President Trump is anticipated to deliver remarks from Trump Tower in New York City today following meetings with national business leaders and developers. The focus is on removing regulatory hurdles for massive infrastructure development. Anticipated start time 3:45pm to 4:00pm
UPDATE: FULL VIDEO ADDED
Everything, e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g, every story, is circling the upcoming economic and financial trade confrontations. There are trillions at stake and President Donald Trump is facing off against the international “BIG CLUB”. The purchased multinational political entities who operate within the massive and institutional multinational corporate and financial networks behind the World Bank and World Trade Organization.
NAFTA re-negotiations are set to begin in Washington DC this coming Wednesday. President Trump is meeting with Trade Team U.S.A tonight.
♦ Last week Mexico’s Economic Minister Ildefonso Guajardo threatened to flood the U.S. with illegal aliens, South American gangs and massive illegal drugs shipments if the U.S. doesn’t keep favor with Mexico in the trilateral trade deal. –LINK–
♦ Now today, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland states that Canada will walk away from re-negotiated NAFTA if Chapter 19 trade dispute resolutions are not retained. –LINK–
What Canada seeks to keep is a dispute mechanism that specifically politicizes the NAFTA trade resolution process. Chapter 19 establishes a bi-national panel who make binding decisions on complaints about illegal subsidies, dumping, manipulation of trade and possible countervailing duties.
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There have been multiple media reports in the last six hours that President Trump is going to announce trade investigation/sanctions against China during a press conference scheduled for Monday.
It makes sense the previously postponed 301 trade investigation against China for violations of intellectual property rights might be announced.
Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 provides the United States with the authority to enforce trade agreements, resolve trade disputes, and open foreign markets to U.S. goods and services. It is the principal statutory authority under which the United States may impose trade sanctions on foreign countries that either violate trade agreements or engage in other unfair trade practices. When negotiations to remove the offending trade practice fail, the United States may take action to raise import duties on the foreign country’s products as a means to rebalance lost concessions. (LINK)
However, a note of caution. Substantive trade negotiations, the kind which involve economics and national security, are always fluid and subject to pause, postponement or changes in direction based on compliance – or expressions of a willingness to comply.
Remember, this is Trump. Looking out for U.S. economic interests is the baseline for trade “leverage”, a tactic and skill uniquely evident in this administration’s trade team. Section 301 is a tool, actually a massive atomic sledgehammer, to force compliance.
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It must be weird for the ordinary person around the world to view U.S. politics through the prism of the American MSM lügenpresse. We’re often left wondering if international observers realize how much deception and fraud exists in media broadcasts of President Trump.
However, that said, a few days ago CTH predicted via twitter that Friday would bring a “breaking news” revelation that President Trump’s administration had been in ongoing negotiations with North Korea. Today, exactly that happened.
(Via ABC) Despite the bombastic rhetoric exchanged between North Korean and American leaders this week, the Trump administration has been quietly engaged in back-channel diplomacy with North Korea for several months, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.
The ongoing talks, which were first reported by The Associated Press, included discussions about U.S.-North Korean relations and Americans imprisoned in North Korea, the source said.
The PPI is the Producer Price Index. The CPI is the Consumer Price Index. The PPI reflects the price product producers are getting for their goods and services. The CPI reflects the price consumers are paying for their goods and services. They generally run together as lower production prices usually mean lower consumer prices.
Here again today, the fed is perplexed. With a growing economy, and with labor market tightening, the people who control the monetary policy have continued to anticipate inflation, rises in the PPI and CPI. However, as we have outlined, it’s not happening.
It’s a little wonky, but basically prices are NOT going up. The Fed is perplexed. We predicted this:
[…] The Labor Department said its producer price index for final demand slipped 0.1 percent last month, weighed by decreasing costs for services. That was the largest decline since August 2016 and reversed June’s 0.1 percent gain.
In the 12 months through July, the PPI increased 1.9 percent after rising 2.0 percent in the year through June. Economists had forecast the PPI to tick up 0.1 percent last month and 2.2 percent from a year ago. (read more)
Neither the PPI nor the CPI measure changes in food or energy costs. Those high consumption sectors have always been removed from Fed measures.
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As you know CTH takes a different approach at significant world events. We try to share the untold stories as they shake out, in real time, in granular details not noted by the MSM. We discuss the stuff on the way to the destination. That way when we arrive at a ‘way point’ we have a historic reference, a back-story, to comprehend consequential headlines when they happen.
