Bessent aims to de-escalate China trade war: 'The current status quo is unsustainable'



Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the current state of America's trade war with China is "unsustainable," signaling support for a de-escalation between the two countries.

When asked if the China tariffs will come down, Bessent told reporters during a media roundtable Wednesday that "both sides believe that the current status quo is unsustainable." The United States imposed a 145% tariff on Chinese imports, and China subsequently retaliated with a 125% tariff on the United States.

Nevertheless, Bessent assured reporters that 'we are moving towards certainty.'

Bessent also added that "both sides are waiting to speak to the other," clarifying that the trade negotiations between the United States and China have not begun.

"I think at this point there would have to be a de-escalation by both sides," Bessent said. "I would be surprised if they went down in a mutual way."

Bessent also said that President Donald Trump has not yet made any unilateral offers to de-escalate.

Because a trade agreement has not yet been reached, some American companies are reportedly reluctant to hire during this period of uncertainty. Nevertheless, Bessent assured reporters that "we are moving towards certainty."

"It's a three-legged stool, and everyone seems to want to focus on one leg, which is tariffs," Bessent said. "The underreported story is that tax is going better than expected, and the Republican unity around that has been very strong."

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Trump admin may have accidentally empowered cartels to flood America with fentanyl, Republican legal experts warn
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Trump admin may have accidentally empowered cartels to flood America with fentanyl, Republican legal experts warn

'A multinational, corporate globalist effort to get drugs into our communities'

Trump raises eyebrows by sharing video claiming he's 'purposely CRASHING the market'



President Donald Trump raised eyebrows Friday by sharing a video on Truth Social that claims he purposefully crashed the stock market to "push cash into treasuries." Trump's timing was especially provocative because his rollout of tariffs the previous day resulted in a multi-trillion dollar market wipeout.

Trump shared a video by a supporter that was posted to X Thursday evening with the caption, "Trump is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers."

The video — which appropriates narration from a March 13 Instagram post by finance influencer Brian Decker — first appeared on a TikTok page that previously accused Hollywood elites of eating mermaids.

In an apparent validation of the video and Decker's core theory, senior Trump adviser Jason Miller noted, "Genius! You have to watch this video!"

In the video, a seemingly computer-generated voice states: "Trump is crashing the stock market by 20% this month, but he's doing it on purpose, and this is why Warren Buffet just said Trump is making the best economic moves he's seen in over 50 years."

There appears to be no evidence of Warren Buffett publicly making such an assertion in recent weeks.

'He's taking from the rich short-term and handing it to the middle class through lower prices.'

On the contrary, in a CBS News interview that aired nearly two weeks before the TikTok video was published, Buffett told talking head Norah O'Donnell, "Tariffs are actually — we've had a lot of experience with them — they’re an act of war, to some degree."

When asked whether tariffs might lead to higher inflation, Buffett said, "Over time, they are a tax on goods. I mean, the Tooth Fairy doesn't pay 'em!"

According to the TikTok video, Trump intentionally crashed the stock market in order to "push cash into treasuries, which forces the [Federal Reserve] to slash interest rates in May, and those lower rates give the Fed the ability to refinance trillions of debt very inexpensively. It also weakens the dollar and drops mortgage rates."

The narrator notes further that Trump's tariffs amount to a "genius play," forcing "companies to build here to dodge them. It also forces farmers to sell more of their products here in the U.S. to bring grocery prices way down. We've already seen this with eggs."

The video shared by the Republican president concludes by asserting he is effectively engaged in a wealth redistribution scheme: "Now remember, 94% of all stocks are owned only by 8% of Americans so Trump, he's taking from the rich short-term and handing it to the middle class through lower prices."

Blaze News reached out to the White House for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

'It's definitely not some sort of fringe conspiracy theory.'

There has been speculation in recent days and weeks that Trump has, as Decker hypothesized, been pushing for a crash or at the very least significant market chaos.

Charlie McElligott, a strategist at Nomura, told clients in early March that Trump and his administration needed an engineered recession to trigger a growth slowdown and disflation that would result in Fed rate cuts and a weaker dollar, reported MarketWatch.

"It's definitely not some sort of fringe conspiracy theory," Ben McMillan, CIO at IDX Advisors, told Business Insider earlier in the week. "I think it's a coin flip as to whether or not it's the intention, but there have been some data points that suggest it's a non-trivial possibility in my mind."

Among the "data points" McMillan reportedly had in mind was Trump's suggestion at Davos that he'll demand interest rates fall and the president's unconventional approaches to tackling the debt problem, such as gold card residency permits.

Trump just happened to state in a Truth Social post Friday morning, "This would be a PERFECT time for Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to cut Interest Rates."

