With a threat of ‘tapes,’ Trump tells ousted FBI chief not to talk to media

Donald Trump warned ousted FBI Director James Comey on Friday not to talk to the media, a highly unusual move that prompted fresh charges the president is trying to silence the man who led an investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s election campaign and Russia.
On Twitter, Trump appeared to suggest that if Comey gave his version of contacts between them, the administration might produce tapes of conversations, although it was not clear if such tapes exist. The veiled threat added to the storm over Trump’s abrupt firing of Comey on Tuesday.
Critics have assailed Trump for dismissing the FBI chief just as the agency is investigating alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, and possible Moscow ties to the Trump presidential campaign.
The New York Times reported the president asked Comey in January to pledge loyalty to him and that Comey refused to do so. Such a request would undermine the standing of the FBI chief as an independent law enforcer and further fueled charges that Trump has overstepped the norms of his office.
“James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Trump said in a string of Twitter posts on Friday.
Trump told Fox News he did not ask Comey to pledge loyalty and only wants him to be honest. Trump said he would not talk about the existence of any tapes.
CNN said Comey is “not worried about any tapes” Trump may have, citing an unnamed source familiar with the matter.
The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, told MSNBC that Congress would want to look at the tapes, if they exist.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation probe and parallel congressional investigations have clouded Trump’s presidency since he took office on Jan. 20, threatening to overwhelm his policy priorities.
Democrats accuse the Republican president of trying to dent the FBI probe by firing Comey and have called for a special counsel to investigate the Russia issue.
INDEPENDENT PROBE?
The No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, Richard Durbin, went further on Friday and said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein should appoint an independent special prosecutor to pursue possible criminal charges related to Comey’s firing, although he did not specify if he meant such charges should be against Trump.
But Rosenstein does not see the need at this time for a special prosecutor, CNN reported. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Trump told Fox News in an interview he did not think an independent probe was necessary.
In a statement, Durbin said that what he characterized as Trump’s admission that he fired Comey because of the Russia probe was “dangerously close to obstruction of justice.”
Durbin said Trump’s tweet on Friday “could be construed as threatening a witness in this investigation, which is another violation of federal law.”
Comey declined an invitation to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee in a closed meeting on Tuesday for scheduling reasons, said Warner’s spokesman. An official familiar with the matter told Reuters that Comey had agreed in principle to testify behind closed doors at some point.
As has happened on previous occasions since Trump took office, different versions rapidly circulated of an event – in this case phone conversations between Comey and Trump and a dinner they had at the White House.
The New York Times said Comey told associates he declined to make a pledge of loyalty to Trump when the president requested it while they dined just seven days after his inauguration. Comey instead told Trump he could count on his honesty, the Times said.
Trump says Comey had told him three times he was not under investigation in the Russia probe. He said in an interview on Thursday with NBC News that Comey gave him this assurance during the White House dinner and in two phone conversations. Trump said Comey wanted to have the dinner because he wanted to stay on in the job.
Comey has not publicly discussed any conversations he has had with Trump.
NEWS BRIEFINGS
Trump also hit back on Friday at media reports questioning the credibility of White House accounts of why Comey was fired, which have changed over the course of the week, and threatened an end to regular White House press briefings.
“As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!” Trump said. “Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future ‘press briefings’ and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???”
Trump told Fox News he would decide in “the next couple of weeks” whether the briefings would continue.
The White House initially said Trump fired Comey on the recommendation of the top Justice Department officials: Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Rosenstein. In the NBC interview on Thursday, Trump said he would have fired Comey regardless of any such recommendations.
The White House has said Comey’s firing was unrelated to the Russia probe. On Thursday, Trump told NBC he knew he ran the risk that by firing Comey he would “confuse people” and “lengthen out the investigation” into ties to Russia.
The president said he never pressured Comey into dropping the FBI investigation, and added that there was no “collusion between me and my campaign and the Russians.”
Trump told Fox News he was surprised by the fierce reaction of Democrats. “I thought that this would be a very popular thing, that I did, when I terminated Comey, because all of the Democrats couldn’t stand him,” Trump said.
Comey had angered Democrats over his handling of the probe of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.
Trump is considering 11 people to replace Comey, a White House official said. Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, Republican Senator John Cornyn, New York Appeals Court Judge Michael Garcia and former Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher will be interviewed on Saturday for the post, an administration official said.
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in January that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign of interference in the election aimed at tilting the vote in Trump’s favor. Moscow has denied any such meddling.
As part of the Russia investigation, the Justice Department last month requested former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s banking records, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Seeking to bolster Trump’s case that he has had no concealed dealings with Russia, his lawyers said in a letter released by the White House on Friday that a review of Trump’s tax returns from the past 10 years showed no income from Russian sources outside of a few exceptions, and indicated he did not owe money to Russian lenders.

