White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci interviewed by Paul Ryan’s best friend in media, CBS John Dickerson.

The U.S. building industry is a manufacturing sector made up of individual smaller material sectors.  Steel rebar is one such sub-sector.

WILBUR ROSS – U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross today announced the affirmative final determination in this antidumping duty (AD) investigation, finding that steel concrete reinforcing bar from Taiwan is being sold in the U.S. market at unfair prices.

The Commerce Department determined that exporters from Taiwan have sold steel concrete reinforcing bar in the United States at 3.50 percent to 32.01 percent at less than fair value based on factual evidence provided by the interested parties.

The Commerce Department will instruct U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to collect cash deposits from importers of steel concrete reinforcing bar from Taiwan based on these final rates.

“The United States can no longer sit back and watch as its essential industries like steel are destroyed by foreign companies unfairly selling their products in the U.S. markets,” said Secretary Ross. “We will continue to take action on behalf of U.S. industry to defend American businesses, their workers, and our communities adversely impacted by unfair imports.”

In 2016, imports of steel concrete reinforcing bar from Taiwan were valued at an estimated $53 million.

The Rebar Trade Action Coalition filed the case with the Commerce Department on behalf of its individual members:

• Byer Steel Group, Inc., Cincinnati, Ohio
• Commercial Metals Co., Irving, Texas
• Gerdau Armisteel U.S., Inc., Tampa, Fla.
• Nucor Corp., Charlotte, N.C.
• Steel Dynamics, Inc., Pittsboro, Ind.

Enforcement of U.S. trade law is a prime focus of the Trump administration. From January 20, 2017, through July 21, 2017, Commerce has initiated 54 antidumping and countervailing duty investigations – a 40 percent increase from the previous year. For the same time period in 2016, Commerce had initiated 40 antidumping and countervailing duty investigations.

Antidumping laws provide U.S. businesses and workers with an internationally accepted mechanism to seek relief from the harmful effects of dumping unfairly priced products into the United States. Commerce currently maintains 404 antidumping and countervailing duty orders which provide relief to American companies and industries impacted by unfair trade.

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) is conducting an investigation to determine whether or not the domestic industry is harmed by imports of steel concrete reinforcing bar from Taiwan. The ITC is currently scheduled to make its final injury determination on or before September 5.

If the ITC makes an affirmative final injury determination, Commerce will issue an antidumping order. If the ITC makes a negative final injury determination, the investigation will be terminated and no order will be issued.  Click HERE for a fact sheet on today’s decision.  (link)

Short interview with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney discussing ObamaCare and the potential for Tax Reform.  Unfortunately, one of the key budgetary issues with the failure of ObamaCare reform is the downstream effect on any middle-class tax reform.

Within ObamaCare’s current -mostly political- structure, the expansive growth of Medicaid means tax-paying workers will pay more for insurance premiums and will also be held captive to the need for additional revenue to pay for medicaid; a double whammy.

The increasing taxpayer costs to keep big government ObamaCare operational, for non-taxpaying medicaid recipients, means the middle-class is once again sacrificed at the altar of the Big Club.

American workers on the individual market will not only see increased insurance rates, but their income tax rates will also be higher as the need to subsidize the lower-income non-working group (medicaid) remains.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday unanimously approved the nomination of Christopher Wray to be FBI director following the dismissal of the agency’s former chief, James Comey, by President Donald Trump.

All 20 members of the committee voted to approve Wray, a white-collar crime lawyer and former assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, sending his nomination to the full Senate for a vote. (read more)

A recent article written by Roger Ailes confidant Michael Wolff affirms one of the more transparently obvious hidden secrets in the 2015/2016 presidential race and election.

Fox News owner/mogul Rupert Murdoch was intensely against the candidacy of Donald Trump. So much so that Murdoch instructed former President of Fox News, Roger Ailes, to shape favorable coverage toward anyone other than Donald Trump, including a request to tilt toward support for Hillary Clinton.

New York – […] It was Ailes’ tacit support of Trump that, in part, made his removal from Fox all the more urgent for the Murdochs. And it was not just the liberal sons who were agitated by Ailes’ regard for Trump, but also the father, whose tabloid, the New York Post, helped create Trump, but who found him now, with great snobbery, not of “our” conservative class. (“When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?” Murdoch senior tweeted the day after Trump officially declared himself a candidate.)

Murdoch instructed Ailes to tilt to anyone but Trump, Ailes confided to me before he was fired, even Hillary. (Ailes, for his part, characterized Murdoch’s periodic efforts at interference as similar to Nixon’s instructions to bomb this or that country — best ignored.)

After the election, a confounded Murdoch had to call on his ex-wife Wendi’s friends, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, to broker a rapprochement with the disreputable Donald. Now, to Trump’s great satisfaction, a humbled Murdoch is a constant caller. (read more)

All intellectually honest media and political observers already knew this was the basic premise for Fox News in the 2015 and 2016 presidential race.   Murdoch supported Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio as the frontrunners.

The August 2015 ambush by Murdoch’s princess Megyn Kelly was merely a highly visible example of Murdoch’s aversion. Kelly was later paid $10 million by Harper Collins, another Murdoch company, as advance payment on her book deal.

After Jeb Bush dropped out, the executive in charge of Fox News debates was Bill Sammon. Sammon’s daughter, Brooke Sammon, was head of Marco Rubio’s communication team.  Murdoch was furious at Chris Christie when he took Rubio to the woodshed in the New Hampshire debate.

If you alert your family not to schedule anything important on round-one NAFTA days, well, you might just be a trade and economics nerd.  LOL  Seriously, this is one of the biggest economic processes that falls almost exclusively outside of the reach of lobbyists.

And within this entire NAFTA trade construct there is little to zero downside to walking away. If Team Trump don’t get what they want from a completely reworked trilateral agreement, they can always just eliminate NAFTA and work on bilateral agreements with Mexico and Canada as individual trade partners. Team USA hold all the leverage.  

USTR is anticipating seven rounds of talks which will take place at three week intervals.

The first round is scheduled for August 16th through 20th in Washington DC.

Washington, D.C. – United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer today announced arrangements for the first round of negotiations for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The first round of the negotiations between the United States, Canada and Mexico will take place in Washington, D.C. from August 16 – 20, 2017.

The negotiations immediately follows the 90-day consultation period with Congress and the public initiated on May 18, 2017. On that day, Ambassador Lighthizer notified Congress of President Trump’s intent to renegotiate NAFTA to get a better deal for America’s workers, farmers, businesses and manufacturers.

Ambassador Lighthizer also announced that John Melle, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for the Western Hemisphere, will serve as Chief Negotiator for the NAFTA negotiations. In his role as Chief Negotiator, Melle will be responsible for the day-to-day negotiations at the staff level.

Since joining USTR in 1988, John Melle has held a number of positions covering Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean and Central America. As Assistant USTR for the Western Hemisphere, he is responsible for developing, coordinating and implementing the United States’ trade policy for the region.  (read more)