U.S. Retail Sales Rose in November Despite Expected Decline

U.S. retail sales rose 0.3% in November compared to the previous month, the Commerce Department said Thursday, despite the Dow Jones estimate that sales would decline by 0.1%. 

The 0.3% estimated increase in U.S. retail and food service sales outpaced inflation from October to November, which was 0.1%. The retail sales are also up 4.1% when compared to the same time last year, the department said, which is still above the inflation rate of 3.1% from November 2022 to November 2023.

Read More

Sen. Joni Ernst Releases List of Federal Agencies with High Employee No-Show Rates Post-COVID

Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA)

With Christmas fast-approaching, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa put out a “naughty list” of government agencies that have high no-show rates of employees who have not returned to the office after the COVID-19 pandemic ended.

According to Ernst’s list, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Social Security Administration top the list with just 7 percent office occupancy rates.

Read More

U.S. Government Blocks $5 Billion in Crucial AI Chips Ordered by Top Chinese Tech Giants: Report

President Joe Biden’s Commerce Department has blocked American chipmaker Nvidia from sending billions of dollars worth of key artificial intelligence (AI) chips ordered by top Chinese tech giants, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

Nvidia was set to deliver over $5 billion in chips from Chinese orders, but the Biden administration is blocking them due to new chip restrictions, according to the WSJ. Nvidia was working on sending the chips before the restrictions took effect but the company received a letter notifying it that the sanctions would take effect immediately instead of one month after their announcement on Oct. 17, as originally scheduled, individuals with knowledge of the situation told the WSJ.

Read More

Alarm Grows as Jobs, GDP Data Revised Downward

President Job Biden’s story about the success of Bidenomics just keeps shrinking.

The Labor Department has consistently overestimated payroll growth predictions under the 46th president and has been forced to revise the data downward to reflect slower economic growth throughout 2023.

Read More

Chinese Solar Giants Snuck Around U.S. Trade Barriers, Investigation Finds

The Commerce Department found on Friday that four large Chinese solar panel manufacturers are avoiding longstanding U.S. tariffs by assembling their products in Southeast Asia before importing them to the country.

BYD Co., Canadian Solar International, Trina Solar Science & Technology and Vina Solar Technology violated U.S. trade laws by finishing their products in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia, according to a department press release. The probe was launched in March after California-based solar company Auxin Solar alleged that some solar firms were circumventing tariffs on China by completing manufacturing in Southeast Asia.

Read More

Consumer Spending Surged in January as Inflation Reached Near 40-Year High

Consumer spending surged in January amid soaring inflation, the Commerce Department announced Wednesday.

Retail sales grew 3.8% in January, far exceeding the 2.1% Dow Jones estimate, the Commerce Department announced Wednesday. January’s figure represents the largest monthly increase since March 2021 and a significant snapback from December 2021 when sales decreased by 2.5%.

Read More

U.S. Trade Deficit Reached Record High in 2021 as Imports Surged

Several cargo boxes on a ship in the ocean

The U.S. trade deficit continued to grow in December as the import-export gap widened to record highs in 2021, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.

The trade deficit grew by 1.8% in December 2021 to $80.7 billion, the Census Bureau announced Tuesday, $1.4 billion above the revised figure from November 2021.

Read More

Biden’s Commerce Secretary Is Trying to Shield a $42 Billion Broadband Funding Program from Public Eyes

Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo requested the inclusion of a provision in the bipartisan infrastructure bill shielding a $42 billion broadband funding program from public scrutiny, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a $1.2 trillion piece of legislation that passed the Senate in August with significant bipartisan support and currently awaits a vote in the House, sets aside $42 billion in broadband deployment grants to be given to states and administered through guidelines issued by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), a division of the Commerce Department.

Read More

Jobless Claims Fall Below 400,000, Hit Economists’ Expectations

Unemployment sign

The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims decreased to 385,000 last week as the economy continues its recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Department of Labor.

The Bureau of Labor and Statistics figure released Thursday represented a slight decrease in the number of new jobless claims compared to the week ending July 24, when 399,000 new jobless claims were reported. That number was revised down from the 400,000 jobless claims initially reported last week.

Read More

U.S. Retail Sales Jump in January in Positive Sign for Economy

The U.S. retail sales were much higher than economists projected in January, ending a multi-month streak of underperformance, according to the Commerce Department.

Retail sales increased 5.3% and totaled $568.2 billion in January, according to the Department of Commerce report released Wednesday. Economists had predicted retail sales to increase by 1.2%, The New York Times reported.

Read More

Judge Postpones Trump’s TikTok Ban in Suit Brought by Users

A federal judge has postponed President Donald Trump’s threatened shutdown of the popular short-form video app TikTok, siding with a Pennsylvania comedian and two other TikTok creators who say Trump’s order hampers their free speech.

U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone on Friday blocked an upcoming Commerce Department action that would have effectively banned TikTok in the U.S. by cutting it off from vital technical services.

Read More

Trump Allowing Select US Firms to Supply Huawei Has Some in Congress Fuming

by Rob Garver   National security hawks who normally side with U.S. President Donald Trump on foreign policy issues are up in arms over his announcement on Saturday that he would indefinitely delay the imposition of tariffs on $300 billion of Chinese goods and relax restrictions on U.S. firms doing…

Read More

Commentary: Trump Shuts China’s ‘Backdoor’ to Cyber Spying

by Thaddeus G. McCotter   President Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order in a prescient move to defend America’s national security against Chinese cyber espionage. Invoking his powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the president gave the Commerce Department 150 days to devise methods of implementing new…

Read More

Nine States Back Environmentalists Trying to Shutdown Search for Oil in Atlantic

by Tim Pearce   Nine states are intervening in a lawsuit against the Trump administration for approving oil and gas companies to search for oil and gas deposits in the Atlantic Ocean. Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh announced Thursday the states would join environmental groups in a lawsuit to prevent the Trump…

Read More