President Trump's Tariffs Will Hurt America More Than China

forbes

Let’s stop pretending. An import tariff is nothing but a tax on consumers and businesses. Not in the exporting country, but the importing one. So the 10% tariff on $200bn of Chinese imports that President Trump has just imposed is in reality a new tax on Americans. And it will hurt America much more than China.

Stocks tumble as Trump threatens to raise Chinese import tariffs

.ft

US stocks opened sharply lower on Monday after Donald Trump threatened to raise tariffs on all Chinese imports to 25 per cent, sharply ratcheting up pressure on Beijing to make concessions in trade talks and sending global equities markets sliding.  The US president made the threat in a number of tweets on Sunday and Monday just a few days ahead of a make-or-break round of trade negotiations scheduled to begin on Wednesday.

cbsnews

In renewing a threat to sharply raise tariffs this week on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods from China, President Trump said in a tweet on Sunday that the levies have had little impact on U.S. consumers -- it is the Chinese who are bearing the brunt of the trade war between the world's two biggest economies, he claimed.

Yet research suggests otherwise, showing that American consumers and businesses are taking the biggest hit in the form of higher prices and costs. That's especially true in areas of the country that typically vote for Republican candidates, like farming communities in the Midwest, according to one recent study by economists from UCLA, University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University and the World Bank.

bloomberg

Trade wars are good, and easy to win. So President Donald Trump said last year as he embarked on his first round of tariffs on foreign imports.

It seems that things have proven so good and easy that he’s readying for another bout. Trump is prepared to increase a 10 percent levy on $200 billion of imports from China to 25 percent on Friday, he tweeted on Sunday — instantly popping any hopes that trade talks were on their final approach toward an amicable resolution.

The president had a justification for casually slapping a $30 billion trade impost via tweet — the Chinese will pay anyway:

RASHIDA TLAIB SLAMS 'NYT' FOR HEADLINE ON GAZA VIOLENCE; OMAR SILENT

.jpost

  

Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. (photo credit: REUTERS/REBECCA COOK AND ERIC MILLER/REUTERS)

US Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib slammed a New York Times headline that framed the violence in Israel as being initiated by a barrage of rockets from Gaza.

"When will the world stop dehumanizing our Palestinian people who just want to be free?" she tweeted. "Headlines like this & framing it in this way just feeds into the continued lack of responsibility on Israel who unjustly oppress & target Palestinian children and families."

Hostilities flare up as rockets hit Israel from Gaza

bbc

Militants in the Gaza Strip have fired more than 200 rockets into Israel, the army says, prompting air strikes and tank fire on the Palestinian territory.

Three Israelis were wounded by the rockets. Israeli fire killed three Palestinians, including a mother and her baby daughter, Gaza officials say.

EU calls for halt to rocket fire from Gaza into Israel

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/262668

The European Union (EU) on Saturday called for rocket fire from Gaza into Israel to "stop immediately" and threw its backing behind efforts by Egypt and the United Nations to calm the situation.

"The rocket fire from Gaza towards Israel must stop immediately. A de-escalation of this dangerous situation is urgently needed to ensure that civilians' lives are protected," EU spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic said in a statement.

"Israelis and Palestinians both have the right to live in peace, security and dignity."

Gaza terrorists on Saturday fired over 200 rockets at Israel, which responded by striking Hamas and Islamic Jihad military targets, officials said, as another escalation between them threatened a fragile ceasefire.

Despite Israel's best efforts to avoid civilian casualties, three Gazans including a baby and her mother died in the strikes, the Gaza Health Ministry claimed Saturday.

The latest flare-up came with Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the blockaded Gaza Strip, seeking further concessions from Israel under the ceasefire.

"Only a political solution can put an end to the violence," the EU statement said

Obama Didn’t Give Iran ‘150 Billion in Cash’

https://www.factcheck.org/2019/03/obama-didnt-give-iran-150-billion-in-cash/

Quick Take

A viral meme distorts the facts about the Iran nuclear agreement. The deal, approved by six countries and the European Union, gave Iran access to its own frozen assets.

Full Story

As a candidate during the 2016 campaign, President Donald Trump criticized the international agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons’ program — formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — that had been adopted the year before. He suggested that the U.S. had returned $150 billion to Iran as part of the deal.

That’s not true. We’ve written about this issue before. PolitiFact and the Washington Post have, too.

But Trump has repeated the claim as recently as December, when he tweeted: “The Democrats and President Obama gave Iran 150 Billion Dollars and got nothing, but they can’t give 5 Billion Dollars for National Security and a Wall?”

