Trump news: President explodes in astonishing attack on Federal Reserve and orders US companies to cease trading with China 'immediately'
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Donald Trump has launched an extraordinary attack on the Federal Reserve and its chairman Jerome Powell while seemingly demanding US companies cease trading with China “immediately” as the rival superpower upped the ante in their ongoing trade war by hiking tariffs on $75bn (£61bn) of American goods.
After Mr Powell addressed a central bank symposium in Wyoming and declined to say he would cut interest rates in accordance with the president’s wishes, the commander-in-chief exploded on Twitter and asked who is the “the bigger enemy” of the US, Mr Powell or Chinese premier Xi Jinping.
“Our Country has lost, stupidly, Trillions of Dollars with China over many years,” he ranted, ordering American businesses to seek alternatives to working with China and telling US delivery companies like FedEx and UPS to “SEARCH FOR & REFUSE all deliveries of Fentanyl from China”, blaming Beijing for the US opioid crisis.
Stocks fell sharply on Wall Street after Mr Trump said he would respond to China’s latest tariff increase and called on US companies to consider alternatives to doing business in China.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank more than 300 points after the president made the announcements on Twitter.
Trump protests: President visits Texas and Ohio after mass shootings
Show all 31The stocks of all three companies the president mentioned also dropped as traders tried to understand what the implications for them were.
Stocks had been wavering between gains and losses earlier after China said it would retaliate against the latest round of tariffs imposed by Washington.
China said Friday that it will also increase import duties on US-made autos and auto parts. The retaliation pulled global markets into negative territory.
Mr Trump’s current economic rating in a new Associated Press poll represents a 5 percentage point drop from the same time last year, but for a president who has struggled to win over a majority of American voters on any issue, the economy represents a relative strength.
Even some Democrats approve: Just 5 per cent of Democrats approve of his job performance overall, but 16 per cent approve of his handling of the economy.
Additional reporting by AP. Please allow a moment for our liveblog to load
Uh oh.
Vladimir Putin has ordered Russia's military to prepare a "symmetrical response" after the US carried out a cruise missile test.
The Pentagon said on Monday it had tested a conventionally-configured cruise missile that hit its target after more than 310 miles of flight, the first such test since the United States pulled out of a major arms control treaty with Russia on 2 August.
Putin said Russia could not stand idly by, and that US talk of deploying new missiles in the Asia-Pacific region "affects our core interests as it is close to Russia's borders", according to a transcript of his remarks on the Kremlin website.
Sure Don. It's just the rest of the country you have to convince.
Trump may have been frustrated in his bid to buy Greenland but the youth arm of Belgian right-wing nationalist party New Flemish Alliance has offered to sell him the French-speaking region of Wallonia for €1.
The party, which wants an independent Flemish state, wrote to him on Twitter saying: "Dear President, one Euro and Wallonia is yours. Call us."
He has yet to respond to the young wags.
Their tweet is of course a nod to this, which Trump tweeted on Tuesday when he was in far more jovial mood regarding the subject.
The Trump administration is planning for a round of in-person talks between US and Chinese officials in September after a constructive exchange this week between deputy-level negotiators, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Thursday.
Kudlow also said trade talks underway between Japanese economy minister Toshimitsu Motegi and US trade representative Robert Lighthizer were yielding pretty good progress on agriculture and telecoms issues.
"The deputies' call [with Chinese officials] was quite constructive and this may lead to a meeting of the principals here in Washington, DC," Kudlow said, referring to a teleconference involving deputy-level officials on Wednesday.
He added that the deputies had agreed to another conference call and were working through some of the key issues to make recommendations to the principals.
"We are still planning for the Chinese team to come over here in September," Kudlow said, declining to name a date.
The United States and China have been locked in a heated months-long trade dispute with tit-for-tat tariffs that have roiled markets and weighed on growth.
Earlier this month, Trump backed off a 1 September deadline for imposing tariffs on thousands of Chinese imports and officials in Beijing and Washington announced renewed trade discussions.
But little progress has been seen after trade talks between the world's top economies broke down in May. Some economists now fear the trade war with China could spur a US recession, hurting Trump's reelection chances in 2020.
Kudlow dismissed fears of a downturn, noting "We don't anticipate anything but a solid strong economy." He also called talks with Japan a "very good story."
But Japan's Motegi on Wednesday noted there were still gaps that needed to be filled before Tokyo and Washington could agree on a bilateral trade deal and that negotiations with his US counterpart were "very tough."
Reuters
More denials on the economy from Trump, who again insists the prospect of a recession is a media fabrication and threatens: "I always find a way to win."
He has also retweeted that laughable Zogby poll again from Monday.
Here's the latest.
North Korea’s foreign minister has called Mike Pompeo a “poisonous plant of American diplomacy” and vowed to “shutter the absurd dream” that sanctions will force a change in Pyongyang.
The North’s blistering rhetoric may dim the prospect for an early resumption of nuclear negotiations between the countries. A senior American diplomat said earlier this week that Washington was ready to restart the talks, a day after the US and South Korean militaries ended their regular drills that Pyongyang called an invasion rehearsal.
North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong-ho made the comments to protest Pompeo’s remarks in an interview in which he said that Washington will maintain crippling sanctions on North Korea unless it denuclearises.
