NATO gave in and let Trump win his fight to reduce the amount of money the U.S. pays to keep NATO security forces active around the world. Trump will attend the NATO summit in London on December 4th, and NATO members don’t want a repeat performance from the Trumpster.
At the last meeting, Mr. Trump told NATO members they need to pay more of the security bill. So NATO decided to lower the amount the U.S. pays by six percent. The U.S. will start to pay the same amount as Germany in 2021.
Mr. Trump will get another chance to act like a king when the Queen has him over for another one of those Royal dinners during the summit. Prince Andrew is a big Trump fan, but he won’t attend the dinner. Andrew got his royal wings clipped after his lame BBC interview.
Wilbur Ross helped Trump’s economic growth claim when he adjusted third-quarter Gross Domestic Product growth. The first third-quarter growth figure was 1.9 percent, but Ross claims inventory levels and other economic factors helped the economy grow by 2.1 percent instead of 1.9 percent. The GDP growth figure is hard to track thanks to Trump’s trade war. Economists claim the trade war will shave two-tenths of a percent off China’s growth, but U.S. economic growth should stay around 2.0 percent.
The Federal Reserve Board won’t cut interest rates at the December 11th meeting. Jay Powell thinks the economy is in good shape. Black Friday Internet sales hit an all-time high, so consumers still believe Trump’s tariff war won’t hurt them going forward. But economists say if Trump doesn’t stop his tariff war American consumers will feel the pain in 2020. According to CNBC, Americans will pay more than $2,000 each to support Trump’s tariff addiction in 2020. Consumers paid $40 billion in tariffs since Trump started his quest to bring China to its knees.
But China won’t go down without a fight even though consumer debt is at an all-time high, and manufacturing suffers from a lack of orders. Orders from U.S. importers that normally go to China are now in the hands of Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodian factories.
Chinese manufacturing numbers increased in November for the first time in seven months. The government stimulated the manufacturing sector, but export orders are still in the toilet. The tariffs kept the November increase well below the increases manufacturing enjoyed in the golden days of Chinese low-cost manufacturing.