With that in mind, here’s another non-discussed granular detail, spotted recently, building toward a much more significant geopolitical outcome, vis-a-vis Russia.
You might remember on August 4th President Trump and French President Emmanuel had a phone call. The outline of the phone conversation is HERE, but there was no real reason for them to be chatting…. or was there?
Western media has paid virtually no attention to how Trump’s big picture economic policy enmeshes and bolsters his national security policy.
Quite literally, and I really want to emphasize this, Secretary Mnuchin (Treasury) and Secretary Ross (Commerce) are just as important as Secretary Mattis (Defense) and Secretary Tillerson (State).
Stop and think about that for a minute.
When President Trump went to Saudi Arabia for the Arab Security Summit the two most visibly active cabinet members were Mnuchin and Ross. When has a Treasury Secretary and Commerce Secretary ever had as much importance during world security events?
Think about it.
Who was Obama’s Commerce Secretary during Iran negotiations?
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Two years ago CTH began discussing the ramifications to a new emphasis on the economy outlined as a possibility of candidate Donald Trump’s economic policy outlook. Within the overall discussion we walked through the anticipated changes possible if A.) Trump won the election, and B.) Trump began instituting Main Street economic policy ahead of Wall Street policy (the past 20+ years).
We discussed the new dimension that would occur between two economic engines (Main Street -vs- Wall Street) as three decades of federal policy shifted. CTH outlined anticipated economic activity in the space between the two dynamics.
Part of those discussions focused on energy costs (we see them lowering), product costs (we explained how inflation would be weird), and importantly, wage rates. It takes several months of policy emphasis, actual outcomes, before the labor market wage rates would grow. We anticipated seeing that impact in Q1 of Fiscal Year 2018, which is October 1st 2017.
Today the Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey, “JOLTS report”, begins to show the initial stages of that wage rate increasing trend. The job market has tightened,… considerably. *Note* We are ending fiscal year Q4 (July, Aug, Sept.) and the trend within MAGAnomics is responding according to predictions. For those of us who argued these policy theories for the past two decades, these results are really cool.
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President Trump’s strategic approach using economic leverage to gain U.S. national security has established a very rare victory in the U.N. with unanimous support for Security Council sanctions against North Korea. Yes, China and Russia supported.
Remember, from Day #1 of his administration President Trump was faced with a threat from N-Korea. On his departure President Obama told the incoming new President Trump that North Korea would be his #1 Geopolitical national security challenge.
The MSM will likely never give President Trump credit for the remarkable long-term economic strategy he deployed to gain China and Russia’s support today.
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations Security Council imposed new sanctions on North Korea on Saturday that could slash by a third the Asian state’s $3 billion annual export revenue over Pyongyang’s two intercontinental ballistic missile tests in July.
The U.S.-drafted resolution bans North Korean exports of coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood. It also prohibits countries from increasing the current numbers of North Korean laborers working abroad, bans new joint ventures with North Korea and any new investment in current joint ventures.
U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley is structuring a U.N. Security Council resolution toward North Korea by targeting a ban on DPRK exports. This approach is in line with the larger Trump strategy to leverage economic sanctions as pressure on North Korea to stop advancing military expansion and nuclear weapons.
However, how President Trump has set Nikki Haley up for success on this resolution is something for the history books to write about:
♦First: A review of the possible enhanced sanctions against N-Korea should be incorporated with the larger issue of policy toward the DPRK’s enabler, China. President Trump, Secretary Mnuchin and Secretary Ross have positioned a severely consequential trade reset between the U.S. and China. [Trump and Ross delayed an announcement on trade sanctions against China which was scheduled for today.]
♦Second: The enhanced U.S. energy export initiatives, in conjunction with lower oil prices, an outcome of U.S. energy policy and a mutually beneficial relationship between President Trump and Arab states in the GCC, have severely weakened the economic position of Russia.
Russia’s energy export economy is dependent on energy prices remaining high. President Trump has brilliantly worked the geopolitical economic relationships to leverage influence over a large portion of the Russian economy.
Combine these two points and you discover the leverage President Trump’s team has created.
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Earlier today President Donald Trump joined Director of Small Business Administration Linda McMahon and Ivanka Trump for an event discussing administration policy toward supporting U.S. small businesses.