When candidate Donald Trump first proposed renegotiating NAFTA back in 2015 everyone was stunned. Fixing bad trade deals had never been proposed by any candidate. Candidate Trump also proposed a border wall.  Those two policy initiatives are entirely connected. Almost immediately the government of Mexico realized the potential impact and threatened to use illegal migration if NAFTA was reopened.
Well, Trump won the presidency.  The crony capitalists/lobbyists in DC (U.S. Chamber of Commerce – Tom Donohue) are freaking out. Congress was notified of the intent to renegotiate NAFTA.  Mexico and Canada were notified. Commerce Secretary Ross, U.S.T.R Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin are ready to begin next week (Wed).
President Trump and Secretary Ross have already announced they will try to renegotiate NAFTA on a trilateral basis (U.S., Canada and Mexico). However, if it doesn’t work, they’ll scrap the 3-way NAFTA and go one-on-one with individual bilateral agreements.

Today Mexico’s Economic Minister Ildefonso Guajardo threatens to flood the U.S. with South American illegal aliens, criminals and gang members as leverage to keep exploiting NAFTA.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico could pull back on cooperation in migration and security matters if the United States walks away from talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Mexican economy minister said in a newspaper report published on Thursday.

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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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Robert Mercer is a billionaire hedge fund manager who originally constructed the multi-million Cambridge Analytica data tool to aid Ted Cruz in winning the 2016 GOP Primary.
Mr. Mercer bought controlling interest in Breitbart Media for $10+ million. It was through Breitbart media that Mercer, together with Steve Bannon, deployed the Cambridge Analytica tool with a two year presidential poll (2014/2015) to vacuum up user data for later use in the 2016 republican primary.  Kellyanne Conway is part of their long-term relationship dynamic.
However, after Ted Cruz refused to specifically and enthusiastically endorse the winner, Donald trump, at the GOP convention in Cleveland, Robert Mercer kicked him out of his suite.  Robert Mercer generally stays in the background and his daughter Rebekah Mercer leads the political advocacy.  That said, they have the resources and disposition to destroy just about any political foe they choose to engage.

(Via Politico)  One of Donald Trump’s most generous political benefactors is providing a six-figure donation to a super PAC devoted to unseating Sen. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who has been fiercely critical of the president.
Robert Mercer, a reclusive hedge fund billionaire who was intimately involved in Trump’s rise and helped to bankroll his 2016 campaign, is contributing $300,000 to a super PAC supporting former state Sen. Kelli Ward, who is challenging Flake in a Republican primary next year.

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State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert delivers the press briefing for August 9th, 2017.  The insufferable media gnats remain fixated on President Trump’s remarks about North Korea – remarks, combined with months of created leverage, that are actually delivering results.
After ignoring all of the action President Trump, Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Mnuchin, and Secretary Ross have taken to shape the geography; and without even seeing the leverage Trump has positioned on China, Russia and North Korea; the pool reporters are floating questions from a parallel universe called ‘bizarro world’.
Seriously, questions about possibly needing a new “diplomatic direction” are ridiculous against the backdrop of the greatest international diplomatic win in years happening only a few days ago with the 15-0 UNSC unanimous vote on North Korea sanctions.
U.S. journalists are embarrassing.

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[Transcript will be added later]
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The latest quarterly poll of small business owners shows an overall confidence index of +106, the highest level in a decade.  This 3rd quarter results is a full 11 points higher than the Quarter 2 confidence level that was also high.
This indicates growing optimism in the most important economic index for MAGAnomics, Main Street.  President Trump continues to focus economic policy away from Wall Street and toward Main Street, with removal of burdensome regulations and improvements to capital access and national economic interests.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Small-business owners’ optimism about their business situation has edged up in the past quarter to a new 10-year high. The Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index for the third quarter is at +106, up 11 points since Quarter 2 and the highest since +113 measured in the second quarter of 2007. Index scores between the first and third quarters of 2016 ranged between 64 and 68.
These results are based on July 10-14 interviewing with a random sample of small-business owners nationwide. Owners are asked to evaluate both their present business situation and expectations about their business going forward.

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The useful pawns continue their efforts to take out President Trump’s National Security Adviser HR McMaster.  But what they don’t realize, and the professional liberal activists do, is that ultimately the only person they are going to remove is strategist Steve Bannon.
The same Battered Conservatives that stood for an ovation to House Speaker Paul Ryan (CPAC 2015) two months after passing Omnibus; the same Battered Conservatives who failed to see the inherent risk created by General Mike Flynn in November 2016; are now rushing to create a binary choice between Steve Bannon and HR McMaster in the White House.