Ri said he couldn’t just let the “reckless remarks” by Pompeo pass by him because they came amid a possible restart of the nuclear talks.
Ri said Pompeo is a “brazen” man because he “had begged for” North Korean denuclearisation and improved bilateral ties when he visited Pyongyang and met leader Kim Jong-un several times.
Pompeo with Ri (Andrew Harnik/AP)
In April, North Korea demanded President Donald Trump remove Pompeo from the nuclear negotiations.
Ri said North Korea is ready for both dialogue and confrontation. But he warned that North Korea will try to remain “America’s biggest threat” if the United States continues to confront the North with sanctions.
Ri was likely referring to comments by Pompeo during an interview with The Washington Examiner earlier this week, in which he said that the US will “continue to keep on the sanctions that are the toughest in all of history and continue to work towards convincing Chairman Kim and the North Korean leaders that the right thing to do is for them to denuclearise.”
North Korea is notorious for crude and fiery diatribes against the United States and South Korea, although it lately focused its anger on South Korea rather than the US, particularly over the allies’ military drills.
During the drills, North Korea carried out a slew of short-range missile and other weapons tests capable of hitting much of South Korea, not the mainland US. Some experts said these suggest that North Korea was interested in resuming talks with Washington.
The top US envoy on North Korea, Stephen Biegun, said on Wednesday that the United States was “prepared to engage as soon as we hear from our counterparts in North Korea.”
US-led negotiations on North Korea’s nuclear weapons collapsed after Trump rejected Kim’s demand for widespread sanctions relief in return for partial disarmament steps during their second summit in Vietnam in February. Trump and Kim met again at the Korean border in late June and agreed to resume the talks.
AP
Trump's re-election campaign hosted events in 2020 battleground states on Thursday to mobilise and train suburban women, an important voting bloc that defected from Republicans during last year's congressional contests.
Campaign representatives - including conservative commentators, a former Apprentice contestant, a beauty pageant winner, and campaign and White House staff tried to persuade women at gatherings in 13 states including Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio to talk openly about their support for Trump and encourage others to do the same.
Jessie Jane Duff, a member of the advisory board for the Trump campaign's women coalition, told about 100 mostly white women packed into the basement of the Fairfax County Republican Party headquarters in Virginia that "the greatest threat to Democrats are right here. Women."
But some women at the Fairfax event, which drew professors, retirees and a software engineer, said they often refrain from discussing their support for Trump because they fear being seen differently in the workplace.
A woman named Sydney, a law student at a university in Washington who did not want to give her full name, said she supported the president's policies even if he sometimes was too brash. Some of her classmates have been afraid to voice their opinions at school because of criticism from liberal students, she added.
The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted this week, shows 39 per cent of women approve of Trump's performance in office and 56 per cent disapprove. The numbers have hovered at these levels for a year.
Erin Perrine, a deputy press secretary for Trump, said the numbers did not reflect the true level of support for the president among women. She noted, for example, that 51 per cent of his donors in the latest quarter were women.
"We all know about the silent Trump supporter," said Perrine said, who was scheduled to host an event in North Carolina. "We want to empower women to share their stories about why they support President Trump and help bring more supporters into the fold."
The events, which coincide with the 99th anniversary of women suffrage, were put together in part by the Trump Victory Leadership Initiative, a grassroots arm of the campaign that will target key demographic groups in the months leading up to the November 2020 election.
Speakers in Fairfax highlighted Trump's economic record and how he has kept his promises on issues like immigration and healthcare.
"This president keeps his word," said Penny Nance, another "Women for Trump" advisory board member.
While Trump's efforts to build a wall on the US-Mexican border have stalled, he has persisted in a controversial crack down on immigration, including separating families.
A promise to lower prescription drug plans has not been met, and his hope of riding a strong economy into 2020 is facing headwinds from signs a recession may be looming.
Trump has had a checkered history with women, from messy divorces and allegations of sexual harassment to a video that came out during his 2016 election campaign that showed him bragging about how his money and power allowed him to "grab" women anywhere he liked.
In 2016, women overall favored Democrat Hillary Clinton, the first woman nominated for president by a major party, by roughly a 12-point margin over Trump. White women in particular ended up voting for Trump by nearly the same margin, exit polls showed.
Tana Goertz, who competed on Trump's reality television show Apprentice more than a decade ago and was set to host an event in Iowa, said voter contact would be key to winning.
"Yes, I am going to motivate them and give them techniques, but I am also get them registration information, other data and help turn them out," said Goertz, who is now a Trump campaign staffer.
Reuters
Ivanka Trump, a convert to Judaism since marrying Jared Kushner, is facing criticism for not standing up to her old man over his recent antisemitic outbursts.
Alexandra Haddow has more.
A handy preview of the G7 and its simmering tensions, as the president jets out for France.
Trump says he is looking forward to meeting with Boris Johnson in France but might be disappointed as Britain is unlikely to alter its approach on Iran, as the PM insists the 2015 deal remains the best way to ensure Tehran does not get nuclear weapons.
"We are strong supporters of the JCPOA (Iran deal). We think that it is very important that Iran doesn't get the nuclear weapons," said a senior diplomat speaking ahead of the G7 summit in Biarritz.
"It is important that it continues and I don't think you will find any change in the British government position."
The source said it was critical that Iran fully complied with the accord, but that while Johnson would listen to the US's position, there would not be a radical change in approach.
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