Trump’s bogus claim now has been repeated in a meme that references the president’s declaration of a national emergency to redirect federal funds for a proposed wall on the southern border.

Secular Education in Hasidic Yeshivas - Panel on "Deep Dive" Fox Nation

Dossier Not What ‘Started All of This’

Factcheck

In an interview about the special counsel’s report, Rep. John Ratcliffe said that what “started all of this” was “a fake, phony dossier.” But a House Republican intelligence committee memo said it was information about a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser that sparked the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the election.

Ratcliffe, a Texas Republican who is a member of the House intelligence committee, said in the interview on Fox Business Network that “I had seen every classified document that any member of Congress was allowed to see. So I wasn’t surprised at all at the findings” of the special counsel investigation, as revealed in a four-page memo on March 24 by Attorney General William P. Barr. He then turned to the dossier.   

Explained 

What Started the Trump-Russia Investigation? Not the Steele Dossier as Trump Claims

haaretz

Republican memo released in February affirmed a story from the New York Times which traces the beginning of the investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia to campaign aide George Papadopoulos

FOX NEWS' CHRIS WALLACE WARNS OF OWN NETWORK'S BIAS: 'OPINION PEOPLE' ON FOX 'MAY BE PUSHING POLITICAL AGENDA' ON MUELLER LETTER

Newsweek

Fox News host Chris Wallace on Wednesday warned viewers that some opinion-based coverage of special counsel Robert Mueller’s letter to Attorney General William Barr on his own network may be biased and to set the record straight, he went over the “facts.”

Without naming specifically which hosts he was referring to, Wallace urged viewers to focus on the “facts” and to disregard the other Fox News figures downplaying of the significance of Mueller’s letter during a Wednesday appearance on Shepard Smith Reporting.

“I know there are some people who don’t think this March 27 letter is a big deal,” Wallace said. “Some opinion people, some opinion people who appear on this network, who may be pushing a political agenda.”

“But, you know, we have to deal in facts. And the fact is that this letter from the special counsel, and it was one of at least three contacts with the Attorney General between March 25 and March 27, was a clear indication that the [special counsel] was upset, very upset, with the letter that had been sent out by the Attorney General, and wanted it changed, or wanted it at least added to and the Attorney General refused to do so,” he continued. “He felt the Attorney General’s letter was inaccurate.”

“What he says in the letter is, ‘You didn’t reflect what we found in the report,’ and there were a lot of people—having read now the full report, or as much as it has not been redacted—agree that he didn’t reveal what was fully in the report,” the host added.

“Again, those aren’t opinions, that’s not a political agenda, those are the facts.

James Comey: How Trump Co-opts Leaders Like Bill Barr

nytimes

People have been asking me hard questions. What happened to the leaders in the Trump administration, especially the attorney general, Bill Barr, who I have said was due the benefit of the doubt?

How could Mr. Barr, a bright and accomplished lawyer, start channeling the president in using words like “no collusion” and F.B.I. “spying”? And downplaying acts of obstruction of justice as products of the president’s being “frustrated and angry,” something he would never say to justify the thousands of crimes prosecuted every day that are the product of frustration and anger?

How could he write and say things about the report by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, that were apparently so misleading that they prompted written protest from the special counsel himself?

How could Mr. Barr go before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and downplay President Trump’s attempt to fire Mr. Mueller before he completed his work?

And how could Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, after the release of Mr. Mueller’s report that detailed Mr. Trump’s determined efforts to obstruct justice, give a speech quoting the president on the importance of the rule of law? Or on resigning, thank a president who relentlessly attacked both him and the Department of Justice he led for “the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations”?

What happened to these people?

I don’t know for sure. People are complicated, so the answer is most likely complicated. But I have some idea from four months of working close to Mr. Trump and many more months of watching him shape others.

Amoral leaders have a way of revealing the character of those around them. Sometimes what they reveal is inspiring. For example, James Mattis, the former secretary of defense, resigned over principle, a concept so alien to Mr. Trump that it took days for the president to realize what had happened, before he could start lying about the man.

But more often, proximity to an amoral leader reveals something depressing. I think that’s at least part of what we’ve seen with Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein. 

TEN KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM WILLIAM BARR’S SENATE HEARING ON RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE IN 2016 ELECTION

newsweek

Atttorney General William Barr testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday afternoon about the specifics of the report prepared by special counsel Robert Mueller on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential elections and possible obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump. There, Barr answered questions about his conclusion that there was no obstruction of justice and that the president had been cleared of wrongdoing.

Underlying the hearing was a last-minute revelation that Mueller had written a letter to Barr saying that he disagreed with Barr’s four-page summary of his report, and the two had followed up with a phone call.

Below are 10 standout moments from Wednesday’s hearing:

Religious Objections to the Measles Vaccine? Get the Shots, Faith Leaders Say

nytimes

The measles outbreak in the United States is now the largest since the disease was declared eliminated here 19 years ago. The return of this scourge has been driven by one factor in particular: misinformation, spread by vaccine critics, that scares parents into not immunizing their children.

Along with rumors that vaccines cause autism or that the trace amounts of mercury and aluminum in them are dangerous — falsehoods that were long ago debunked — have come innuendos aimed at deeply religious parents.

Vaccines, the activists say, contain ingredients made from pigs, dogs, monkeys and aborted fetuses. Indeed, most of those assertions are based in fact. Ingredient lists published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins show that vaccines may contain these elements (although any residual DNA is present only at the parts-per-million level).

Nonetheless, vaccination is endorsed by top Jewish and Islamic scholars, and by the Vatican. Religious authorities have meticulously studied how vaccines are made and what is in them, and still have ruled that they do not violate Jewish, Islamic or Catholic law.

Although no vaccine is without side effects, immunization is one of the greatest advances in medicine. The World Health Organization estimates that vaccines have saved more than 10 million lives in just the last decade.

Trump’s Stonewall Is Beginning to Crack

theatlantic

To date, the cover-up has worked about as well as President Donald Trump could have hoped.

Almost four years after Trump declared his campaign for the presidency, and more than 30 months since he won that office, he has successfully kept secret almost all the things he wished to keep secret. How much debt does he owe, and to whom? How much of his income derives from people who do business with the U.S. government? How much of his income derives from foreign sources? Who are his business partners, and do any of them present ethical or national-security concerns?

These basics of post-Watergate official disclosure have all been suppressed.

Incredibly, even after the delivery of the Mueller report, the American people still have only the haziest idea of Trump's business connections to Russia and Russians. Do those connections cast any light on why the Russian government was so eager to elect him president in 2016? Perhaps that information is held somewhere within the Department of Justice or the FBI, but citizens and taxpayers can only guess.

Hirono accuses Barr of lying, tells him to resign

During During testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) accused Attorney General William Barr of lying to Congress and tells him he should resign

The Mueller report: A catalog of 77 Trump team lies and falsehoods

cnn

The Mueller report documents at least 77 specific instances where President Donald Trump's campaign staff, administration officials and family members, Republican backers and his associates lied or made false assertions(sometimes unintentionally) to the public, Congress, or authorities, according to a new CNN analysis. The plurality of lies came from Trump himself, and most of them took place while he was president.

The redacted version of the 448-page report released by the Justice Department earlier this month didn't find conspiracy or coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Special counsel Robert Mueller did not decide whether Trump obstructed justice in violation of the law, though he investigated it thoroughly and found in several instances both potentially obstructive behavior and motive.

WILLIAM BARR TORCHED BY HARVARD LAW PROFESSOR, TOP LEGAL SCHOLARS OVER 'INDEFENSIBLE' MUELLER SUMMARY: AG ‘MUST BE IMPEACHED'

newsweek

After special counsel Robert Mueller’s letter to William Barr complaining about his summary of the Russia investigation was revealed on Tuesday, top legal scholars — including a longtime Harvard law professor — condemned the Attorney General for allegedly misrepresenting the special counsel’s findings, with some calling on him to resign or be impeached.

The New York Times and the Washington Post reported on the existence of the letter, sent by Mueller to Barr in late March, earlier today, where the special counsel told the Attorney General: “The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions.”

“There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation,” Mueller added in his letter sent days after Barr released his four-page summary of the special counsel’s findings, according to the Post. “This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”

Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, a constitutional legal expert who has taught at the leading academic institution for almost half a century, condemned Barr for misleading public opinion in a statement posted to Twitter, and called for the attorney general to be impeached for his actions. “Mueller says AG Barr misrepresented the ‘context, nature & substance’ of his probe. What else is there? Barr is a total disgrace and a phony,” Tribe wrote. “He must now testify under Rep. Jerry Nadler’s rules, then resign.”

“Mueller must now testify as well. This is a new ballgame,” the professor continued. “AG Barr flat-out lied to the American people about the Mueller report’s incrimination of President Trump. He’s been outed as a total fraud. We can’t let Barr — or Trump — get away with such gross abuse of power.”

“Barr must be impeached if he doesn’t resign first,” Tribe added.