U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and a delegation of out-going and in-coming Mexican trade officials have been conducting intensive NAFTA negotiation talks for the past several weeks.  The out-going Mexican officials, led by Ildefonso Guajardo, are optimistic terms of agreement can be reached with the U.S; the incoming Mexican officials led by AMLO’s Jesus Seade, not so much.
The key issue is still the NAFTA fatal flaw that allows both Canada and Mexico to exploit their access to the U.S. market as brokers for imported Asian parts, assembled in Mexico/Canada, and the finished goods shipped into the U.S.  That structural issue remains unresolved; hence the impasse.
Meanwhile, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland wants to reenter the trade discussion after being shut out since the beginning of May.

(Reuters) – Canada is “very keen” on concluding negotiations to renew the North American Free Trade Agreement as soon as possible, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Saturday, amid signs of progress after months of delays.

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When President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the intensely short-sighted JCPOA (Iran deal), there was a period of preparation for our allies and partners prior to the re-institution of the first round of U.S. sanctions against Iran.   The transition period ends tomorrow as the sanctions begin August 6th, 2018.
Europe and NATO allies are under pressure to discontinue any trade action/terms with Iran as the U.S. sanctions will also apply toward any nation that engages in economic transactions with the Iranian regime.

Congressman Darrell Issa discusses the ongoing oversight over the FBI and DOJ by multiple congressional committees.  In this interview Issa discusses the requests by FBI Agent Peter Strzok to transfer a set of special intelligence authorities, gained during his investigation into candidate Trump, into the special council.

Representative Peter King (NY) discusses the agenda of the Trump administration and the mid-term elections with Maria Bartiromo.
Ms. Bartiromo notes how the accomplishments of the President are only highlighted when President Trump draws attention to them. The positive news is considerable and the economic policy success is off-the-charts, but the MSM focus on narrative engineering.

The activist who climbed the base of the Statue of Liberty on Independence Day, Therese Patricia Okoumou, held a press conference yesterday outside a New York Courthouse in front of an adoring crowd of Democrat supporters.
Ms. Okoumou is a 44-year-old immigrant from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She lives in the St. George neighborhood of Staten Island, and took the opportunity yesterday to spew an anti-America chant during a news conference.  WATCH:

PHASE II – President Trump tweeted earlier today about the ongoing geopolitical contest that is priority #1 in defending U.S. interests and retaining our economic strength.
Do not be surprised if North Korea launches another provocative missile test soon. Watch China, not N.Korea. It’s Chairman Xi’s people in the DPRK who are taking action. Kim Jong-Un is an expendable proxy regime. The war is the U.S. -vs- China trade and economic confrontation. North Korea is the Potemkin backdrop for the Beijing puppeteer.

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As POTUS Trump and the U.S. trade team target ever increasing tariff pressure upon Beijing to change their behavior, keep a close eye on North Korea. Given the zero-sum approach of the Chinese; and their history of weaponizing the DPRK; we could expect to see Beijing roll out nuclear antagonism again in an overt effort to gain concessions.
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A new release from the FBI Vault on the Hillary Clinton email investigation reveals the Anthony Weiner/Huma Abedin laptop containing Clinton emails (350,000) and Blackberry communications (344,000) was never reviewed for intrusion prior to the 2016 election.

Here’s how we discover. However, first, the frustrating context:

