Tag: taxes

Trump’s Reciprocal Tariffs Prompt Japan Trade Negotiations with U.S.

President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs have helped open trade negotiations between the United States and one of its key economic partners — Japan.

Last week, Trump announced reciprocal tariffs, a policy that has the United States set tariffs based on the rate that each country in the world imposes on the U.S. For Japan, the tariff rate with the U.S. is now 24 percent.

As a result, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is looking to negotiate trade with the Trump administration.

“Countries from all over the world are talking to us. Tough but fair parameters are being set. Spoke to the Japanese Prime Minister this morning. He is sending a top team to negotiate!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They have treated the U.S. very poorly on trade. They don’t take our cars, but we take MILLIONS of theirs. Likewise, agriculture, and many other ‘things.’ It all has to change, but especially with CHINA!!!”

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Taiwan Offers Zero Tariffs and More Investment in U.S.

Taiwanese President William Lai Ching-te on Sunday proposed zero tariffs, lower trade barriers, and more investment in the United States instead of retaliating against President Donald Trump’s tariff increases.

President Trump’s tariff announcement on Wednesday included 32 percent on all Taiwanese exports except semiconductors, which are Taiwan’s most celebrated and economically significant product.

Trump had threatened in March to include Taiwanese semiconductors on his tariff list, because he said Taiwan “stole” the industry from America with unfair trade practices.

“They stole it from us. They took it from us, and I don’t blame them. I give them credit. I blame the people that were sitting in this seat because they allowed it to happen,” Trump said in March.

The president’s position on Taiwanese semiconductors softened a little after the island’s biggest chipmaker, TSMC, pledged to spend $100 billion on five new semiconductor factories in Arizona over the next four years.

Officials in Taipei were stunned when Trump slapped 32-percent tariffs on everything except semiconductors last week. Taiwanese cabinet spokeswoman Michelle Lee called the tariffs “deeply unreasonable” and “highly regrettable.”

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We Didn’t Start the Trade War—We’ve Just Finally Joined It

When President Donald Trump slapped a fresh round of tariffs on European and Asian imports, the professional hand-wringers and legacy press clodpolls sprang into choreographed action.

Headlines and television anchors blared warnings of trade wars, economic isolation, and diplomatic fallout. The bureaucratic priesthood that worships at the altar of “free trade” without reciprocity—from Brussels to Brookings—launched into familiar homilies: tariffs are regressive, Trump is reckless, and globalism is gospel.

But let’s pause the hysteria momentarily and apply something vanishingly rare in today’s media-industrial complex: perspective.

The prevailing orthodoxy treats tariffs as anathema to prosperity—an outdated relic of 19th-century mercantilism. But this overlooks a simple truth: for trade to be free, it must also be fair. For decades, American policymakers—both Democrats and Republicans—have tolerated a grotesquely asymmetrical global trade regime that has hollowed out the American industrial base and made us dangerously dependent on foreign powers, friend and foe alike.

Trump’s critics are wrong. These tariffs aren’t a calamity. They’re a much-needed course correction

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Art of the Deal: EU Offers Trump ‘Zero-for-Zero Tariffs’ on Industrial Goods with United States

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Monday that the bloc has offered a “zero-for-zero tariff” trade arrangement on industrial goods with the United States in a bid to avoid a full-on trade war.

While the EU chief continued to condemn the reciprocal tariff measures enacted by U.S. President Donald Trump to rectify the long-standing transatlantic trade imbalance, as pressure from the markets began to take shape, Von der Leyen and other top eurocrats expressed willingness to negotiate with the White House.

“We stand ready to negotiate with the US,” the EU president said. “We have offered zero-for-zero tariffs for industrial goods as we have successfully done with many other trading partners. Because Europe is always ready for a good deal. So we keep it on the table.”

However, the German politician did not address other significant areas of concern expressed by the Trump administration, such as restrictions on American food imports or, perhaps more significantly, on EU tariffs against U.S. made automobiles, which currently stand at around four times the rate European cars are taxed when sent to the United States.

Von der Leyen warned that Brussels is “prepared to respond through countermeasures and defend our interests if the trade dispute continues.” The EU chief said that Brussels will take a two-pronged approach towards the Trump tariffs, firstly by reducing internal barriers within the bloc — as opposed to reducing further barriers with the U.S. — and of “diversifying” Europe’s trading partners.

