White House trade and manufacturing policy advisor Peter Navarro appears on Fox News to discuss the administration’s outlook toward China and the intense focus to bring critical manufacturing back to the U.S.

Earlier in the day a visibly angered President Trump told Maria Bartiromo he “doesn’t want to talk to China right now”, and Navarro highlights exactly why.   All administration policy and economic influence is targeted to remove Chinese manufacturing from the U.S. supply chain.  President Trump officials openly discussing an intentional U.S. effort to decouple from China is a significant shift…. WATCH:

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Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has been in discussions for several years with both TSMC and Intel to build advanced chip manufacturing plants in the U.S. and extract U.S. supply chain needs from China and southeast Asia.  It appears his efforts, and the emphasis on global supply-chain shifts from President Trump, are getting results.

According to numerous media reports Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) is likely to announce this week they will build an advanced chip manufacturing facility in Arizona.  A manufacturing facility for advanced 5 nanometer chip manufacturing is a steep investment decision costing around $10 billion.

This shift in a high-tech supply chain will align with President Trump’s prior discussions with Tim Cook the CEO of Apple which led to a decision to invest in Texas.  TSMC is a chip supplier for Apple products; and Apple is moving to the 5nm processors in new devices. It looks like the movement of advanced industrial products away from China is underway.

(Via Appleinsider) – Apple supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is set to announce that it plans to build an advanced chip factory in Arizona.

Taiwan-based TSMC is the world’s largest contract manufacturer of silicon chipsets and has long been Apple’s primary supplier of A-series chips.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk is drawing a line in the sand in his fight against authoritarian rules in California.  After several days of intense debate and argument with the arbitrary rules of the local Almeda County authorities, Musk says he’s reopening his auto plant:

FREMONT, Calif. — Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed on Twitter Monday that the company has restarted its California factory in violation of local government orders.

In the afternoon tweet, Musk wrote that he would be on the assembly line and asked that he be arrested if authorities take anyone into custody. State law allows a fine of up to $1,000 a day or up to 90 days in jail for operating in violation of health orders. (link)

Senator Tom Cotton appears with Maria Bartiromo to discuss recent reporting showing cell phone in/around Wuhan China showed road-blocks and/or a containment zone was mysterious set up in October of 2019.  The suspicion is that China knew the virus had escaped the Wuhan bio-lab and was taking effort to contain the spread of the virus.

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These suspicions fall on the heels of additional confirmation that Beijing asked the World Health Organization not to reveal human-to-human transmission of the virus at the same time.

Stay big picture. After three years of Beijing losing the geopolitical confrontation to President Trump…. Think about what you know of the aggressive Communist and zero-sum disposition of China. Keep in mind these new reports from intelligence research are pointing to a biologic release in/around October of 2019.   Now consider this timeline overlay…

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White House Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro appears for an interview with Maria Bartiromo.  As a China hawk Navarro outlines the economic damage from a perspective where China needs to be held accountable.

One of the ways to hold Beijing accountable is to retract all U.S. business interests and decouple from China.  The White House is currently using a task-force approach to assemble the background evidence.  Once assembled, many people suspect President Trump will initiate very strong policies against China (including tariffs) simultaneously timed with tax incentives for U.S. companies to return manufacturing back to the U.S.

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If you think about the economic vulnerabilities currently carried by China, it is entirely possible for USTR Lighthizer, Secretary Mnuchin, Secretary Ross and Peter Navarro to structure serious financial punishment upon the Red Dragon.

At no time in the past twenty years has Beijing been more vulnerable to an economic adversary.  At the same time, there has never been a more strategic economic adversary in the oval office. This is a conspicuously remarkable moment in history.

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U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and U.K. Secretary of State for International Trade Elizabeth Truss announced today [joint statement] the beginning of a series of fast-tracked trade negotiations toward a new free trade agreement. [USTR Release]

In the foreground is a trade agreement between the U.S. and the United Kingdom. However, in the more strategic background context these negotiations create leverage for the U.K. in their post-Brexit negotiations with the European Union. First from today:

LIGHTHIZER – […] The US negotiating team will be led by Dan Mullaney, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Europe and the Middle East; and the UK negotiating team will be led by Oliver Griffiths, Director for US Negotiations at the Department for International Trade. Over 200 staff from U.S. and UK government agencies and departments are expected to take part in the negotiations.

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White House Manufacturing Policy Advisor and lead on execution of the Defense Production Act, Peter Navarro, appears on Fox News to discuss the ongoing initiatives to secure, produce and/or manufacture critical healthcare products in the U.S.

There are multiple reports in media today about the White House assembling a variety of new policies and regulations to go full wolverine on ‘America-First’.  USTR Lighthizer, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross are leading the effort.

Additionally, Navarro notes FEMA, HHS and DoD will soon have rules requiring USA manufactured purchases for their government contracts.

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Wall Street’s U.S. multinationals moved the majority of U.S. apparel manufacturing to southeast Asia for the past several decades; as a result they virtually wiped out major apparel hubs in the United States.  Now those same multinationals are claiming their production shift to making masks and PPE in China means the tariffs on imports should be lifted; and they are sending their corporate lobbyists into DC to pitch that message.

Nonsense.

There are no tariffs on U.S. healthcare products made in the USA.  If the apparel industry wants to avoid tariffs, then bring the manufacturing back home.  Critical manufacturing in the United States is what U.S. consumers of those and other goods want.

President Trump should not lower tariffs on imported PPE, he should actually raise those tariffs as high as needed to shift that manufacturing back to the U.S.

The time is now to wage battle against the Wall Street manufacturers & K-St lobbyists.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration is “turbocharging” an initiative to remove global industrial supply chains from China as it weighs new tariffs to punish Beijing for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, according to officials familiar with U.S. planning.

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The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released the first quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) advanced estimate and the result is a 4.8% decline in economic activity. [BEA Here]

The revised fourth quarter GDP shows the economy was growing at 2.1 percent prior to the COVID-19 shutdown.  The severity of the change in GDP reflects a severe drop in consumer spending, essentially bringing the economy to a halt in March as the entire nation went into lock-down.  As the BEA explains:

The decline in first quarter GDP was, in part, due to the response to the spread of COVID-19, as governments issued “stay-at-home” orders in March. This led to rapid changes in demand, as businesses and schools switched to remote work or canceled operations, and consumers canceled, restricted, or redirected their spending.

The full economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be quantified in the GDP estimate for the first quarter of 2020 because the impacts are generally embedded in source data and cannot be separately identified. (more)

Digging down into the details the data shows what we all have seen.  There is some specific data that is noteworthy in the tables.

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It’s tough to see happy warrior Kevin Hassett without a smile.  However, Hassett is a very smart straight-shooter brought back into the administration to specifically advise and assist President Trump on economic plans and strategies to exit the COVID-19 collapse.

Hassett held an impromptu press availability to discuss the current status of our economic situation and took questions about the budget shortfalls amid local and state government. Lets finish battling through the crisis so we can get quickly to the rebound.

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