffs.
The CNBC panel, mainly Steve Liesman, tries to downplay decades of the working-class being diminished by economic panel, and Santelli was having none of it. Video prompted, WATCH:
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On March 27th, CTH shared the following: “Wealthy nations will attempt to maintain exports against President Trump tariffs by subsidizing their industries. Corporations have deeper pockets, and the politicians are used to the bribes, we call it “lobbying.” Therefore, the government responds by subsidizing the corporations [ie. the WEF business model].
How does the politics of opposition surface? …”Canada will subsidize their export industries, Germany will subsidize their auto industry, the EU will provide subsidies to their manufacturing powerhouses, and China will once again start subsidizing their manufacturing industry. Each of these nations will in turn, eventually, devalue their currency.
However, poorer nations will be faster to lower import tariffs on USA goods because they have lower lobbying (bribe) income from corporations to govt. That’s what we should expect to see.” [LINK]
With the tariffs now triggered, it begins exactly as anticipated:
[SOURCE]
The economics of the thing is now colliding with the politics and the ideology, of the thing. Globalists are being confronted. The proverbial West will cleave according to their financial self-interest.
The World Economic Forum (Build Back Better) model no longer views the USA as an ally. The MAGAnomic “Big Ugly” is underway. Countries will thrash and gnash their teeth; then surge in opposition, fail, then attempt to refoot and realign, then surge again and fail again.
And so it will go…
Tucker Carlson interviews the fulcrum between Wall Street and Main Street in the MAGAnomic policy world, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Secretary Bessent notes the goal of the tariff plan, and the accompanying economic policy is to give the working middle-class a boost in wealth and simultaneous relief from bad policy that has exclusively benefited the investment class. WATCH:
Chapters:
0:00 Trump’s Tariff Plan
5:42 The Current State of the Stock Market
8:22 Will Americans See Substantial Tax Cuts Because of Tariffs?
13:16 How Much Money Will America Make Through Tariffs?
14:33 Bringing Manufacturing Back to the US
20:14 Tariff Pushback From Foreign Countries
President Trump delivers a speech at the White House outlining a global trade reset established on the principle of trade and tariff reciprocity. [Primary Executive Order Here] – [Executive Order Here]
“The post-war international economic system was based upon three incorrect assumptions: first, that if the United States led the world in liberalizing tariff and non-tariff barriers the rest of the world would follow; second, that such liberalization would ultimately result in more economic convergence and increased domestic consumption among U.S. trading partners converging towards the share in the United States; and third, that as a result, the United States would not accrue large and persistent goods trade deficits.”
“Put simply, while World Trade Organization (WTO) Members agreed to bind their tariff rates on a most-favored-nation (MFN) basis and thereby provide their best tariff rates to all WTO Members, they did not agree to bind their tariff rates at similarly low levels or to apply tariff rates on a reciprocal basis. Consequently, according to the WTO, the United States has among the lowest simple average MFN tariff rates in the world at 3.3 percent, while many of our key trading partners like Brazil (11.2 percent), China (7.5 percent), the European Union (EU) (5 percent), India (17 percent), and Vietnam (9.4 percent) have simple average MFN tariff rates that are significantly higher.”
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Country-specific ad valorem rates of duty as specified in Annex I to the main Executive Order.
The tariffs generally target completed goods, not the imported chemical or component materials needed to by industry to manufacture the products domestically. Annex II are the exemptions to the Executive Order.
I have been going through the details and will have much more soon.
President Trump and the White House posted the following message to begin “Liberation Day.”
President Donald Trump is scheduled to end the U.S Marshal Plan for Europe, eliminating one-way tariffs eighty years after the Marshal Plan began. President Trump is now planning to institute global reciprocal tariffs, by matching all tariff and non-tariff trade barriers and restrictions. WATCH:
[SOURCE]