From the Boston Marathon bombing investigation through the San Bernardino terrorist attack; passing the Garland, Texas cartoon terror shooting; and continuing through Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub; and then through the Parkland shooting and into Las Vegas -via the Mandalay Bay- we always knew something was wrong with the apparatus, the institutional apparatus, of the FBI… but it wasn’t until 2017 with James Comey, Andrew McCabe and the transparently corrupt Clinton exoneration and candidate Trump set-up scheme that we fully grasped the scale and scope of the corruption.
It is disconcerting to accept that the institution of the FBI is corrupt, soup-to-nuts, including every aforementioned field office and participant therein.  But reality doesn’t care about feelings; it just stares you in the face until we accept it.
Talking heads always approach the issue with a co-dependent and enabling qualifier: “we’re not talking about the field agents”, they say.  Um, no; that’s nonsense.  If the institution is corrupt, then every entity within it is corrupt – until such time as the corruption is removed.
Enter FBI Director Christopher Wray…
FBI Director Wray seems like an affable person who is, by all reasonable evaluations, entirely way-over-his-head in dealing with the systemic rot, cancer and corruption.
Sound harsh?  Go back and WATCH the post IG report (Clinton email investigation) press conference; it’s not harsh.   It takes a particular kind of corruption manager to stand in front of a national audience and tell the world there was no bias in the Clinton email investigation… yet, he’s going to put every employee of the FBI through “bias training”?
Yeah, un huh.
No bias… but everyone needs bias training.  Gotcha.
Perhaps a more nonsensical statement was declared somewhere…. but I couldn’t remember one… until…. well, until the same DOJ/FBI released the FISA application constructed by the institution of the FBI.  This is where we read:
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The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the July 2018 employment report today (full pdf with tables below) highlighting continued growth in jobs.  Overall private employment gained 170,000 jobs, while government employment decreased 13,000 jobs for a net gain of 156,000 new jobs.   The BLS unemployment rate dropped to 3.9%.
[*Note this footnote:  “The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for May was revised up to +268,000, and the change for June was revised up to +248,000. With these revisions, employment gains in May and June combined were 59,000 more than previously reported.”]  Huh, funny that…. some revision eh?
July’s labor participation is holding steady at 62.9%, with 155,965,000 employed within the U.S. workforce. (Table A-1)
Blue and White-collar Main Street jobs continue to lead the MAGAnomic resurgence. (table B-1) Construction jobs increased 19,000 jobs; manufacturing gained 37,000 jobs; and trade/transportation and utilities gaining 15,000.
With extra cash in their pockets, the U.S. worker/consumer continued to spend and retail employment added 7,100 new workers in July.   (Table B1) Interestingly, and reinforcing a long-ago CTH prediction, the consumer spending growth (leading to increases in employment) is specifically in the consumable goods sector (food, clothing, etc.).   This is connected to the increase in work-time (table B2); an oft overlooked aspect to the economy.
Truck transportation gained 4,400 jobs in July (everyone needs truckers), which is in line with the high wage growth (3.4%) within this sub-set of the transportation industry.

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Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross appears on Fox News this morning to discuss Phase II in the economic confrontation with China.  The hurt will increase until behavior changes.
Phase II is direct, deliberate and fully confrontational trade engagement with extreme prejudice to financially hurt the Chinese economy and present the communist regime with examples of what will lie ahead if they do not concede to U.S. terms.
The first objective in Phase II is to convince the Chinese the war is real.  Beijing cannot yet fathom the United States is not going to allow the import of low cost manufactured goods…. they believe, wrongly, against a history with all previous administrations, that President Trump is bluffing.

When I first saw this late last night, the severity of the vulgar racism expressed within the details made me pause… it couldn’t possibly be real.  Alas, it is real.
Stunningly, it is real.
Sarah Jeong is a writer of some sort who was hired by the New York Times to become an editor for their publication.   However, apparently someone on Twitter had encountered Ms. Jeong’s expressed ideology, and shared the content of the new editor’s twitter feed.
To say Ms. Jeong is a severe racist would be an understatement.  The level of racial anger, racial bitterness, race-based vulgarity, and expressed racial hatred is so over-the-top it seems the New York Times must be intent on creating some form of publicity from their decision to hire.
There is no-way a business could/would ever ACCIDENTALLY hire a person who has expressed such vitriolic hatred when their role and responsibility within the organization would be to promote the editorial perspective of the New York Times.  Meaning the New York Times supports and condones this type of overt racism.
A small sample of Ms. Sarah Joeng’s racial perspective is below.
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