This past week I asked a friend at the White House about how the president was holding up against the onslaught of media attacks. "They didn't even deliver a glancing blow," was the response. It wasn't for a lack of trying.
Love him or hate him, you've got to hand it to Donald Trump. His trade and tariff strategy -- risky as it is -- seems to be working. The master negotiator is hammering out agreements -- first with the Europeans and now with Mexico -- that are better deals for American firms and workers.
There's an old cliche that the Federal Reserve likes to take away the punch bowl just when the party is getting going. That's what President Trump suspects that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is doing now by raising interest rates at a time of a booming economy.
Take a wild guess what country is reducing its greenhouse gas emissions the most? Canada? Britain? France? India? Germany? Japan? No, no, no, no, no and no.
From the first day Donald Trump started running for president, he has raged against America's large and persistent trade deficit. His tariff policies are designed to try to reduce these trade imbalances. It is the metric he uses to gage whether other nations are playing by the rules of our trade deals. As a pure economic accounting measure, the U.S. GDP goes down when we import and goes up when we export.
A few years ago, I spoke at my son's fifth-grade class about all of the wonderful things that we have today in our great country that weren't around 100 years ago, including inventions like cars. A ponytailed girl in the front of the room raised her hand and, with a solemn look on her face, scolded me: "Cars are bad. They cause pollution." Wow. These were 11-year-olds! It was one of my first encounters with the green indoctrination that goes on in public schools starting in the first grade.
The media and other Trump haters can't seem to let themselves admit it, but President Donald Trump scored a big victory for the American economy on trade last week. Trump and the European Union reached a handshake deal that is designed to lower tariffs on both sides of the Atlantic. They agreed to shoot for zero tariffs. Sounds like freer and fairer trade to me.
Once upon a time, "work for welfare" was a pretty accepted notion. In 1996, Bill Clinton signed a strict workfare bill, which was so popular that it helped him get reelected. A Brookings Institute study by welfare scholar Ron Haskins proved those reforms moved more than half of those on welfare (mostly young single moms) into the workforce, and millions eventually gained economic self-sufficiency.
One of Donald Trump's more memorable promises on the campaign trail was to lower the cost of prescription drugs. Polls show this issue remains popular with Americans, especially lower-income families, who are worried about high drug prices.
President Donald Trump's aluminum and steel tariff policies have now triggered retaliatory tariffs from other nations, including Canada, the EU and China.
Republicans are right to call for tough measures to deter illegal immigration -- which means building the wall, ending the "catch and release" policy and challenging the harboring strategies of sanctuary cities.
Last week, I testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on the state of the American labor market. I summarized my message in one sentence: For American workers, the job market has never -- or at least seldom -- been better. If you don't have a job, go out and get one, because jobs are out there for the taking.
All of a sudden, everyone on the left wants "free markets in energy policy." As someone who's advocated for that for, oh, about three decades, this riff should be music to my ears. But is laissez faire energy policy really what liberals are seeking?
The left is quickly running out of excuses for why Donald Trump's economic policies have caused a boom rather than the bust that they predicted with such great certainty.
Remember Obamacare? The fight is far from over on the future of the Obama-era health insurance overhaul. Republicans are making a last-ditch effort this year to turn the program and the money over to the state. This isn't full Obamacare repeal, but it would make a world of sense. States would be free to experiment and find ways to reduce costs and provide better services.
T.S. Eliot famously wrote that April is the cruelest month, but when it comes to America's fiscal picture, nothing could be further from the truth about this April. The latest government numbers confirm that last month was a blockbuster for growth, federal revenues and deficit reduction.
Donald Trump is now deep into trade negotiations with China and NAFTA 2.0 negotiations with Canada and Mexico. We are strong free traders, but we believe that Trump's plans to negotiate better trade agreements that reduce trade barriers abroad are right on the mark. He also has to make sure those deals fully protect U.S. intellectual property, or what is commonly called know-how.
Is anyone paying attention to the crisis that is going on in our electric power markets?
What is it about the internet that makes it so the government just can't seem to keep its greedy paws off of it?
I have argued many times on these pages and elsewhere that the shale oil and gas revolution is the story of the decade. Since 2007 U.S. oil and gas output has risen by about 75 percent, and the renaissance is still in its infancy stages.