“This is why we are deepening our relations with our trading partners: You know the deals we have done with Mercosur, Mexico, Switzerland, and we are working with India, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and many others. With that, we want to be very clear: Europe stands together for our businesses and with our businesses for all Europeans in the European Union and beyond,” she said.

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How USAID and NED Funded the Bloody Biden Color Revolution in Bangladesh with $1.73 Billion

Ever since the elected Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina was overthrown on 5 August 2024, radical Muslims close to Clinton-related  “interim” dictator Muhammad Yunus have been conducting violent pogroms against Hundus, Sikhs and Christians, as The Gateway Pundit reported. A new report details how the violent overthrow of the democratically elected government was funded by USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy.

The report “American Aid and Regime Change in Bangladesh: A Primer” by Jaibal Naduvath was published by the Indian Observer Research Foundation.

Sheikh Hasina ran afoul of the US Deep State “Blob” regime change apparatus over her refusal to take sides in the US-Russia conflict over Ukriane. “Hasina has accused Washington (read: USAID and NED) —of undermining her government through an extensive web of influence operations, allegedly in retaliation for her refusal to cede control of Saint Martin’s Island in the Bay of Bengal to the US which was planning to set up an airbase there to counter China,” the ORF report states.

Bangladesh was delaying signing two military agreements pushed by former Under-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, which would bind Bangladesh to closer military-to-military cooperation with Washington, as Jeffrey Sachs wrote on Common Dreams.

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Tariffs Also Counter VAT Taxes, Currency Manipulation, Dumping, Export Subsidies, Fake Standards

During an appearance on FNC’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” White House senior economic counselor Peter Navarro explained the long-term implications for the Trump administration’s tariffs and how they will function to ensure fair trade for the United States.

“Let’s not forget, every economic report that’s been coming out in the last month has been pushing us towards expansion and strength,” Navarro said. “And we just had a blowout jobs number on Friday, 228,000 jobs. That was 50 percent higher than was predicted. So, again, there’s cognitive dissonance between what the media is saying, wanted to push us into recession, and what’s actually happening. I think you’re right, Jackie, that the tariff and trade policy is just one chapter in a book that contains all these other beautiful things that we’re going to do. If you just take, for example, the oil prices, oil prices were a dollar higher during the Biden years. For a commuting, working family, that’s about $1,000 worth of gas prices they had to pay. We’re going to get that back for them. These tariff revenues, by the way, Jackie, $600 billion, $700 billion they are going to raise a year, $6 trillion to $7 trillion over the 10-year period. They’re going to help pay for the tax cuts. I will tell you this, Jackie. Every single dollar that comes in, in tariff revenues that we take from the foreigners who have been cheating us are going to go right to the American public in terms of tax cuts and debt reduction.”

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Zimbabwe Axes All Tariffs on US Goods

The president of Zimbabwe, Emmerson Mnangagwa, has suspended all tariffs on goods from the United States, a few days after the White House imposed an 18 percent rate on imports from the African country.

On Saturday, Mnangagwa wrote on X: “The principle of reciprocal tariffs, as a tool for safeguarding domestic employment and industrial sectors, holds merit. However, the Republic of Zimbabwe maintains a policy of fostering amicable relations with all nations, and cultivating adversarial relationships with none.”

He said, “In the spirit of constructing a mutually beneficial and positive relationship with the United States of America, under the leadership of president Trump, I will direct the Zimbabwean government to implement a suspension of all tariffs levied on goods originating from the United States.”

“This measure is intended to facilitate the expansion of American imports within the Zimbabwean market, while simultaneously promoting the growth of Zimbabwean exports destined for the United States,” he added.

Zimbabwe’s main trading partners are South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and China, but it does export tobacco and rice to the United States.

President Donald Trump imposed what he called reciprocal tariffs on countries around the world on April 2, declaring it “Liberation Day in America.”

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New report shows “massive” EU funding for trans NGOs

A new report has revealed that over €220 million in EU funds have been used to advance “a radical gender identity agenda” over the last decade, including support in the EU for adopting a strategy calling for gender  self-ID for children.

The investigation by MCC Brussels, a Hungarian backed think tank, says that research funding is being ‘weaponised’, and that EU-funded research “is being used as an advocacy tool to justify policy changes rather than for neutral academic inquiry” – pointing to €2.4 million in funding for research “Challenging the gender binary”, and a €3 million “MEN4DEM” study which critics say “treats traditional masculinity as a threat to democracy”.