Specifically because of their chosen approach the efforts against McMaster will lead to President Trump having to decide between two senior administration officials, Bannon or Mcmaster; and in deciding which to keep, Bannon will be the biggest loser.
Predictably the professional political left know how to game out this dynamic.  The professionally democrat are much better political strategists; and they are more than happy to play along, knowing exactly what to do. Meanwhile, in their efforts to take down McMaster the useful idiots and battered conservatives in right-wing media are walking obliviously into a familiar trap.
The person the professional-political-left really want to target is Steve Bannon.  Bannon represents everything the left-wing activists hate.  They’ve already tried a few different approaches to take him down and isolate him from the presidency, with no measurable success.
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President Donald J Trump delivers the weekly address for August 4th, 2017.  Touching on the immigration RAISE act and outlining the ongoing MAGAnomic growth.
In the final analysis, the exceptional results from President Trump national economic policy platform, MAGAnomics, are, unfortunately, a risk to the professional political class who prefer, and have previously structured, multinational global economics as their baseline for controlled U.S. economic outcomes for three decades.
President Trump succeeding in his America-First economic platform undermines the U.S. lobbying community, the Big Club, who pay politicians for control over the U.S. economy.  However, if you follow the flow of their own private capital investments you will notice they are putting their private money into U.S. assets while simultaneously advocating collective financial policy -over your money- that retains a gobalist economic worldview.

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MAGAnomics, Main Street economic priority, is slowly working and the signs are as evident as the surges in the second quarter U.S. GDP (2.6%). Just imagine if DC was on board with Main Street? Imagine the explosive economy if DC politicians removed the anchor that is ObamaCare and simultaneously unleashed the U.S. fiscal policy with lowered tax rates on middle-class Americans, sub-chapter-S-Corps., and small businesses. Imagine.
The economy would blow through 3% growth within months and four, five and even six percent GDP growth would be entirely possible. The accompanying wage rates would necessarily skyrocket.
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UPDATE: After popular request, I finally received a copy of “the map” McGurk is using and added it to the transcript to make it easier. /SD
Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS Brett McGurk follows up on the “around the globe” update speech delivered by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. With this update McGurk explains the current status of the D-ISIS campaign in Syria and Iraq. (additional emphasis regionally) WATCH:

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[Transcript] MS NAUERT: Good to see you back. I know, it’s Friday late in the day, summertime. So you all get good camper awards for coming in today. Thank you so much for being here on this Friday. We have our Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, Brett McGurk, who’s here with us. I know you heard from Brett just a couple weeks ago at the end of the ISIS – D-ISIS coalition meeting here in Washington. And so Brett wanted to come in today to provide you all with an update as to where things stand in the campaign.
So without further ado, Brett’s here with that.
MR MCGURK: Thank you. Okay, thanks everybody for coming. I thought what I’d do today – you heard from the Secretary for a kind of trip around the world six months in here since he arrived about everything going on in the world and the activity here at the State Department. And what I thought I’d do is drill in a little bit more on what he discussed about the very important – one of our key priorities here at the department, about the campaign against ISIS.
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And remember, there are some people who think the “UniParty” isn’t real. Meanwhile, republicans led the way in the Senate to initiate a rules process blocking President Trump from recess appointments during the upcoming Senate break.   The pro-forma session process requires all Senators to agree to the rules maneuver; they did.
There are over 100 Trump nominations awaiting confirmation from the Senate.  The Senators will not return until after Labor Day.

WASHINGTON DC – […] Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), doing wrap up for the entire Senate, locked in nine “pro-forma” sessions — brief meetings that normally last roughly a minute.
The move, which requires the agreement of every senator, means the Senate will be in session every three business days throughout the August recess.

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Earlier today President Trump introduced a new immigration policy proposal for legal entry into the U.S. known as the RAISE Act.  The RAISE Act eliminates the outdated Diversity Visa lottery system, which serves questionable economic and humanitarian interests. The RAISE Act replaces the current permanent employment-visa framework with a skills-based system that rewards applicants based on their individual merits.

[Transcript] 11:39 A.M. EDT – THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. It’s great to be here today to unveil legislation that would represent the most significant reform to our immigration system in half a century. I want to thank Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue for their tremendous work in putting together this historic and very vital proposal.
As a candidate, I campaigned on creating a merit-based immigration system that protects U.S. workers and taxpayers — and that is why we are here today. Merit-based.
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