While Forbes took issue with various falsehoods in the TikTok video, it noted that "to that theory's credit," yields for U.S. Treasury notes collapsed this week — which will likely mean cheaper borrowing. However, Forbes noted that lower Treasury yields can alternatively be achieved without tanking the markets, namely "by restoring fixed income investors' confidence in the federal government’s fiscal health through more austere spending."

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‘Judicial Coup’ Threatens To Kneecap Trump’s America First Agenda

[rebelmouse-proxy-image https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Screenshot-2025-03-19-at-10.15.08 AM-e1742393800395-1200x675.png crop_info="%7B%22image%22%3A%20%22https%3A//thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Screenshot-2025-03-19-at-10.15.08%5Cu202fAM-e1742393800395-1200x675.png%22%7D" expand=1]The United States is facing what El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele described as a "judicial coup."

Amid Chaos At ActBlue, House Republicans Seek Answers About ‘Potentially Fraudulent And Illicit Financial Activity’

In addition to congressional investigation, ActBlue faces a wave of departures among its top officials.

Treasury Secretary Bessent: US-Ukrainian economic deal is dead in the water



President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to Washington, D.C., on Friday to finalize a deal that would afford America access to some of his country's natural wealth in exchange for investments in a reconstruction fund and a U.S. economic presence that could serve as a deterrent to future aggression from without.

Following his heated exchange with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office, Zelenskyy was reportedly told to leave the White House before the agreement could be signed. Trump noted on Truth Social, "He can come back when he is ready for Peace."

According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the so-called minerals deal — which he referred to as a "general economic agreement" — is off the table in the interim.

Bessent, who was present for the ill-fated meeting with the Ukrainian president as well as for previous attempts at closing the deal, told CBS News' Margaret Brennan on Sunday that "it is impossible to have an economic deal without a peace deal. The sine qua non for an economic deal is that Ukrainian leadership wants a peace deal."

Zelenskyy confirmed Wednesday that he was unsuccessful in pushing for an explicit security guarantee in the deal from the United States, reported the BBC.

'This is one of the biggest own goals in diplomatic history.'

"I wanted to have a sentence on security guarantees for Ukraine, and it's important that it's there," said Zelenskyy.

"I want to find a NATO path or something similar," he continued, adding, "If we don't get security guarantees, we won't have a ceasefire, nothing will work, nothing."

Although Bessent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and others in the administration figured they had made clear to the Ukrainian leadership that peace was a prerequisite for greater American involvement and that the deal was itself a de facto security guarantee, Zelenskyy cast doubt on the value of diplomacy during the Friday meeting, citing the possibility that Russian President Vladimir Putin might violate a ceasefire.

The treasury secretary told Brennan that the initial plan was for Zelenskyy to join around 16 individuals for lunch where the deal would be signed after the press conference in the Oval Office.

"We were already set up to sign the deal," said Bessent. "President Zelenskyy has thrown off the sequencing."

"Let me tell you the most tragic part of this," continued the treasury secretary. "President Trump's idea for this economic arrangement was to further intertwine the American people and Ukrainian people and show no daylight — to show the Russian leadership that there was no daylight. And President Zelenskyy came into the Oval Office and tried to relitigate in front of the world the deal."

Bessent suggested that absent a desire on Zelenskyy's part to strike a peace deal, the economic deal is dead in the water.

"I think we have to see if President Zelenskyy wants to proceed," said Bessent. "What's the use in having an economic agreement that's going to be rendered moot if he wants the fighting to continue?"

Bessent told Fox News' Laura Ingraham hours after the foiled deal closing, "This is one of the biggest own goals in diplomatic history."

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Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Glenn Beck float possible audit of Fort Knox. Elon Musk indicates he's game.



Elon Musk, the head of the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, signaled an interest Monday in auditing the Fort Knox United States Bullion Depository after Republican Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Mike Lee (Utah) and Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck pressed the issue.

According to the U.S. Mint, the fortified vault adjacent to the Fort Knox Army installation south of Louisville, Kentucky, presently holds 9.2 million pounds of gold, a figure that includes half of the U.S. Treasury's gold. The New York Post indicated that the value of the reserves on-site are roughly $425 billion.

There have long been calls to undertake a comprehensive audit of Fort Knox — something that does not appear to have taken place in decades.

'Surely, a full audit every 25 years is not too much to ask.'

Roughly 20 years after three gold compartments were opened at the depository for an allegedly thorough audit, a committee of auditors from the U.S. General Accounting Office and the Treasury Department launched a review of the gold holdings at Fort Knox on Sept. 24, 1974.

The GAO later recommended that the treasury secretary task the director of the mint with performing routine audits of the gold. Audits apparently took place for years thereafter on a cyclical basis, at least up until the mid-1980s.

Former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) noted during a 2011 congressional hearing, a year after introducing legislation that would have the fort audited, that "because the government has for so long refused to provide substantive information on its gold holdings, it is not surprising that so much confusion abounds, both within and without the government."