Major cyber attack hits companies, hospitals, schools worldwide

LONDON/MADRID (Reuters) – A global cyber attack leveraging hacking tools believed to have been developed by the U.S. National Security Agency has infected tens of thousands of computers in nearly 100 countries, disrupting Britain’s health system and global shipper FedEx.
Cyber extortionists tricked victims into opening malicious malware attachments to spam emails that appeared to contain invoices, job offers, security warnings and other legitimate files.
The ransomware encrypted data on the computers, demanding payments of $300 to $600 to restore access. Security researchers said they observed some victims paying via the digital currency bitcoin, though they did not know what percent had given in to the extortionists.
Researchers with security software maker Avast said they had observed 57,000 infections in 99 countries, with Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan the top targets.
Asian countries reported no major breaches on Saturday, but officials in the region were scrambling to check and the full extent of the damage may not be known for some time.
China’s official Xinhua news agency said some secondary schools and universities had been affected, without specifying how many or identifying them.
The most disruptive attacks were reported in Britain, where hospitals and clinics were forced to turn away patients after losing access to computers on Friday.
International shipper FedEx Corp said some of its Windows computers were also infected. “We are implementing remediation steps as quickly as possible,” it said in a statement.
FROM ARGENTINA TO SPAIN
Only a small number of U.S.-headquartered organizations were hit because the hackers appear to have begun the campaign by targeting organizations in Europe, said Vikram Thakur, research manager with security software maker Symantec.
By the time they turned their attention to the United States, spam filters had identified the new threat and flagged the ransomware-laden emails as malicious, Thakur added.
Infections of the worm appeared to have fallen off significantly after a security researcher bought a domain that the malware was connecting to, by chance undermining the malware’s effectiveness.
Making the domain active appears to have stunted the spread of the worm, Thakur said on Saturday.
“The numbers are extremely low and coming down fast,” he said, while cautioning that any change in the original code could lead the worm to flare up again.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said late on Friday it was aware of reports of the ransomware, was sharing information with domestic and foreign partners and was ready to lend technical support.
Telecommunications company Telefonica was among many targets in Spain, though it said the attack was limited to some computers on an internal network and had not affected clients or services. Portugal Telecom and Telefonica Argentina both said they were also targeted.
Private security firms identified the ransomware as a new variant of “WannaCry” that had the ability to automatically spread across large networks by exploiting a known bug in Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
The hackers, who have not come forward to claim responsibility or otherwise been identified, likely made it a “worm”, or self spreading malware, by exploiting a piece of NSA code known as “Eternal Blue” that was released last month by a group known as the Shadow Brokers, researchers with several private cyber security firms said.
“This is one of the largest global ransomware attacks the cyber community has ever seen,” said Rich Barger, director of threat research with Splunk, one of the firms that linked WannaCry to the NSA.
The Shadow Brokers released Eternal Blue as part of a trove of hacking tools that they said belonged to the U.S. spy agency.
Microsoft said it was pushing out automatic Windows updates to defend clients from WannaCry. It issued a patch on March 14 to protect them from Eternal Blue.
“Today our engineers added detection and protection against new malicious software known as Ransom:Win32.WannaCrypt,” Microsoft said in a statement on Friday, adding it was working with customers to provide additional assistance.
SENSITIVE TIMING
The spread of the ransomware capped a week of cyber turmoil in Europe that began the previous week when hackers posted a trove of campaign documents tied to French candidate Emmanuel Macron just before a run-off vote in which he was elected president of France.
On Wednesday, hackers disrupted the websites of several French media companies and aerospace giant Airbus.Also, the hack happened four weeks before a British general election in which national security and the management of the state-run National Health Service (NHS) are important issues.
Authorities in Britain have been braced for cyber attacks in the run-up to the vote, as happened during last year’s U.S. election and on the eve of the French vote.
But those attacks – blamed on Russia, which has repeatedly denied them – followed a different modus operandi involving penetrating the accounts of individuals and political organizations and then releasing hacked material online.
On Friday, Russia’s interior and emergencies ministries, as well as its biggest bank, Sberbank, said they were targeted. The interior ministry said on its website that about 1,000 computers had been infected but it had localized the virus.
The emergencies ministry told Russian news agencies it had repelled the cyber attacks while Sberbank said its cyber security systems had prevented viruses from entering its systems.
NEW BREED OF RANSOMWARE
Although cyber extortion cases have been rising for several years, they have to date affected small-to-mid sized organizations, disrupting services provided by hospitals, police departments, public transport systems and utilities in the United States and Europe.
“Seeing a large telco like Telefonica get hit is going to get everybody worried. Now ransomware is affecting larger companies with more sophisticated security operations,” said Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer with cyber security firm Veracode.
The news is also likely to embolden extortionists when selecting targets, Chris Camacho, chief strategy officer with cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint, said.
In Spain, some big firms took pre-emptive steps to thwart ransomware attacks following a warning from the National Cryptology Center of “a massive ransomware attack”.
Iberdrola and Gas Natural, along with Vodafone’s unit in Spain, asked staff to turn off computers or cut off internet access in case they had been compromised, representatives from the firms said.
The attacks did not disrupt the provision of services or networks operations of the victims, the Spanish government said in a statement.

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U.S. consumer watchdog’s prepaid-card rule survives Congress challenge

A major challenge to the U.S. watchdog for consumer finances fizzled on Thursday, as Congress missed a deadline to repeal the agency’s new rule on prepaid cards.
Late last year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a rule requiring greater disclosures and overdraft limits for the cards sold by companies such as Mastercard Inc. and Greendot and frequently used in place of paychecks.
The timing made the rule eligible for Congress to repeal it under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), but lawmakers only had until Thursday to kill the regulation by passing a disapproval resolution in both chambers with simple majorities.
Republican Senator David Perdue of Georgia, one of the agency’s biggest critics, had introduced a resolution that he tried to speed through his chamber, but congressional aides and advocacy groups said he could not gather enough votes.
Perdue has repeatedly said the CFPB, created in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law to protect individuals against fraud, oversteps its authority. Earlier this week he said he intends to keep up pressure on the agency.
The resolution’s failure indicates that future regulations from the CFPB, reviled by many Republicans, may have shots at survival. The agency is led by Democrat Richard Cordray, was created by former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and was originally conceived by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, a leader in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
The CFPB was expected to soon finalize restrictions on the fine print in contracts known as “mandatory arbitration clauses” that require consumers to give up their rights to class-action lawsuits as a condition of buying a service or product. But the rule’s fate has been caught in limbo. Congress is expected to kill it swiftly with a CRA resolution once it is official.
While the first half-dozen CRA resolutions flew easily through Congress, repealing a wide spectrum of Obama-era regulations, the final resolutions faced a tougher time. One limiting methane emissions from oil and gas production on public lands failed on Wednesday. All told, Congress killed 14 regulations since Feb. 1.
Lawmakers could still vote after this week to repeal rules that Obama finished in the last six months of his administration, but they will need super-majorities in each chamber, which is nearly impossible to achieve in the more closely divided Senate.

