Washington Insider

The New York Times is reporting this week that the president's tariffs on Chinese goods generated $20.8 billion in revenue as of last Wednesday. However, it also said that this revenue is "less than what the United States is spending to support farmers hurt by the trade war."

Bloomberg says this week that there is an unusual degree of bipartisanship in an unusually high criticism of "big tech." Facebook, Google and Amazon all are facing "multiple attacks across Washington from lawmakers and officials over a range of grievances that underscored the kind of...

Roll Call is reporting this week that the recent papaya salmonella outbreak highlights FDA's food safety challenges. The report said that the "law from nearly a decade ago meant to modernize the food safety system is starting to show its age."

Bloomberg says this week that the president is pushing Congress to approve the new North American trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, saying it would bring jobs to the U.S. and stop factories from leaving. "I'm calling on Congress to pass the USMCA," he told an audience in Milwaukee on...

Reuters is reporting this week that pressure is growing on credit availability across agriculture, especially from many big banks who had searched hard for new ways to expand their loan business beyond the troubled mortgage sector a decade or so ago. Many of the nation's largest banks...

Bloomberg is reporting this week that the Congress may be plunging deeper into the thicket of spelling out future implications of climate change for military spending. The military already knows it faces increasing vulnerabilities from a warming planet, the report says. But, what it doesn't have...

In a modest piece of bad news this week, Bloomberg reported that the United States may have less time to take action to avoid a default on federal debt than previously expected. The report said that "a new estimate shortens an already tight timeframe for lawmakers to strike deals on...

Monetary policy continues to attract headlines this week as Politico reports that while for much of the past decade, Republicans including President Donald Trump, ripped the Federal Reserve for keeping interest rates too low, a policy they said risked blowing up giant asset bubbles and...

It appears that President Donald Trump is sharpening his attack on the Fed, and that he may even be "grooming replacements," Bloomberg says this week. Most recently, he called "the bank a bigger problem than U.S. competitors." Bloomberg thinks that the fresh criticism is consistent with ideas...

There's a lot of unfinished business around concerning trade policy. One important piece concerns the new NAFTA, Bloomberg says. Signed by Canada, Mexico and the U.S. more than seven months ago, the agreement isn't so new anymore. But it may be close to...

The Hill, together with much of the urban press, is emphasizing that President Donald Trump's trade truce with Chinese President Xi Jinping last weekend brought a temporary pause to dueling tariffs between the world's largest economies, "but the two leaders will soon need to forge a path...

And, in a sign of market bullishness, shares of Huawei suppliers rallied around the globe Monday. Still, constraints on Huawei's business abound with some analysts arguing that the optimism is overdone. As a result, many are still trying to figure out what form the relief will take.

President Donald Trump's decision over the weekend to relax limits on Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei and to delay new tariffs on Chinese goods may revive stalled trade talks with Beijing, the Washington Post reported this week. However, it leaves negotiators confronting the same tough...

While most of the current press coverage of trade issues is focused on the U.S.-China talks, Bloomberg says that the logic of the President's attacks escapes leaders in Europe, and that this is especially true as President Trump heads to a showdown with China's Xi Jinping and as the costs of...

The urban press sees the threats of an intensifying global trade war as big news and spends considerable effort trying to describe how big that threat may be. For example, this week Bloomberg is reporting that the world economy runs the risk of having to foot a $1.2 trillion bill if the...

The New York Times said Monday that President Trump continued his assault on the Federal Reserve "blaming the central bank for reining in a U.S. economy that is on track to reach its longest expansion in history."

The coming trade talks with China expected at the end of June and could decide whether tensions between these two huge economies will ease enough to allow for a resumption of negotiations, or whether the U.S. will place tariffs on another $300 billion worth of Chinese goods, as the President...

This is an increasingly high-tension period as the crucial G20 meetings along with trade talks with China loom, and as the Congress works to craft a budget deal for the coming year. On the matter of future spending, The Hill says that there is a sharp split on strategy among Republicans and...

The Federal Reserve meeting this week has come and gone and it says that it is thinking about the need for lower interest rates, but no change was announced yet. In the meantime, President Trump complained to the press that the U.S. was the target of a "currency war."

The expected fight over monetary policy appears ready to burst into public view these days. Following criticism from President Donald Trump, the world's most powerful central bank is making clear it thinks the law is on its side if the President tries to remove Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve...