Washington Insider

Food Safety News is running a guest editorial this week on the need to recall tainted tuna. The writer is Sandra Eskin who directs the Pew Charitable Trusts' work on food safety, a non-partisan, global research and public policy effort dedicated to serving...

There has been a good bit of back and forth about the winners and losers in the phase-one trade deal with China, with most of the applause coming from administration insiders. However, Politico Magazine contributing editor Zachary Karabell has gone even...

China has, indeed, become an economically strong world competitor. The hoped-for phase two of the China deal will be focused on a number of the remaining areas of anti-competitive behavior and will rely less on direct trade interventions like tariffs. The...

Most of the press is focused on the first phase of the China trade deal this week but there is another effort underway as Europe's new trade commissioner has come to Washington. His mission is "to prevent the Trump administration from ruining the...

The New York Times reported this week that the Trump administration "formally removed China's designation as a currency manipulator on Monday, offering a major concession to the Chinese government as senior officials arrived in Washington to sign a trade...

Bloomberg reported recently that while current data are suggesting that President Donald Trump may be poised to deliver on one of his biggest economic promises: Reducing the annual U.S. trade deficit with China and the world, that accomplishment could come...

The Labor Department's monthly jobs report released last week suggests that the economy ended 2019 on a steady footing, the New York Times reported last week. The American labor market "still shows few signs that it is running out of breath."

American businesses and consumers, and not China, are bearing the financial brunt of President Trump's trade war, the New York Times said this week, and new data is undermining the president's assertion that the United States is "taxing the hell out of...

The Senate's top appropriators said this week that they are hoping the Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 budget that the President will send to Capitol Hill next month will closely follow the parameters of the recent two-year spending caps deal and "make it easier for...

Big internet companies have long been the target of complaints that they don't pay enough taxes. In response, France imposed a 3% levy last year on the digital revenue of companies that make their sales primarily in cyberspace, such as Facebook Inc. and...

The U.S. and the euro area face "daunting economic challenges" in a world of low inflation and interest rates and central banks alone don't have the tools to cope, according to former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi and ex-Federal Reserve...

Late last week, Federal Reserve officials reported on their review minutes of recent meetings and called their monetary policy "likely to remain appropriate for a time" even amid what they saw as persistent downside risks, Bloomberg reported over the...

The media is full of prognostications these days, mainly focused on the U.S. outlook. However, Bloomberg is focusing heavily on China, as well, and says this week that the tech industry there enters a new year after weathering unprecedented turbulence in...

In something of a shift from recent trends, Bloomberg is reporting this week that "as a new decade dawns, some, but not all, of the dark clouds hanging over the U.S. economy have cleared."

While many observers indicate hopes for fewer trade tensions following the expected phase one deal with China, there are indications the administration intends to continue to push forward with its "managed trade" initiatives in China and in numerous other...

The media are increasing their focus on trade policy now and pointing out that for years America's trade agreements have tried to break down economic barriers and remove tariffs and other impediments to cross-border commerce. However, the newly emerging...

Meat production in the U.S. is booming right now with optimism over increased export demand to China. The New York Times this focused on China's food production policies and charged that it "bungled the effort to contain African swine fever, a mistake that...

Bloomberg has published its review of what it expects the world's central banks to do next year, It labels this year as the time central banks jumped back into the fray, cutting interest to deal with a trade slowdown and subsequent declines in...

Amid all the chaos and anger in Washington these days, the New York Times reported on Sunday that President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil said "Mr. Trump decided not to pursue tariffs on Brazilian steel after a phone call on Friday."

While nearly everybody is happy to see reduced tensions between the U.S. and China over trade, new questions are being raised by many in the media regarding what the current deal means and what are the longer-term costs of the recent battle.