GOP Needs To Fight for Principles

While President Trump celebrated the AHCA passing in the House, Stephen Moore said the next top priorities, are passing his tax plan, passing his budget, and building the wall.
Stephen Moore, an economist from the Heritage Foundation, said the spending bill that passed  was a disappointment.
But Moore thinks President Trump made a calculated political move to not fight on the budget, because he wanted to get the healthcare act through.
But now, it’s time for conservatives and the Trump administration to fight for the priorities of the American people.
Moore said economic growth and putting Americans back to work is the key to solving the budget and poverty problem
But if the Democrats want to shutdown the government in opposition to Trump’s tax plan and the budget, then the blame is on them.
“It’s no great crisis if we have a short-term government shutdown. It only means that places like the Department of Education, the Department of Energy won’t show up to work for a couple of days, but if it is to fight over a major principle about our debt or about what are the functions of our government what should we be funding or what shouldn’t we be funding. If its about funding our national security to make our county is safe, then Republicans should stand up for principle they shouldn’t just go in fetal position over these budget fights,” Moore said.
Moore said he has never seen an opposition party like the Democratic Party, but despite this resistance, President Trump’s agenda is moving forward.

U.S. House tax committee sets first hearing on tax reform

The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday set a May hearing on the potential impact of tax reform on U.S. economic growth, the first in what is expected to be a series of sessions as Congress edges toward tax reform legislation.
The Republican-controlled panel, which oversees tax policy in the House of Representatives, said in a statement that the hearing will take place on Thursday, May 18 at 10 a.m. (1400 GMT) and focus on tax reform policies that Republicans see as most likely to spur economic growth and job creation. The statement did not identify witnesses for the hearing.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady has said he could introduce a tax reform bill sometime in June.

Kushner Cos says to skip China marketing push this weekend

The company owned by the family of senior White House aide Jared Kushner will skip roadshow events in China this weekend seeking money from local investors for a real estate project in exchange for a shot at U.S. immigrant visas, a company spokesman said.
Nicole Kushner Meyer, Jared’s sister, appeared at marketing events last weekend in Beijing and Shanghai in an effort to raise $150 million from Chinese investors through the controversial EB-5 visa-for-investment program.
According to marketing materials from one of the organizers of the roadshow, sales events for the project are scheduled in the southern cities of Shenzhen on Saturday and Guangzhou on Sunday.
“No one from Kushner Companies will be in China this weekend,” James Yolles, spokesman for the firm, said.
The company and KABR Group are raising money for a two-tower apartment complex in New Jersey called One Journal Square, marketing materials showed.
Kushner Companies earlier this week apologized for Meyer having mentioned Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, in discussing the project. The company said Meyer had done so only in an attempt to make clear that her brother was not involved.
“Kushner Companies apologizes if that mention of her brother was in any way interpreted as an attempt to lure investors. That was not Ms. Meyer’s intention,” it said.
In addition to Meyer, Laurent Morali, president of Kushner Companies, was included in marketing materials online for the China road show.
Jared Kushner, whose White House portfolio includes relations with China, sold his stake in Kushner Companies to a family trust early this year.
The EB-5 program allows wealthy foreigners to, in effect, buy U.S. immigration visas for themselves and families by investing at least $500,000 in certain development projects.
A member of the audience at the marketing event in Shanghai said Meyer spoke for about 10 minutes during last Sunday’s event and described her family’s humble roots.
According to the New York Times, in Beijing on Saturday she told the audience of about 100 people the project “means a lot to me and my entire family”.

Shopping at Walmart Cartoons

Exclusive: Aldi raises stakes in U.S. price war with Wal-Mart

A lady shops at Aldi, a retail grocery store chain in Wheaton, Illinois, U.S., April 13, 2017. REUTERS/Nandita Bose

