It has a granite fountain and a bosque of shade trees. And to some rightwing Americans, the new headquarters of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a monument to all that went wrong under eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency. The budget for the refurbishment of the Washington DC building, at about $363 a square foot, makes it more expensive than the Venetian hotel in Macau or […]
President Donald Trump’s populist views, reality television stardom, and penchant for Twitter insults all but guaranteed an out-of-the-ordinary first 100 days for the billionaire political neophyte. A look at the data reveals how Mr Trump compares with previous Oval Office occupants. Bills signed into law Enacted legislation for last seven presidents in first 100 days Source: govtrack.us The White House touts that Mr Trump has accomplished more […]
By John Irish | CHATELLERAULT, France CHATELLERAULT, France French presidential hopeful Emmanuel Macron launched a scathing attack on Friday against politicians who have failed to endorse him against far-right rival Marine Le Pen, saying they were making France “morally weak” and pandering to extremists. Having been caught on the hop by Le Pen since the start of the second round campaign this week, and with just over […]
When the Nasdaq Composite index first spent two days above the 5,000 mark, it signalled the last gasp of a spectacular bull market. Confidence in internet companies’ power to change the world and mint fortunes was about to collapse. Seventeen years later the market has hit a milestone of 6,000, part of a run of record highs for global equity markets. While stocks have again been rising […]
North Korea tested a ballistic missile on Saturday morning local time, in a provocative move that came just hours after Rex Tillerson, US secretary of state, called on UN member states to impose “painful” sanctions on the regime in Pyongyang. US Pacific Command, which oversees US forces in Asia, said North Korea launched a missile at 5.03am local time on Saturday from a location near Pukchang airfield, […]
Despite the proclaimed stand of Republican lawmakers to repeal and replace the Obamacare, or 2010 Affordable Care Act, the numbers are eluding the GOP (grand old party) lawmakers as factions within the party are divided on the matter. The GOP will require 216 votes to push their version of the healthcare bill. Factions, however, do not see eye to eye on many of the contentious issues incorporated […]
Good morning. Here’s our morning roundup of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. When Barack Obama was vacationing recently with Bruce Springsteen, Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey aboard a $300 million yacht in Tahiti, one wonders if he ever hummed Springsteen’s “All Or Nothin’ At All.” At the moment, it seems like he […]
WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump told Reuters on Thursday he will either renegotiate or terminate what he called a “horrible” free trade deal with South Korea and said Seoul should pay for a U.S. anti-missile system that he priced at $1 billion. In an interview with Reuters, Trump called the five-year-old trade pact with South Korea “unacceptable” and said it would be targeted for renegotiation after his […]
With Democrats seemingly unsatisfied with Republicans dropping border wall funding and adjusting on Obamacare-related items, it appears President Trump is calling Schumer’s and Pelosi’s bluff, proclaiming “If there’s a shutdown, there’s a shutdown,” adding that Democrats would be to blame if the federal government was left unfunded. Schumer today: *SCHUMER: TRUMP CONCESSIONS BRING SPENDING DEAL CLOSER TO FINISH *SCHUMER SAYS ‘SOME STICKING POINTS’ LEFT ON SPENDING BILL […]
WASHINGTON President Donald Trump complained on Thursday that the United States was being unfairly treated in the Paris Climate Agreement and told Reuters he would announce a decision in about two weeks on whether Washington would remain in the accord. The Republican Trump, elected in November, had vowed during his campaign to withdraw from the Paris accord within 100 days of becoming president, part of a broader […]
Exactly one month after Trump was humiliated by his own party, when in the last moment the House failed to get the number of votes to pass a Republican healthcare bill due to holdouts from the conservative Freedom Caucus, the president’s second attempt to repeal Obamacare before his first 100 days in office run out, appears on the edge of failure. However, whereas the latest effort succeeded […]
Since at its core, yesterday’s 1-page “tax plan” was a Goldman creation, who better to explain what Trump offered than Goldman Sachs itself, which it did overnight in a far lengthier note from its chief Washington analyst Alec Phillips. Here is Goldman with an elaboration of the handful of bullet points contained on the much anticipated one page, extended to 6 pages. Q&A on the President’s Tax […]
