Food imports into the U.S. are on the rise. The trend now is for agricultural commodity trade deficits, rather than surpluses, with key commodities like beef usually in a deficit. Despite the increase in food imports, the Food and Drug Administration conducted far fewer than the annual goal of 19,200 inspections, according to FDA data.
Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Bessent faced a divided Senate Finance Committee on Thursday for another Trump nomination hearing this week. To his credit, Bessent demonstrated a masterful view of the macroeconomics around tariffs, trade, and currency.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) will be confirmed as Secretary of State. He had very little pushback in his confirmation hearing among his colleagues on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Senator Michael Crapo (R-ID) is already setting his agenda: renewing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), expiring this year, and new trade deals that open agriculture markets to U.S. exports.
The goods and services trade deficit rose 7.6% in November to $78.2 billion, a big leap from previous months when the deficit was trailing under the three month moving average, based on Bureau of Economic Analysis data released this week.
A mostly Democratic Party panel of members of the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) held a hearing on tariffs on Wednesday, where the room was heavily weighted against incoming president Trump’s 10% (or 20%) universal tariff proposal.
Biden’s signature climate change-related spending policy, the Inflation Reduction Act, is said to be going under the knife once Trump takes office in January. But with Republican districts now full of solar, and solar manufacturing facilities, the real risk is changes to the so-called 45X tax credit.
The takeaway from the roughly 90 minute hearing titled “Rebuilding the Arsenal of Democracy” was that the government needed long term contracts and more money to build up defense systems because, based on war games conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the U.S. struggled to hold its own.
President-elect Donald Trump read Mexico and Canada the riot act on Monday night, telling them if they don’t seal their border and – in Mexico’s case – drastically slow the flow of fentanyl and other narcotics into the U.S., they’ll be hit with 25% tariffs starting January 20, 2025.
Either we have a fashion industry or we have de minimis, but we cannot have both, warned Jacob Helberg, one of the 10 commissioners for the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission.