WHEATON, Ill. (Reuters) – German grocery chain Aldi Inc is trying to beat the world’s biggest retailer at its own game: low prices.
Already with 1,600 U.S. stores, Aldi’s internal studies show its prices are 21 percent lower than its lowest-priced rivals, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc , according to Chief Executive Jason Hart. He plans to maintain that gap going forward.
His strategy, previously unreported, centers on adding more private-label goods, which are a retailer’s in-house brands, to win over price-sensitive customers, and a massive expansion to further disrupt a U.S. grocery sector that has seen 18 companies go bankrupt since 2014.
Hart’s plan calls for spending $1.6 billion to expand and remodel 1,300 U.S. stores, and open 400 new stores mainly in Florida, Texas and on both coasts by end of 2018. He also pledged Aldi will be willing to change prices more frequently to respond to rivals if needed.
“We are re-merchandising, remodeling, enhancing our product range and are focused on gaining volume so more customers start their shopping at Aldi and we are able to complete their shopping lists moreso than we have in the past,” said Hart, who added Aldi’s U.S. sales have doubled in five years.
Though it only accounts for only about 1.5 percent of the U.S. grocery market, Aldi is growing at 15 percent a year, whereas Wal-Mart currently controls about 22 percent of the market and its U.S. sales are estimated to grow about 2 percent this year, according to analysts.
Aldi’s growth potential has competitors taking notice. Reuters reported in February that Wal-Mart is running price tests in 11 states, pushing vendors to undercut Aldi and other rivals by 15 percent and is expected to spend about $6 billion to regain its title as the low-price leader. For a graphic, click http://tmsnrt.rs/2le6v0Y
Price wars are roiling the entire retail sector – from department stores to discount chains – but it is nowhere as intense as in the grocery sector. Beyond Wal-Mart’s move to match Aldi on price, German discount chain Lidl plans to open up to a 100 U.S. stores in a year, and Amazon.com Inc is aggressively testing out various brick-and-mortar grocery formats along with growing Amazon Fresh, its grocery delivery service. For a graphic, click http://tmsnrt.rs/2qRbNT9
“We have not seen anything like this in the grocery sector in the United States before,” said Scott Mushkin, managing director of Wolfe Research and a leading pricing analyst.
Such heated competition risks a dangerous race to the bottom that could result in more retailers shutting their doors.
“Given Aldi’s expansion, Lidl’s entry, Wal-Mart’s response and Amazon’s growing ambitions in this space, it is fair to expect a significant acceleration in the bankruptcy and liquidation cycle in this sector over the next few years,” said Burt Flickinger, managing director at retail consultancy Strategic Resource Group. For more on Wal-Mart’s stock performance vs Amazon, click [L1N1IC270]
GOAL: EVERYDAY LOW PRICING
Aldi, has a simple strategy to win more customers: everyday low pricing, according to Hart.
“We don’t confuse our customers with yo-yo discounts, sales, coupons and loyalty cards that require membership fees,” he said.
Four analysts and consultants contacted by Reuters confirmed Aldi now offers the lowest prices in private label consumer products in the states it operates, although they did say Wal-Mart is gaining ground in the states they are conducting price tests.
Depending on the product, Aldi’s prices are cheaper than most rivals’ private label items and even most branded items, analysts said. Hart said the 21 percent difference in price is calculated by monitoring competition on a basket of groceries.
Aldi counts on its no-frills shopping experience to help keep costs low, and limits much of its inventory to items that sell in huge volume. But its focus on offering far more private label items than branded products is central to allowing Aldi to adjust pricing whenever it chooses, Hart said.
Aldi and Wal-Mart do no break out the figures, but analysts including Mushkin and Flickinger say Aldi carries about 1,200 stock keeping units (SKUs) or type of products, 90 percent of which are private label. Wal-Mart stocks about 30,000-40,000 SKU’s of products similar to ones Aldi sells, and only 30 percent of that are private labels.
That different product mix can potentially make it more difficult for Wal-Mart to adjust prices because it often first needs buy-in from suppliers, and many times faces push back from packaged goods makers like Procter & Gamble , Unilever and even smaller brands. Such vendors fear steep discounting can erode the value of their brands, analysts said.
A Wal-Mart spokesman declined comment, saying the company would not comment on a competitor’s strategy. P&G and Unilever did not respond to Reuters requests seeking comment.
But the explosive growth in private label products is on the radar of Wal-Mart Chief Executive Doug McMillon. Last month he told analysts that private label goods will play an even more important role as the widespread availability of branded products online will compress those products margins over time.
“Aldi is disrupting the sector the way Wal-Mart did when they started,” said Strategic Resource Group’s Flickinger.
STEPPING UP THE GAME
Aldi’s aggressive push to remodel its stores will allow it to add new private label merchandise in rapidly growing categories like fresh food.
“The remodels are aimed at increasing our volumes which means more purchasing power that will help us lower prices further,” said Scott Patton, Aldi’s vice president of corporate buying.
At a recent visit to an Aldi store in Wheaton, Illinois Reuters found newer-looking shelves, wider aisles and brighter lighting than a typical Aldi store. There was also a bigger assortment of fresh, organic, gluten-free products and antibiotic-free meats versus what it stocked earlier – categories Aldi said is growing the most rapidly at its stores.
For example, its Simply Nature range of private-label products grew 53 percent to $300 million in 2016 from a year ago.
Aldi has also opened stores close to Wal-Mart’s supercenters to benefit from its budget-conscious shoppers. Its total store count of 2,000 stores by the end of next year will be about 42 percent of Wal-Mart’s U.S. store base.

Bid to revoke Obama methane rule fails in surprise U.S. Senate vote

A pumpjack brings oil to the surface in the Monterey Shale, California, in a file photo. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday rejected a resolution to revoke an Obama-era rule to limit methane emissions from oil and gas production on federal lands, dealing a blow to President Donald Trump’s efforts to free the drilling industry from what he sees as excessive environmental regulation.
The Congressional Review Act resolution received just 49 votes after Republican leaders scrambled for weeks to secure the 51 needed to pass it. The resolution would have revoked the rule and prevented similar regulations from being introduced.
Getting the Trump administration to repeal the BLM rule had been a top priority of the oil and gas industry. Companies said it was unnecessary, would could cost them tens of thousands of dollars per well and hinder production.
But not all Republicans supported the measure, in part because it would have made regulating methane waste more difficult in the future.
Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona made a surprise vote against the resolution, joining fellow Republicans Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine in opposition to torpedo it.
“While I am concerned that the BLM rule may be onerous, passage of the resolution would have prevented the federal government, under any administration, from issuing a rule that is ‘similar’,” McCain said in a statement.
He said the Interior Department should issue a new rule on to replace the existing one on methane leaks, which he called a public health and air quality issue.
The rule, finalized by President Barack Obama in his last weeks in office, updated 30-year-old regulations that govern flaring, venting and natural gas leaks from oil and gas production. Obama’s administration said it would preserve up to 41 billion cubic feet (BCF) of natural gas per year that is currently lost to leaks and flaring.
The American Petroleum Institute and other industry groups have said the methane rule is unnecessary because companies have made strides in reducing leaks on their own.
“The rule could impede U.S. energy production while reducing local and federal revenues,” said Erik Milito, API’s Upstream and Industry Operations Group Director.
Members of the Western Energy Alliance, which include Devon Energy , Whiting Petroleum and EOG Resources had also been strongly opposed to the rule.
Environmental groups hailed what they depicted as a rare victory for the environment after several regulatory rollbacks by the Trump administration.
“In recent months, thousands of Americans asked the Senate to stand up for clean air and against the oil lobby, and their efforts were successful today,” said Jamie Williams, president of the Wilderness Society.
The Western Values Project estimated that if the rule had been rescinded, the U.S. Treasury would have lost out on $800 million in lost potential royalties from leaked or vented natural gas over the next decade.
Republican Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works who supported the resolution to kill the rule, called on Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to act unilaterally to revoke it.

Republican Senators McCain, Sasse oppose Trump’s U.S. trade representative pick

Republican U.S. Senators John McCain and Ben Sasse said on Wednesday they would vote against President Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, because of his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement.
“Unfortunately, your confirmation process has failed to reassure us that you understand the North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) positive economic benefits to our respective States and the nation as a whole,” McCain and Sasse said in a letter to Lighthizer.

