Trump: Handelskrig är bra - Strafftull på stål och aluminium

A powerful Chinese billionaire has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges that he evaded nearly $2 billion in tariffs as part of a conspiracy to smuggle massive quantities of aluminum into the U.S.

The indictment, which was reached in May but not unsealed until this week, accuses Liu Zhongtian, founder of Chinese aluminum giant China Zhongwang Holdings Inc., of conspiring to defraud the U.S. through a sprawling scheme spanning the company’s headquarters in Liaoning, China, ports in Los Angeles and a remote desert in Mexico. It alleges that the scheme began in 2008 and has continued to the present day.

President Trump said that the U.S. would impose 10% tariffs on an additional $300 billion in Chinese goods and products beginning on Sept. 1, after trade talks this week failed to yield any significant results.

In a series of tweets, Mr. Trump, who received a briefing from his trade team Thursday, said that negotiators still planned to resume their discussions, as scheduled next month, and expressed his interest in reaching “a comprehensive Trade Deal” with China.

However, he said that China’s promise to increase its purchase of U.S. agricultural products, as well as its promise to stop the sale of fentanyl to the U.S. have fallen short.

A two-year agreement to raise federal spending and at the same time lift the government’s borrowing limit will go to the president’s desk after it passed the Senate with more Democrats voting for it than Republicans.

The bill, which provides for more than $2.7 trillion in discretionary spending over the next two years, was the result of weeks of negotiations between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). It suspends the debt ceiling until the end of July 2021 and sets spending levels roughly $320 billion above limits set in a 2011 law.

While President Trump and Republican leadership have celebrated the increases in military spending the deal calls for, conservatives in the House and Senate have lambasted what they say are unsustainable increases in federal deficits. Under the Trump administration, the annual federal deficit is set to reach $1 trillion a year.