"While the Mint and the inspector general trust the accuracy of the audits performed between 1975 and 1986, this still means that at least two-thirds of the gold reserves were last audited over a quarter-century ago," continued Paul. "Surely, a full audit every 25 years is not too much to ask."

Paul's son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R), advocated over the weekend for an audit of Fort Knox after the right-leaning financial news site ZeroHedge got the ball rolling again Saturday on audit talk.

'There should be no reason why the American people cannot see them with their own eyes.'

ZeroHedge noted, "It would be great if @elonmusk could take a look inside Fort Knox just to make sure the 4,580 tons of US gold is there. Last time anyone looked was 50 years ago in 1974."

Musk responded, "Surely it's reviewed at least every year?"

Sen. Paul stated, "Nope. Let's do it."

Sen. Mike Lee similarly pushed for an audit, both noting that he has repeatedly been denied access to the depository and raising the possibility that for all the public knows, the contents of the Kentucky vaults could be Pez candies.

Glenn Beck pushed the matter further, noting in letters Monday to President Donald Trump, to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and to the Treasury Department, "Though on paper, America is the world's largest holder of gold, there has been no full, independent audit of these reserves in over 70 years. This has led to widespread speculation, conspiracy theories, and a growing distrust in our institutions."

"At a time when Americans are more skeptical than ever of their government and financial elites, a simple yet profound act of radical transparency could be a game-changer," continued Beck, proposing that he take a camera crew into the depository to document and verify America's gold reserves.

"If our reserves are indeed secure, as the government claims, there should be no reason why the American people cannot see them with their own eyes," added Beck.

— (@)

After questioning whether the American public's gold was still there, Musk signaled support for Beck's idea, writing, "Yeah!"

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Trump Need Not Bend To The 19-State Lawfare Coup Trying To Thwart His Treasury

The president, as the chief executive officer of the country, is not obligated to heel every time an out-of-control federal judge jerks his leash.

If Elon’s DOGE Is To Successfully Cut Government Waste, There Can Be No ‘But’ About It

As Democrats and the media continue to grip their groins in agony over Elon Musk and his DOGE team’s audit of the federal government, it’s fun to hear them all periodically pause to offer some variation of, “Everyone wants to end wasteful spending, but…” That’s the surest indicator that a person has absolutely no interest […]

Ex-Obama policy adviser sentenced to prison for flying to UK to rape a child



Rahamim Shy, a former senior adviser in the Obama administration, was convicted and sentenced to prison Wednesday for traveling to Britain to rape a 9-year-old girl and for possessing "indecent photos of a child."

The U.K.'s Crown Prosecution Service indicated that Shy, a New Jersey investment banker who served as a senior adviser in former President Barack Obama's Treasury Department, traveled from New York to Bedfordshire, England, in February 2024, after a month of scheming to meet a schoolgirl with "cuddly toys and condoms" in his luggage.

Prosecutor Lorraine Telford stated, "Rahamim Shy is a predator who was fully prepared to commit unspeakable acts against a child for his own sexual gratification."

"It was clear from his explicit conversations and items he brought to England that he had only one intention, to commit rape against what he knew was a vulnerable child," added Telford.

'Shy will no longer pose an immediate threat.'

The pedophile connected with a woman on an online forum as well as on messaging apps who he was led to believe was the grandmother of a young girl. According to the CPS, Shy told the supposed grandmother, who went by "Debbie," in "acute detail the disturbing acts he wanted to do to the girl and that he was fully prepared to travel to England to do so."

In his online communications, Shy suggested it was a "tad late" for his intended victim to start sexual activity and indicated it would be an "honor" for him to become "her first."

What Shy didn't know at the time was that the 9-year-old girl didn't exist and her supposed grandmother was actually an invention of the Bedfordshire Police, reported the Telegraph.

Shy flew to Gatwick Airport on Feb. 23, 2024, then drove to Bedford where he discovered "Debbie" was an undercover cop.

In addition to finding items on his person that "demonstrated a clear intent to win the child over before abusing her," arresting officers also found "indecent images of children" on Shy's phone as well as messages to other people expressing an interest in molesting children.

The pedophile's defense argued that since he was in the U.S. at the time that he was plotting to rape a child, he was jurisdictionally exempt from prosecution. The Luton Crown Court did not buy what Shy's lawyers were selling.

Shy was sentenced to 11 years and six months in prison.

"The fact the child in this case did not exist makes no difference, and it is a credit to the police operation and subsequent prosecution that Shy will no longer pose an immediate threat," said Telford.

In addition to working in the Obama Treasury Department from 2008 to 2014 — at one point getting deployed to Afghanistan to advise the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force — the Daily Mail reported that Shy worked under former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and provided strategic policy analysis to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

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