Delay seen, again, on Trump growth agenda after Comey sacking

Not even a week after the Trump administration and Congress rekindled optimism that they could soon make progress on a pro-growth agenda including tax cuts, the unexpected firing of the head of the FBI late Tuesday presented investors with a fresh reason to second-guess their confidence in the “Trump trade.”
At the least, financial market participants viewed President Donald Trump’s abrupt dismissal of FBI Director James Comey as an unwelcome distraction, while some fretted it could tie Washington in knots for months, potentially postponing already-delayed reforms.
The takeaway for the stock markets: don’t bet on any quick legislation around trade, the budget, healthcare or infrastructure.
“There is nothing good out of this for markets,” said Michael Purves, chief global strategist at Weeden & Co. “It will weigh on Trump’s ability to cut deals with Congress. It costs him negotiating leverage.”
Jack Ablin, Chief Investment Officer at BMO Private Bank, said, “on a medium-term basis, it does undermine the administration’s power to get things done.”
Trump’s election last November unleashed a powerful upswing in U.S. stock markets on the premise that he would cut taxes and regulation and usher through a major infrastructure spending package. The benchmark S&P 500 <.SPX> has gained 12 percent since Election Day, while shares of tech stocks and smaller companies have performed even better.
Nagging concerns about Trump’s ability to get things done, along with some anxiety about stretched equity valuations, have combined to cap the rally, and stocks have done little since early March.
Around midday Wednesday, the S&P was near unchanged, as were other market benchmarks.
The administration recovered some credibility last week when the House of Representatives voted to repeal major portions of former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act after failing to do so a month earlier. The simple achievement of advancing the healthcare bill to the Senate had been seen by investors as a signal that enacting tax cuts was doable, the big question was just how soon – this year or next.
“There’s a tremendous amount of hope baked into the market that Trump is going to be able to act, particularly on tax reform,” said Brad McMillan, Chief Investment Officer for Commonwealth Financial in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Edward Perkin, Chief Equity Investment Officer at Eaton Vance, said if the date to pass tax “is pushed out it’s not so much a problem, but if people question if it will ever happen, then that’s a problem.”
The degree to which this further alienates Democrats on Capitol Hill, especially in the Senate, was another concern given how narrow support has been so far for Trump’s agenda.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a senior Democratic lawmaker from California, was not optimistic that tensions between the parties would ease anytime soon.
“I had been hopeful that we could have a line of activity that’s going to bring a very divided country together,” Feinstein told Reuters Wednesday. “The problem out there is that people are so divided.”
Should the Comey episode weaken Trump’s bargaining ability with lawmakers, it may actually act as a catalyst for a tax bill, just one that might resemble congressional Republicans’ version more than Trump’s.
“An ongoing special investigation or shift in the balance of power could actually make Trump more eager to sign off” on the previously existing congressional tax plan, analysts at NatWest Markets said.
Of course, some had already adopted the view that Trump’s promised reforms were a distant hope, at best.
“Investors are realizing that the fiscal policy agenda is being pushed out farther on the horizon,” Michael Arone, Chief Investment Strategist at State Street Global Advisors .

FBI Director Comey Cartoons

U.S. Republican Graham curious on Trump business deals

U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said on Tuesday he wants to know more about President Donald Trump’s business dealings in relation to Russia, but that congressional investigations may have to avoid the matter if they conflict with an FBI probe.
Graham asked former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Monday whether he had concerns about Russian ties to Trump’s business interests. Clapper said he could not comment because the issue could be a subject of an ongoing investigation.
CNN reported on Tuesday that Graham intended to look into Trump’s business ties to see if any connections exist between Russia and the Trump campaign or the president’s associates.
The White House said it would welcome any fact-finding by Graham and the subcommittee, which he chairs, saying the president has no business ties to Russia.
“He has no business in Russia; he has no connections to Russia,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters. “So he welcomes that.”
Spicer added that Trump had directed a law firm to send Graham a certified letter stating as much.
While Graham expressed interest in finding out whether Trump’s business interests had any Russia ties, he said the subcommittee may have to “steer clear” of the issue if it conflicts with the FBI’s probe of Russia and the Trump campaign.
He clarified later that he had not taken any new actions.
“This is nothing new here,” he told reporters at the Capitol. “I’m not a prosecutor. But if you ask me if I want to know if there are any Trump business ties to Russia that are inappropriate, the answer would be ‘yes.'”
Graham told CNN it would be helpful to see Trump’s tax records but that it was too soon to say whether he would be willing to subpoena them, the network said.

Senate votes to confirm Gottlieb as head of FDA

The U.S. Senate voted on Tuesday to confirm Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a conservative health policy expert and venture capitalist, as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
Gottlieb, a physician and former deputy FDA commissioner during the George W. Bush administration, is seen as competent and knowledgeable. But critics worry about his ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Gottlieb has agreed to divest his holdings in about two-dozen healthcare stocks.

Flynn associates subpoenaed in Russia probe: CNN

Federal prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas seeking business records from people who worked with former U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn when he was a private citizen, CNN reported on Tuesday.
Citing people familiar with the matter, CNN said the subpoenas were issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alexandria, Virginia. They targeted people who worked with Flynn on contracts after he was pushed out of his job as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014, it reported.
Flynn later joined the Trump campaign but was fired as the White House national security adviser by President Donald Trump in February after he failed to tell the truth about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States.
Flynn’s attorney, Robert Kelner, did not respond immediately to a request for comment. A Justice Department spokeswoman said the department does not comment on the existence of ongoing investigations.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into allegations Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election to benefit Trump, as well as possible links to the Trump campaign.
Russia has repeatedly denied interfering in the U.S. election and the Trump administration denies allegations of collusion with Russia.
Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, saying he had lost confidence in Comey over his handling of an election-year email scandal involving then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Flynn, a retired general, has emerged as a central figure in the Russian probes.
Investigators have been looking into whether Flynn properly disclosed payments from clients with links to foreign governments, including Russia and Turkey, CNN said.

