This is the big one.  This is the inflection moment.  Tonight around 5:00pm Chinese Vice-Chairman Liu He will engage with team U.S.A. on the substantive issues around the future of the U.S-China trade relationship.   Trillions at stake.
At midnight tonight the tariffs on Round One of Chinese goods are scheduled to increase from 10 percent to 25 percent.  Round Two is yet determined.  The background for the disposition of TEAM USA was outlined HERE.

Mnuchin – Trump – Lighthizer and Ross

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnunchin previously worked a 150-page outline agreement with China on seven chapters of trade issues covering: Theft of U.S. intellectual property; protection for trade secrets; forced technology transfers; competition policy; access to financial services; and currency manipulation.  Last week China reversed course on all of the substantive agreements. 
Today Vice-Chairman Liu He is going to try to justify to President Trump why China can no longer accept the commitments they made over the past three months.
It cannot be overstated how everything in/around DC must first be filtered through the prism of this inflection point.  At the heart of U.S. politics, the majority of the Senate Chamber is aligned with the Chinese through purchased multinational lobbying interests. Again, there are trillions at stake.  Wall Street through K-Street has paid the Big Club to defend their multinational/financial interests from President Trump.
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At the conclusion of a presentation for healthcare ‘surprise billing’ initiative, President Donald Trump took multiple questions from the media on a variety of issues.
Topics include: China trade deal and upcoming meeting with Vice-Chairman Liu, President Trump notes receiving letter from Chairman Xi Jinping; the strength of the U.S. economy; issues surrounding special counsel Bob Mueller; North Korea missile launch; current status of issues with Iran; questions about Donald Trump Jr. subpoena.  [Transcript will follow]

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[Transcript] Q Mr. President, on the North Korea missiles —
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
Q — what message do you take from them?
THE PRESIDENT: Well we’re looking at it very seriously right now. They were smaller missiles — short-range missiles. Nobody is happy about it, but we’re taking a good look and we’ll see. We’ll see.
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The White House is promoting a new healthcare initiative to confront the issues of ‘surprise billing’ within the healthcare industry. [SEE HERE]  Today President Trump delivered remarks on a new standard for informing healthcare consumers:

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[Transcript] – 12:06 P.M. EDT – THE PRESIDENT: Hello, everybody. Yesterday, Secretary Azar announced a bold, new initiative to require drug makers to disclose the prices to consumers. And it’s going to be something, I think, very special. You may have heard about it; maybe not. But it’s the beginning of a plan of transparency. And I think it will have quite an impact. So, thank you very much. That was a job well done. Everybody said it. (Applause.)
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There are numerous media reports about the Senate Intelligence Committee filing a subpoena for additional testimony from Donald Trump Jr.  However, there’s something a little, well, ‘off’ about how the story is being presented…. zero official verification.

Without any verification, and with only vague references to anonymous sourcing, CTH would advise to wait-and-see on this one.  DJT-jr has been used more than once for leak hunting.   The AP Article is HERE.  That said, Trump Jr. did retweet this message:

Dan Bongino appears with Lou Dobbs to discuss the insufferable debate over the word “spies”.  Bongino accurately outlines the issues with current FBI Director Christopher Wray and his institutional motives.

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FBI Director Wray lost all credibility in June of 2018 when he participated in a structured press conference intended to diminish the IG report on the institutional issues with the FBI.   It was then obvious Wray was committed to the institutional cover-up of gross misconduct by former and current DOJ and FBI officials.
At the conclusion of that June 14, 2018, press conference an earlier unscheduled meeting on January 3rd, 2018, between Christopher Wray, Rod Rosenstein and House Speaker Paul Ryan then began to make a lot more sense.
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President Trump flew into Tyndall Air Force Base to tour the ongoing hurricane recovery effort ahead of a panhandle rally.  After the visit and briefing President Trump will be heading to a MAGA rally at the Aaron Bessant Park Ampitheater in Panama City Beach, FL. President Trump is expected to speak at 8:00pm EDT.
UPDATE: Video Added

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USTR Robert Lighthizer has filed the official notification with the federal register for the increase in Section 301 tariffs from 10% to 25% effective Friday (full pdf below).  Additionally Reuters has exclusive details of the collapse in U.S-China trade talks.
As most CTH readers are aware, Lighthizer has focused heavily on the enforcement mechanisms within the trade talks. [Previous Bookmark] Apparently, when the 150 page draft agreement was presented to the Chinese politburo, Beijing balked at allowing the U.S. to hold controlling enforcement over the trade agreement terms.

The fallback presentation from Vice-Chairman Liu was: we cannot put the binding enforcement mechanisms in writing, you’ll have to ‘trust us’ to honor the agreement; at which time Lighthizer said no-way.

WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) – The diplomatic cable from Beijing arrived in Washington late on Friday night, with systematic edits to a nearly 150-page draft trade agreement that would blow up months of negotiations between the world’s two largest economies, according to three U.S. government sources and three private sector sources briefed on the talks.
The document was riddled with reversals by China that undermined core U.S. demands, the sources told Reuters.

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In the aftermath of GM’s announcement to close the Lordstown, Ohio, auto assembly facility, President Trump worked earnestly to get GM to sell the facility and save jobs for the region.  Today President Trump and GM CEO Mary Barra announce the likely sale to Workhorse Group pending UAW union approval.

Washington (AFP) – General Motors Wednesday announced plans to invest $700 million in Ohio and to sell a shuttered plant to a company that makes electric trucks, drawing cheers from President Donald Trump who has assailed the US automaker for cutting American jobs.

“GREAT NEWS FOR OHIO!” Trump tweeted, revealing the details ahead of the company’s official announcement.

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I can just picture the The New York Times gathering a team of actuaries, legal accountants, tax historians, advisers and financial consultants around a big executive office table, piled high with reams of papers and spent coffee cups, saying:

“We’ve got him now…. as soon as people understand: fixed asset depreciation schedules; and if the assets were depreciated legally using straight line or diminishing balance; then we move to whole-value equity pick-up, or minority interest accounting; before digging into section 1031 ‘like-kind’ asset exchanges; partnerships (limited or writ large), carried interest loopholes, pass-throughs, net capital losses/gains, seven-year income averaging and the difference between long-term and short-term capital gains”…

…or something.
Seriously, the ‘Trump-taxes’ story has to be the biggest, funniest, most well documented, and most absurd, ongoing snipe hunt in history.  “I was going to support President Trump’s re-election until I saw his depreciated amortization schedule from 1989″… said no-one, like, ever.
Could it be possible John Barron is still pulling this hilarious trick twenty-five years after the New York Times called Donald Trump “The Comeback King“?…
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Last night the DOJ informed House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler they would recommend President Trump invoke executive privilege over the Mueller report if Nadler continued in his quest to wrongfully impeach AG William Barr.  Today the White House followed through:

(White House Statement)  “The American people see through Chairman Nadler’s desperate ploy to distract from the President’s historically successful agenda and our booming economy. Neither the White House nor Attorney General Barr will comply with Chairman Nadler’s unlawful and reckless demands.

The Attorney General has been transparent and accommodating throughout this process, including by releasing the no-collusion, no-conspiracy, no-obstruction Mueller Report to the public and offering to testify before the Committee. These attempts to work with the Committee have been flatly rejected. They didn’t like the results of the report, and now they want a redo.

Faced with Chairman Nadler’s blatant abuse of power, and at the Attorney General’s request, the President has no other option than to make a protective assertion of executive privilege.

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