Following a briefing and meeting with cabinet members and national security officials President Trump and Vice-President Pence held a rather lengthy Q & A with media reporters to answer a myriad of questions surrounding national security and ongoing administration policy.
The president discussed North Korea, regional partners, the United Nations, China, Russia, Syria as well as leaks, Jeff Sessions, Mitch McConnell, healthcare reform, taxes etc. together with Vice President Mike Pence in Bedminster, New Jersey.

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President Trump announced today his daughter and White House adviser Ivanka Trump will lead the U.S. delegation to India for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in November.

The delegation was announced by both President Trump and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Twitter.  Prime Minister Modi previously invited Ivanka Trump to visit India during his visit to the White House.  The conference is scheduled for November 28-30, and businesswoman Ivanka Trump’s attendance is seen as a way to promote high-visibility women’s entrepreneurship around the world.
Strategic value.  Ivanka and Arabella Trump are cultural heroines in China, very well regarded.  China and India are currently in serious economic competition.  Trump is essentially rewarding India with Ivanka’s value, while China watches from distance.
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As surprising as it seems, the U.S. State Department never checked the ‘.gov’ accounts of key Hillary Clinton aides Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills and Jake Sullivan in the initial search to fill the FIOA request filed by Judicial Watch for communication over Benghazi.  Yea, go figure…

(Via Judicial Watch) […] District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta ordered the State Department “to search the state.gov e-mail accounts of Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, and Jacob Sullivan,” former aides of Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State. The State Department is ordered to search in those accounts “for records responsive to [Judicial Watch’s] March 4, 2015, FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request.” (A separate Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit first broke open the Clinton email scandal.)

[I]f an e-mail did not involve any state.gov user, the message would have passed through only the Secretary’s private server and, therefore, would be beyond the immediate reach of State. Because of this circumstance, unlike the ordinary case, State could not look solely to its own records systems to adequately respond to [Judicial Watch’s] demand.

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Speaking from Bedminster New Jersey, President Trump answers questions from media surrounding the ongoing issue with North Korea, and the intransigent republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his inability to move legislation.

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It’s always about the economic folks.  President Trump is the first U.S. president to fully appreciate, and utilize, economic leverage to achieve U.S. national security objectives.

…”If China helps us with North Korea I will feel a little differently about trade”…

~President Donald Trump

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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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In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the Donald Trump Administration and Presidency.

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

President Trump Twitter @POTUS / Vice President Pence Twitter @VP

Sarah H Sanders Twitter @SHSanders45

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

When we initially read this article yesterday our review began with an earnest and sincere effort to understand the concerns amid the career bureaucrats in the U.S. State Department; and also to understand the overall cultural climate that would need Secretary Tillerson’s Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to calm these officials….

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The No. 2 U.S. diplomat on Tuesday sought to allay concerns among the State Department’s rank-and-file employees over possible layoffs and perceptions of a lack of firm direction under the administration of President Donald Trump. (more)

…After all, this has to be about the eleventyth time either Secretary Tillerson or Deputy Sullivan has addressed these ‘climate assessment’ issues. It was less than a week prior to this latest effort by Sullivan when Tillerson himself was talking to the department.
I mean seriously, how much “talking to‘ could one organization need? These are obviously some seriously needy people. Then again, we’ve long discussed the overall liberal perspectives within the department; so the most entrenched liberalism inside government is definitively inside the Department of State.
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Apparently CTH and Asian expert Gordon Chang are on the same intellectual page in analysis of the ongoing North Korea issues.  In this interview Mr. Chang outlines the dynamic between U.S. President Trump, North Korean President Kim Jong-un and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Gordon Chang also agrees that mounting economic pressure on China will be the pathway to getting the DPRK into line.

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The North Korean commentariat today has all been centered around a “response” to a precipitous strike by the United States. As previously outlined by Secretary Tillerson, via the “four no’s”, and backed up by the entire U.S. policy team, there is no intent on the U.S. to initiate a North Korean regime change. That leverage approach is China’s to utilize; while we hold China accountable.
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