Trump fires FBI Director Comey, setting off U.S. political storm

Hillary Henchman?

U.S. President Donald Trump ignited a political firestorm on Tuesday by firing FBI Director James Comey, who had been leading an investigation into the Trump 2016 presidential campaign’s possible collusion with Russia to influence the election outcome.
The Republican president said he fired Comey, the top U.S. law enforcement official, over his handling of an election-year email scandal involving then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
The move stunned Washington and raised suspicions among Democrats and others that the White House was trying to blunt the FBI probe involving Russia.
Some Democrats compared Trump’s move to the “Saturday Night Massacre” of 1973, in which President Richard Nixon fired an independent special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal.
White House officials denied allegations that there was any political motive in the move by Trump, who took office on Jan. 20.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said he spoke to Trump and told him he was “making a very big mistake” in firing Comey, adding the president did not “really answer” in response.
An independent investigation into Moscow’s role in the election “is now the only way to go to restore the American people’s faith,” Schumer said.
Though many Democrats have criticized Comey’s handling of the Clinton email probe, they said they were troubled by the timing of Trump’s firing of him.
Senator Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is overseeing its own investigation into Russian interference during the election, said in a statement he was also troubled by the timing of Comey’s termination.
“His dismissal, I believe, is a loss for the Bureau and the nation,” Burr said.
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a January report that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an effort to disrupt the 2016 election, with the aim of helping Trump.
CNN reported on Tuesday night that federal prosecutors had issued grand jury subpoenas to former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, seeking business records, as part of the probe into Russian interference in the election.
Trump’s firing of Comey came a day after former acting Attorney General Sally Yates told a Senate panel that she had informed the White House on Jan. 26 that Flynn was at risk of blackmail by Moscow because he had been untruthful about his discussions with the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak. Trump fired Flynn 18 days later.
Russia has repeatedly denied any meddling in the election and the Trump administration denies allegations of collusion with Russia.
RESTORING ‘PUBLIC TRUST’
Trump, in a letter to Comey released by the White House, said: “It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission.”
The president told Comey in the letter that he accepted the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions that he could no longer provide effective leadership. Comey’s term was to run through September 2023. He was appointed director by Democratic President Barack Obama in 2013.
Sessions advised Trump’s campaign before being picked by the president to lead the Justice Department. Sessions had recused himself from involvement in the Russia investigation, after he misstated his own 2016 contacts with Russia’s ambassador to Washington.
Comey’s deputy, Andrew McCabe, became acting FBI director. The White House said the search for a new permanent director would begin immediately.
Pushing back against critics of the move, White House officials said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a career prosecutor who took office on April 25, assessed the situation at the FBI and concluded that Comey had lost his confidence.
Rosenstein sent his recommendation to Sessions, who concurred and they forwarded their recommendation to Trump, who accepted it on Tuesday, they said.
The White House released a memo in which Rosenstein wrote: “I cannot defend the Director’s handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton’s emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken.”
Rosenstein cited several former Justice Department officials’ comments criticizing Comey’s handling of the Clinton email investigation, including his public statements.
But one of those he cited, Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general under President H.W. Bush, questioned the purported reasons for the firing. Reached by Reuters, Ayer said in an email that the administration’s explanation was “a sham.”
Comey was traveling in Los Angeles when the news broke that he had been fired.
In an odd twist, a White House official said the letter firing him was delivered to the FBI by Keith Schiller, Trump’s longtime armed personal bodyguard who is now director of Oval Office Operations at the White House.
Trump, in the letter, said: “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau.”
EMAIL CONTROVERSY
Comey, 56, had been the target of criticism from many quarters for his handling of a probe involving Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was U.S. secretary of state under Obama. As recently as Tuesday, the FBI clarified remarks that Comey made on the matter last week.
Trump had originally criticized the FBI director for not pursuing criminal charges against Clinton last July, but later lavished praise on him.
Comey had said in July the Clinton email case should be closed without prosecution, but then declared – 11 days before the Nov. 8 election – that he had reopened the investigation because of a discovery of a new trove of Clinton-related emails.
Clinton and other Democrats say they believe Comey’s decision help cost her the election.
The firing came as a shock to FBI staff, nearly all of whom had confidence in Comey despite the controversy surrounding his handling of the Clinton email situation, according to an FBI official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The official said there was concern among agents that the firing was a political act related to the Russian investigation.
Other current and former U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials questioned the White House explanation for Comey’s firing.
“Trump praised him for the work on the email investigation, so that’s not it,” said Austin Berglas, a former FBI supervisory agent on hacking cases. “I think he realized the extent of the Russia investigation under way and moved him out. To me, that’s the only logical explanation right now.”
Trump’s dismissal of Comey does not mean the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the U.S. presidential election will be disrupted or end – career FBI staffers can continue the probe even as the search for a new FBI director begins, legal experts said.
Republican Representative Justin Amash wrote on Twitter that he and his staff were reviewing the possibility of drafting legislation to create an independent commission to look into the Russian campaign meddling.
Legislation related to the appointment of a special prosecutor or independent counsel has lapsed. But Justice Department regulations provide for the appointment of a special counsel, which is selected by the attorney general, or acting attorney general in the case of recusal, the experts said.

