FREE WHITEWATER

Trade

Americans’ Support for Free Trade Reaches New High

A strong majority supports free trade and rejects Trump’s anti-market trade wars and tariffs. Mark Murray reports that Amid President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, nearly two-thirds of Americans say they support free trade with foreign countries, according to the latest national poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal. That represents a…

Wastrel

Embed from Getty Images John Bresnahan and Burgess Everett report Deficit Don? Red ink gushes in Trump era (‘The president endorsed a bipartisan budget deal without any of the spending restraints previously demanded by Republicans’): With a new bipartisan budget deal that does nothing to cut federal spending, Trump is on track for another $1 trillion…

Worse Ahead for Farmers

The price of supporting Trumpism – whether on economics, immigration, or foreign policy – is decline. For it all, some farmers will choose their own humiliation, their own degradation, for the sake of supporting Trump. Tory Newmyer describes what awaits Midwestern agriculture in Farmers are bracing for more tariff pain. But they’re sticking with Trump…

Trump’s Bottomless Ignorance on Display (Yet Again)

Libertarian-leaning GOP Congressman Justin Amash responded this morning to Trump’s completely-wrong-no-good-and-backwards-beyond-belief Twitter claim about trade deficits: Trump: We have lost 500 Billion Dollars a year, for many years, on Crazy Trade with China. NO MORE! Amash: A trade deficit is not a loss of money. If you buy from a supermarket or go to a…

The Cost of Trump’s Tariffs

Heather Long reports Trump’s steel tariffs cost U.S. consumers $900,000 for every job created, experts say: President Trump has shown little interest in removing the steel and aluminum tariffs he imposed more than a year ago despite growing evidence Americans are paying a hefty price for these tariffs and increasing pressure from Republicans in Congress…

‘Stung by Trump’s Trade Wars, Wisconsin’s Milk Farmers Face Extinction’

After years of the ignorant scheming of tax incremental financing, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, capital catalyst grants, the Trump tax bill, and now Trump’s trade war, Alan Rappeport reports Stung by Trump’s Trade Wars, Wisconsin’s Milk Farmers Face Extinction (“The flagship industry in a pivotal swing state faces an economic crisis”): KENDALL, Wis. —…

How Walker and Trump Destroyed Dairies in America’s Dairyland

One has heard so much these last eight years about how Wisconsin has been ‘open for business,’ and for Walker and the WEDC that has meant countless subsidies and tax breaks for conservatives’ preferred businesses. Walker was never a free-market man; his whole approach rested on state capitalism (government funding some producers) and crony capitalism…

‘Chinese-owned company qualifies for Trump’s anti-China farm bailout’

Listen closely, and one can almost hear the peals of laughter from a bureaucrat in the Chinese ministry of commerce… Jeff Stein reports Chinese-owned company qualifies for Trump’s anti-China farm bailout: A Chinese-owned pork producer is eligible for federal payments under President Trump’s $12 billion farm bailout, a program established to help U.S. farmers hurt…

Promising Gain, Delivering Loss

Here in the Midwest, in America’s Dairyland, in a small college town surrounded by farms, Trumpism’s economic promises, never likely to do a body good, now slowly curdle: U.S. business groups say hundreds of thousands of American jobs are at stake as newly imposed trade barriers cause an abrupt slowdown of cross-border trade. The fallout is…

Tales of Unrequited Support

Wisconsinites who went for Trump now find themselves economically disadvantaged despite their support.  It’s become an international tale: how some residents of America’s Dairyland foolishly hoped for better from Trump and now find themselves experiencing worse: Plymouth, Wisconsin, styles itself as “the cheese capital of the world”. The town of 8,445 people, about an hour north…