Washington Insider

House Democrats plan to fight President Donald Trump on numerous issues, including World Health Organization funding, military bases named after Confederate officers, border wall money and limits on food stamp eligibility, as fiscal 2021 spending negotiations ramp up.

The Hill reported last week that the generous expansion to unemployment insurance Congress passed to keep Americans afloat during the COVID-19 crisis is due to run out at the end of the month, potentially leaving millions of people struggling.

The Hill is reporting that, not surprisingly, Treasury's Steven Mnuchin and the Fed's Jerome Powell differ significantly over how soon economy will recover and what that will involve.

Certainly, there is a lot going on in the area of trade policy these days, including the implementation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Bloomberg is reporting this week that the U.S.-China feud is getting nasty with red tape as a stealth weapon. The article says the countries are moving beyond trade threats to exchanging regulatory punches that threaten a wide range of industries including technology, energy and air travel.

While President Donald Trump is urging American companies to ditch China, many of them can’t get more goods fast enough. There are several reasons, Bloomberg reports.

The International Monetary Fund emphasized on Wednesday that the global economy faces an even deeper downturn than previously projected, and that the pandemic continues to sow uncertainty as businesses around the world struggle to recover.

The Hill is reporting this week that business groups are pushing back on the president’s new limits on work visas and are hinting at possible legal action against the recent executive order they see as an attack on legal immigration.

Bloomberg is reporting this week that with COVID-19 cases spiking in nearly a dozen U.S. states, this may seem like a strange time to constrain America’s ability to obtain critical medical supplies and drugs. However, new tariffs are exactly the strategy that America’s top trade...

While there is modest agreement that more virus testing is essential to control the pandemic, the Washington Post says the administration has yet to distribute nearly one-third of the funds provided by Congress for testing and contact tracing. The report cites Senate Democratic leadership...

Robert Scott, who is a senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute, charges in a column that the Trump administration often touts returning trends in industries and jobs. In actuality, its policies are failing to curb most of this offshoring, and the administration hasn't addressed the...

Bloomberg says this week that the U.S. has decided to withdraw from international efforts to harmonize global tax rules for digital companies and that the decision risks triggering a new trade war.

Chairman Jerome Powell told the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee on Tuesday that the U.S. economy may be entering a period of significant improvements in employment but also could leave the labor market well short of the robust levels seen just before the coronavirus...

The Trump administration is preparing a huge new infrastructure proposal as part of its push to spur the U.S. economy back to life. A preliminary version being prepared by the Department of Transportation would reserve most of the money for traditional infrastructure work, like roads and...

Bloomberg says this week that the Trump administration launched what could turn out to be the biggest attack in a century against the giants of America’s meat industry. The probe follows the recent uproar over employee treatment during the pandemic, the report says.

Bloomberg is reporting this week that although much of the virus-related public debate has focused on economic subsidies, state and local health departments are pushing Congress for billions of dollars to expand their disease-tracking programs.

After the U.S. labor market posted a surprise improvement for May, the weekly jobless-claims data will again remind people that economic pain remains widespread, even if it’s gradually abating, Bloomberg reports this week.

Bloomberg is reporting this week that European Union efforts to soothe transatlantic trade tensions have stalled.

This week, Bloomberg examined the prospects faced by U.S. efforts to reduce dependence on China and other overseas suppliers for strategic goods.

It has been clear for some time that farmers are on the front line of number of recent trade fights as well as the recent market disruptions from pandemic. And, with fewer people filling up their gas tanks, the demand for ethanol made from corn has cratered.