Free Obama Cell Phone Cartoons

Trump ‘Supervolunteer’ Tells Healthcare Story

Days after Congress passed a bill to Repeal and Replace Obamacare, it’s now in the hands of the Senate. However, for some, like Ray Reynolds, it’s a start to what the American healthcare system needs. Reynolds is a photographer and followed the Trump campaign across the country taking over 60 thousand photos. He compiled some of those photos into books, documenting his campaign experience, but also, his family’s struggle with health insurance. His mother and sister both died while waiting for treatment. He says “I lost a sister that was 52 years old. Now, I’ve got health issues with diabetes and I’m going down the same path she went down.”
He calls Obamacare a “death tax for the elderly and senior citizens.”
Reynolds clearly doesn’t hold back on his distaste for America’s current healthcare system. Living in Virginia where insurance rates have increased 252%, he’s a man with diabetes unable to get insurance, facing potential premiums up to thousands of dollars.
To find his books, “My Path My Purpose” and “ Making America Great Again” on the campaign and the healthcare struggle that inspired him to volunteer, visit DJT.digital.

Trump to nominate Chatterjee, Powelson to FERC: White House

President Donald Trump will nominate Neil Chatterjee, an adviser to Republican U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, and Robert Powelson, a member of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, to the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the White House said on Monday.
Chatterjee’s term would expire on June 30, 2021, and Powelson’s term would end on June 30, 2020, the White House said. Both must be confirmed by the Senate.

White House postpones meeting to decide on participation in Paris climate pact

A meeting of Trump administration advisers that had been scheduled for Tuesday to decide whether to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement has been postponed due to scheduling conflicts, a White House official said.
Key advisers to President Donald Trump and cabinet officials were due to convene at the White House to resolve an internal debate over whether Trump should keep his campaign promise to pull the United States out of the Paris agreement, according to senior administration officials and several people briefed on the meeting.
The White House official did not say when the meeting would be rescheduled.
The meeting was meant to lay the groundwork for a formal proposal to Trump, who has promised to announce a decision before a Group of Seven summit at the end of May.
Ahead of Tuesday’s originally planned meeting, business groups and some lawmakers called on the White House to remain in the Paris agreement, while some conservative policy groups urged the advisers to recommend a withdrawal.
Meanwhile, representatives of nearly 200 countries that are party to the Paris agreement are meeting in Bonn this week to discuss technical aspects of implementing the accord.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will host the biennial Arctic Council meeting in Fairbanks, Alaska, later this week.

French ex-prime minister Valls plans to back Macron in June elections

Manuel Valls, a former French Socialist prime minister, said on Tuesday that he wished to support President-elect Emmanuel Macron’s political movement in the June elections in the lower house of parliament.
“I will be a candidate in the presidential majority and I wish to join up to his movement, namely the ‘Republic on the Move’,” Valls told RTL radio.
Macron is working to obtain a majority in the lower house of parliament in June elections.
His party chief, Richard Ferrand, said on Monday that Macron’s ‘En Marche’ movement would change its name to “En Marche la République” or “Republic on the Move”, so as to structure itself more like a traditional party.
Ferrand also said the names of Macron’s 577 candidates in the legislative elections would be announced this Thursday.

FBI James Clapper Cartoons

White House expects Senate to change healthcare bill, but retain principles

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House said on Friday it expects the Senate to retain the “principles” of the healthcare bill approved by the House of Representatives on Thursday even as it makes some changes.
“We expect there to be some changes, but we expect the principles and the main pillars of the healthcare bill as it exists now to remain the same,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters.
Among those principles, she said, were creating a competitive environment and giving states more flexibility to make decisions about the healthcare system.

Ex-Obama administration officials to testify in Trump-Russia probe

Two officials in former President Barack Obama’s administration will testify on Monday in a Senate investigation into allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and possible collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Moscow.
James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence under Obama, and Sally Yates, who was Deputy Attorney General, will testify to the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism, the first such public testimony by former officials from the Democratic administration in one of congressional probes on Russia.
Congressional committees began investigating after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered hacking of Democratic political groups to discredit the election and sway the voting toward Republican Trump, who won an upset victory in November.
Moscow has denied any such meddling. Trump also has dismissed the allegations, suggesting instead that Obama might have wiretapped his Trump Tower in New York or that China may have been behind the cyber attacks. No evidence has been found to support either allegation.
The public hearing will be the first featuring testimony by Obama administration officials who have left government. Trump fired Yates from the Department of Justice in January, and Clapper retired on Jan. 20, when Trump was inaugurated.
Senator Lindsey Graham, the subcommittee’s chairman who called the hearing is a Russia hawk and sometime critic of Trump who has been one of the leading Republican voices calling for a thorough investigation of Russia and the election.
Yates is expected to tell the senators that on Jan. 26, when she was acting Attorney General, she had warned White House Counsel Don McGahn that then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had not told the truth about conversations he had with Sergei Kislyak, Moscow’s Ambassador to Washington, about U.S. economic sanctions on Russia.
Flynn resigned after less than a month in office.
The congressional hearings have been shadowed by allegations, mostly from Democrats, that lawmakers are too partisan to investigate effectively.
In the lead-up to Monday’s hearing, Susan Rice, who was Obama’s national security adviser, declined an invitation to testify because it had come only from the Republican Grahamand not Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat.
Her refusal was first reported by CNN.
Rice’s name was linked to the Russia investigation when Trump suggested she might have broken the law by asking intelligence analysts to reveal the name of a Trump associate mentioned in an intelligence report.
She denied doing anything inappropriate, and there is no evidence to substantiate Trump’s allegation.
Trump tweeted on Thursday that it was “Not good!” that Rice had not agreed to testify.
The probe being led by Graham and Whitehouse is one of three main congressional investigations of Russia and the 2016 U.S. election. The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies are conducting separate investigations.
Clapper, Yates and another official who served under Obama, former CIA Director John Brennan, had been scheduled to testify to the House of Representatives intelligence committee in March, but that hearing was canceled by the panel’s chairman, Republican Devin Nunes.
Nunes, a Trump ally, has since recused himself from the Russia investigation amid concerns that he was too close to the White House to lead a credible probe.
Yates, Clapper and Brennan are now due to appear at a public hearing of the House committee that has not been scheduled.