The report, “Mission Creeps: How EU Funding and Activist NGOs Captured the Gender Agenda,” was authored by sociologist Ashley Frawley, and MCC Brussels say it is the first comprehensive investigation into how a small but powerful network of NGOs has shaped EU gender policy under the radar of public scrutiny – and that the funding has been used to promote “controversial policies” that “undermine women’s rights, child safeguarding, and national sovereignty – all without meaningful democratic debate”.

The analysis found that at least €40 million had gone to projects involving the “most radical” transgender advocacy groups – categorised as meeting one or more of the following characteristics: “take for granted and/or promote notions of gender radically divorced from sex, endorse concepts like non-binary gender identity, support the demotion of the significance of sex in national accounting and statistics.”

Spokeswoman for the Irish campaign group, The Countess, Laoise De Brún, said “all roads lead back to Europe when it comes to the capture of our institutions and government departments.”

“Gender Self-ID and Hate Speech laws, anti-Conversion Therapy are all manufactured not to solve actual societal problems but to force our society in a certain direction. They do not do what they say on the tin,” she said.

“For two long, our craven politicians have behaved like foie gras geese, feet nailed to the floor ingesting an endless diet of increasingly unhinged EU legislation that bears no connection to what the people of Ireland need or want.”

“NGOs have the same stranglehold of Ministers in Ireland as they do at a European level and they are all pushing the same drug. A heady new facet of human rights or a new frontier of progressivism which politician drink up eager to burnish their credentials and march in step with the liberal ruling elite. In reality all of these laws are an attack on the family, on childhood, on women’s rights, on free speech and on state sovereignty. We need a DOGE of these NGOs and how they operate in the EU and at home. Before it’s too late.”

Frank Furedi, Executive Director of MCC Brussels, commenting on the new report, said, “What we’re seeing from our research is the corruption of political processes. There’s a two-way-process where civil society is systematically bought off to provide the EU with legitimacy, whilst the EU becomes increasingly radicalised by ideologues claiming to represent civil society. This is an increasingly secretive political process where power is rendered invisible to ordinary people.”

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Almost 1,000 feds take more money from taxpayers than the president

Last year, 939 of the employees who outearned the president were medical officers at the Veterans Health Administration, which provides care for 9.1 million veterans across 1,380 facilities. Four of the employees are listed as dentists.

Micah Nix, an emergency room doctor with the Indian Health Service, outearned the president, as did one unnamed employee at the Bureau of Prisons.

There were also 15 doctors at the National Institutes of Health earning more than $400,000, including the four highest paid employees in the entire federal workforce. Gary Gibbons, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, took home $519,246, breaking his own record for the highest federal salary in U.S. history.

Dr. Anthony Fauci once held the record with a $480,654 salary in 2022. Gibbons surpassed that with a $492,643 salary in 2023 and has now become the only federal employee to earn more than $500,000.

The 956 employees are spread across 48 different states. California is home to 162 of them. Florida is in second place with 59, and North Carolina has 50. Five of the top six highest paid federal employees work in Maryland.

The count of 956 employees does not include an additional 36 that earned exactly $400,000 — the same as the president.

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Why is Trump Using Tariffs? The Truth That Has Misled the World on Tariffs

For all the criticism of Trump and the risk of a global trade war, as Macron wants to unleash a trade war to elevate France to the top of the EU, if we just look at the data, we can see why Trump has taken this approach. Even those Republicans like Rand Paul joining the Democrats in calling tariffs a tax, none of them are looking at this issue objectively or seriously. Under the Biden Administration, not only was there a wholesale invasion of illegal immigrants, but on the trade front, he paid no attention at all, and most seemed to assume he was too senile to pay attention.

They are resoundingly calling Trump insane, mainly because they have something to lose. Free Trade has been one-sided. There is a risk that France will push to impose trade barriers against others to support their Marxist agenda. That will be devastating, but we see the world economy headed into a recession for the USA, yet a Depression for the EU. The fact that Trump imposed a 10% tariff on the UK but 20% on the EU is actually driving a wedge between Starmer’s dream of overruling BREXIT to get back into the Marxist utopia of the EU.

In addition, the belligerence of Macron is having an impact. There is a growing discontent with the European Union and the 20% tariff on the EU, with Macron vowing that full retaliation may prove to be the wedge that starts the fragmentation of the EU. Hungary has its own currency and can quickly leave the EU and resume trade with both the USA and Russia. Ukraine has long suppressed the Hungarian people trapped within the boundaries of Ukraine. The same is true for all of those members questioning the EU yet did not join the euro.

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