Those who have followed the MAGAnomic trade and economic policy closely were aware a tonal shift had taken place in the last several weeks.
Specifically because of their weak position, and faced with the first U.S. President in their modern economic history who intends to stop the erosion of American wealth, China intentionally used North Korean aggression in order to create trade leverage with the U.S.
Today, at the U.S./China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue in Washington DC Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross left no room to doubt the approach President Trump and the U.S. trade team are going to take in the upcoming trade standoff.
At opening remarks between the two sides, Ross outlined the U.S. trade gap with China in unusually blunt terms. While U.S. exports to China have grown in recent years, imports have expanded even faster, leading to a $309 billion trade deficit.

“If this were just the natural product of free-market forces, we could understand it, but it’s not,” Ross said, as Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang looked on. “So it’s time to rebalance in our trade and investment relationship in a more fair, equitable and reciprocal manner.”  (video below)

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In February U.S. President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping agreed to a format for ongoing trade discussion and economic dialog.  The outcome of their discussions was a 100 day road map to include way-points for economic dialog.
An outcome from the way-point approach was a showing of good faith with China opening their market to U.S. Beef export and the purchase of U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG), while allowing greater access to its financial services sector to U.S.   However, significant trade imbalance remains and ongoing U.S./China economic dialog was scheduled.
Today Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, USTR Robert Lighthizer and White House Adviser Jared Kushner  attended the next phase US – China Comprehensive Economic Dialog meeting.

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*NOTE* after Wilbur Ross delivered his brutally honest remarks the Chinese contingent to the talks cancelled a 5:00pm press conference.
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Earlier in the year President Trump established a commission to review U.S. election integrity.  Earlier today the first meeting of that Commission on Providing Election Integrity took place.
The meeting video is below which begins with remarks by Vice-President Mike Pence and President Donald Trump. (A Transcript follows):

[Transcript] 11:28 A.M. EDT – THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, good morning. Please be seated. On behalf of the First Family, welcome to the White House. And welcome to the inaugural meeting of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.
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It would appear Mitch McConnell, and the larger congress, just lit the fuse on “the big ugly“.  Winter is coming.

• President Trump has requested all Republican Senators to attend a White House luncheon, held entirely in their honor, tomorrow.  • President Trump has also announced a MAGA rally to be held in Youngstown Ohio, next week.   • Not coincidentally this rally announcement comes on the same day Ohio governor John Kasich writes an op-ed in the New York Times gleefully celebrating the defeat of the senate healthcare reform and  ObamaCare repeal. • HHS Secretary Tom Price is NOT HAPPY.
Oh yeah, the Big Ugly is coming.  President Trump is not a politician.

The failure of congress to pass Obamacare reform means the tax reform agenda for the middle class is now far less likely.  The UniParty Congress know this.  The UniParty Congress is doing the bidding of the lobbyists.
The escalating costs of ObamaCare, specifically because of the Medicaid expansion, means increased tax revenues are needed to pay for the program.  John Kasich, and his crew of like-minded governors (there are eleven) demand their state get more federal dollars.  This means more income tax revenues are needed.  This means no middle-class tax relief.
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To understand the larger objectives of the global and financial elite it is important to understand the three-decade global financial construct they seek to protect. Global financial exploitation of national markets:

♦Multinational corporations purchase controlling interests in various national elements of developed industrial western nations.
♦The Multinational Corporations making the purchases are underwritten by massive global financial institutions, multinational banks.
♦The Multinational Banks and the Multinational Corporations then utilize lobbying interests to manipulate the internal political policy of the targeted nation state(s).
♦With control over the targeted national industry or interest, the multinationals then leverage export of the national asset (exfiltration) through trade agreements structured to the benefit of lesser developed nation states – where they have previously established a proactive financial footprint.