The big announcement of the really, really big Trump Tax Plan with the “biggest tax cuts in history” came out bigly on Wednesday, as Trump promised. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, Trump’s latest tax team, beamed proudly as they presented their baby. The stock market took a deep breath, then looked at their brainchild and completely petered out. First, let me say, I clearly have nothing to recant […]
The remarks, in an interview that was recorded Tuesday, came at the end of Ms. Trump’s rocky 24-hour trip this week to Germany, her first official foray since taking a West Wing office last month. Continue reading the main story A spokeswoman for Ms. Trump did not respond to questions about her position on immigration — or about whether her remarks were intended to pressure her father. […]
Breitbart News hit a wall Tuesday in its campaign to storm the ramparts of the media establishment when one of the most influential press associations in Washington, D.C. denied its application for credentials to cover Congress because of concerns over the site’s funding, staffing, workspace and independence. The decision by the Standing Committee of Correspondents of the House and Senate Press Gallery — a body chaired by […]
Two of America’s most prominent Republican dynasties — the Bushes and the Romneys — are locked in a $1bn-plus battle to acquire the Miami Marlins baseball team, in a tangled sale process that previously included a rival bid from the family business of Jared Kushner. A consortium bid fronted by Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and presidential candidate, and Derek Jeter, the retired New York Yankees […]
President Donald Trump’s top economic team unveiled what they called the biggest tax cut in US history, proposing a sharp reduction in corporate taxes and a simplification of individual rates they said would unleash economic growth. Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said the proposal would slash corporate taxes from 35 per cent to 15 per cent and include a “one-time” cut-rate tax to induce companies to repatriate […]
By Patricia Zengerle | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. lawmakers want to emerge from briefings by the Trump administration on North Korea on Wednesday with something many think has been absent from the White House so far: a clear strategy for dealing with a major national security threat. As a standoff escalated over the reclusive Asian nation’s development of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, President Donald Trump invited […]
PARIS France’s centre-right party, seeking to rebound after the defeat of its presidential candidate, said on Wednesday it could share power with Emmanuel Macron if he is elected, as pollsters predict, on May 7. Macron, a 39-year-old centrist, is tipped to comfortably win a run-off vote against far-right leader Marine Le Pen, but the political movement he created a year ago faces a huge challenge in the […]
Moments ago the House Freedom Caucus announced their support for a revised version of an Obamacare replacement bill that includes the so-called “MacArthur Amendment.” Here is the official statement from Freedom Caucus Chair Mark Meadows: “Over the past couple of months, House conservatives have worked tirelessly to improve the American Health Care Act (AHCA) to make it better for the American people. Due to improvements to the […]
By Amanda Becker and Ginger Gibson | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON President Donald Trump will release a tax plan on Wednesday that proposes to sharply slash rates on businesses and overseas corporate profits returned to the United States, officials said. The Trump administration is touting the blueprint, which also calls for higher standard deductions for individuals, as a landmark tax cut just days before the Republican president marks his […]
No president likes being judged on his first hundred days in office, not least Donald Trump. It is, he tweeted last week, a “ridiculous standard” by which to be measured, even though he also claimed to have accomplished “a lot”. With his 100th day in the White House falling on Saturday, investors have more nuanced ideas. For much of 2017 financial markets have doubted the global “Trump […]
With little macro data overnight (aside from a modestly disappointing Australian CPI print), offset by an ongoing of corporate profits (this is the single busiest week for corporate earnings in more than 10 years), today everyone’s attention will be focused on three things to come out of Washington: taxes, healthcare, spending. And while we did our best to summarize what is known and unknown last night, this […]
By Dan Levine | SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO A U.S. judge on Tuesday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order that sought to withhold federal funds from so-called sanctuary cities, dealing another legal blow to the administration’s efforts to toughen immigration enforcement. The ruling from U.S. District Judge William Orrick III in San Francisco said Trump’s Jan. 25 order targeted broad categories of federal funding for sanctuary governments […]
