China’s President Xi Jinping will have talks with President Trump on Thursday at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Last week, Trump tweeted that the meeting would be “very difficult.” The U.S. has a $347 billion trade deficit with China. In the election campaign, Trump also threatened to label China a “currency manipulator,” a designation that could […]

President Trump issued two executive orders dealing with trade today. One will start a 90-day clock for the Commerce Department to report back on countries unfairly subsidizing their exports to the U.S. That’s called dumping. Second, the administration will look into whether countervailing duties imposed by the U.S. when it finds another country is dumping are […]

If you want to be loved, you don’t go to work for the Congressional Budget Office. The non-partisan agency’s job is to make economic projections and provide Congress with all sorts of budget data. Data that fails to account for all sorts of possibilities and invariably makes somebody unhappy. The agency earned the wrath of […]

Following the collapse of the House GOP health plan, President Trump and congressional Republicans say they will now pivot to tax reform. But they have got some serious heavy lifting to do before they get there. The appropriations bill passed last November expires at the end of April. With Republicans divided, the GOP may now […]

The White House says it will try to roll back a host of climate initiatives from the Obama administration. These are rules that apply to power plants and coal mines, for instance. But also look out for a sweeping attempt to undercut the government’s way of measuring climate pollution. Right now, federal agencies have to […]

What now? That’s the question after House Republicans last week failed to pass a repeal-and-replacement bill for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Over the weekend President Trump predicted the ACA will “explode.” One way that could happen is if more insurers drop out of state and federal exchanges in 2018. They’re worried […]

Kushner will try to marry private-sector efficiency with government bureaucracy.