Since initially explaining this modern import/export dynamic some have asked for specific examples in order to gain a better understanding.  There are a myriad of interests within each sector that make specific explanation very challenging.  However, here’s an attempt.
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Earlier today USTR Robert Lighthizer released President Trump’s NAFTA Objectives outline to congress and the American people.  The NAFTA renegotiations are scheduled to begin in August.
The bilateral trade negotiations with the EU (European Union), S.E.A.N. (Southeast Asian Nations), China, U.K. and all other nations will follow -individually- after the NAFTA process is complete.

It cannot be overstated how critical this is.  Please, please, understand.  There are trillions of dollars at stake.   All political opposition to President Donald Trump will increase in exponential severity as the dates of these renegotiated trade deals draws closer.  There are trillions of dollars at stake.   The entities outlined below will throw everything at the current administration in an effort to secure a better financial outcome for their interests.
Multinational Corporations, Wall Street interests and Multinational Financial stakeholders (mostly banks and foreign governments), have lobbied DC politicians for decades to create trade outcomes favorable to them.  It is, at its core, the financial and policy cancer that has distributed America’s physical and financial wealth globally. Additionally, multinational corporate media are part of this entire process and are stakeholders in the outcomes.
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President Trump delivers opening remarks to celebrate Made in The USA manufacturing week, a presidential initiative.

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Sometimes we just sits and thinks… and sometimes we just thinks and laughs… This truly is the greatest of times to be alive and engaged.  All, because, Trump stuff.

After reminding ourselves there’s no longer an actual media apparatus (per se’) in the historic sense of assembling facts, just facts, that explain situations; we once again see a brutal example of an answer to a simple economic question ignored by media.
Yesterday, within a MAGAnomics discussion thread, the question was asked:

♦ How long do you think the Chinese economy can sustain itself? When will it run out of steam? Could you maybe add some meat to the bone of what a trade war may look like with China, in terms of what we can expect to happen?

My own reply was rather simplistic:

♦ A trade confrontation with China will remove the cloak of capitalism and show the true colors of totalitarian control behind the Chinese economic mask.  Confronting China’s Oz, economically, is simply sending in Toto (Wilbur Ross) to pull back the curtain. Easy peasy.

As if on cue… here comes Xi Jinping to deliver the audio visual demonstration. (more…)

OMB Director Mick Mulvaney has an explanatory outline, promoted by the White House, explaining the administration’s economic principles: “MAGAnomics”.
Introducing MAGAnomics
By Mick Mulvaney – Wall Street Journal – July 13, 2017
If the Trump administration has one overarching goal, it’s to Make America Great Again. But what does this mean? It means we are promoting MAGAnomics—and that means sustained 3% economic growth.
For most of our nation’s modern history, a healthy American economy meant one that grew at roughly 3.5%. That was the average growth rate between the late 1940s and 2007. Since then, it has hardly topped 2%.
The difference between those two growth rates is staggering. If the American economy had grown at only 2% between the end of World War II and 2000, average household income would have been roughly $26,000 instead of $50,000.
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In 2016 CTH first predicted the intellectual economic disconnect that would arise out of the paradigm shift in economic principles. Initially I called it “the economic third dimension” – SEE HERE.
As time progressed through the second fiscal quarter of 2017 (Jan-March) again, we noted how the Federal Reserve was exactly failing to understand this “third dimension”; the space between Wall Street and Main Street fiscal policy – SEE HERE.

Finally today, for the first time, we see a federal reserve voting official begin to question the underlying economic assumptions of the Fed. Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans is the first federal official to identify the disconnect between federal economic policy and actual economic outcomes:

WASHINGTON – […] Inflation has run below the Fed’s 2 percent target over the past eight years, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans noted.
“This is a serious policy outcome miss,” he said in remarks prepared for a conference in Idaho.
[…] Even as inflation has tumbled this year, Fed officials have brushed it off, indicating that they believe that one-off factors are keeping prices low. Those include cellphone service prices cratering because of carriers bidding to offer unlimited data plans. Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen and others have suggested that inflation is likely to head back up after those temporary price drops slow overall prices.

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