Made in North Korea: As tougher sanctions loom, more local goods in stores

From carrot-flavored toothpaste and charcoal facemasks to motorcycles and solar panels, visitors to North Korea say they are seeing more and more locally made products in the isolated country’s shops and supermarkets, replacing mostly Chinese imports.
As the Trump administration considers tougher economic sanctions to push the isolated country toward dismantling its weapons programs, North Korea is pursuing a dual strategy of developing both its military and economy.
The majority of consumer products in North Korea still come from China. But under leader Kim Jong Un, there’s been an attempt to sell more domestically made goods, to avoid any outflow of currency and to reinforce the national ideology of juche, or self-reliance, visiting businessmen say.
There is no available data to show how much is being produced domestically. Export data from countries like China and Malaysia, which sell consumer goods to North Korea, may not be an accurate reflection.
China’s commerce ministry declined to comment when asked whether China’s exports to North Korea were decreasing due to an increase in locally-made products.
Visitors say that with the impetus from the top, large North Korean companies like military-controlled Air Koryo, the operator of the national airline, and the Naegohyang conglomerate have diversified into manufacturing consumer goods including cigarettes and sports clothing.
North Korea is one of the most insular countries in the world and visits by foreigners are highly regulated.
A Reuters team that was in the capital Pyongyang last month was allowed to go to a grocery store, accompanied by government minders, where shelves were filled with locally made drinks, biscuits and other basic food items. Other visitors have seen locally made canned goods, coffee, liquor, toothpaste, cosmetics, soap, bicycles and other goods on sale in the city.
“As new factories open, the branding, packaging and ingredients of our food products have improved,” said shop assistant Rhee Kyong-sook, 33.
Kim Chul-ung, a 39-year old physical education teacher visiting the store, said: “I can taste real fruit in the drinks that are made in North Korea, compared to drinks from other countries.”
Visitors say locally made consumer goods are becoming increasingly sophisticated and QR or matrix barcodes can been found on a wide range of products from make-up to soft drinks. Market vendors are also becoming more competitive, offering samples of their food to shoppers, something they didn’t do five years ago.
“Around 2013, Kim Jong Un started talking about the need for import substitution,” said Andray Abrahamian of Choson Exchange, a Singapore-based group that trains North Koreans in business skills.
“There was clearly recognition that too many products were being imported from China, not just high-end consumer goods but also lower-end ones like food.”
“MY HOMELAND”
Air Koryo’s range of products now includes cigarettes, fizzy drinks, taxis and petrol stations.
“Naegohyang”, or “My Homeland”, began as a Pyongyang-based tobacco factory, but has expanded in recent years to produce playing cards, electronic goods and sports clothing. The company even sponsors a women’s football team of the same name.
The North Korean companies were not available for comment and do not publish revenue or profit statements. It was not possible to identify any joint venture partners.
Traders and retail experts said the North Korean market was attractive, thanks to a growing class of “donju”, or “masters of money,” who generate wealth in a gray market economy that is being increasingly recognized and controlled by the state.
“The North Koreans increasingly don’t want Chinese products because they think they are poor quality,” said a trader from Southeast Asia who exports consumer goods to North Korea. The trader did not want to be identified.
China has been rocked by a number of food safety scandals in recent years, including contaminated rice and milk powder.
“Mothers in North Korea are no different to mothers in China or Canada, they want to feed their babies the best possible food,” said Michael Spavor of Paektu Exchange, which brings delegations of investors, tourists and academics into North Korea.
“I’ve seen people in a store in North Korea comparing a Chinese and a Korean product and picking the Korean one,” he said.
STILL RELIANT
Nevertheless, North Korea is still heavily reliant on trade with China and the vast majority of raw materials to make consumer products still come from or through China.
For example, while domestically-made instant coffee is becoming increasingly common, the sugar used in it would likely come from China or another country that produces sugar and pass into North Korea via China, says Abrahamian.
“We’re seeing a rise in domestically-made products, including motorcycles, solar panels and food, but the business relationships on which these products depend on are still Chinese.”
Because of the reliance on China, it is likely these “Made in North Korea” companies will suffer if stiffer economic sanctions are imposed on the country.
Diplomats said this week Washington was negotiating with China on a possible stronger U.N. Security Council response – such as new sanctions – to North Korea’s missile launches.
(Washington considering imposing new sanctions on North Korea, to read more, click http://reut.rs/2p9JyO5)
“If you have a coal mining town of 10,000 people who are all in some way connected to the coal industry, then when sanctions are imposed against North Korean coal, the whole town’s consumer market will suffer because people don’t have the buying power anymore,” said Abrahamian.

Macron wins French presidency, to European allies’ relief

Emmanuel Macron was elected French president on Sunday with a business-friendly vision of European integration, defeating Marine Le Pen, a far-right nationalist who threatened to take France out of the European Union.
The centrist’s emphatic victory, which also smashed the dominance of France’s mainstream parties, will bring huge relief to European allies who had feared another populist upheaval to follow Britain’s vote to quit the EU and Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president.
The euro currency, hit a six-month high against the dollar while Asian shares gained and U.S. stocks briefly touched a record high.[FRX/]
With virtually all votes counted, Macron had topped 66 percent against just under 34 percent for Le Pen – a gap wider than the 20 or so percentage points that pre-election surveys had suggested.
Even so, it was a record performance for the National Front, a party whose anti-immigrant policies once made it a pariah, and underlined the scale of the divisions that Macron must now try to heal.
After winning the first round two weeks ago, Macron had been accused of behaving as if he was already president. On Sunday night, with victory finally sealed, he was much more solemn.
“I know the divisions in our nation, which have led some to vote for the extremes. I respect them,” Macron said in an address at his campaign headquarters, shown live on television.
“I know the anger, the anxiety, the doubts that very many of you have also expressed. It’s my responsibility to hear them,” he said. “I will work to recreate the link between Europe and its peoples, between Europe and citizens.”
Later he strode alone almost grimly through the courtyard of the Louvre Palace in central Paris to the strains of the EU anthem, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, not breaking into a smile until he mounted the stage of his victory rally to the cheers of his partying supporters.
His immediate challenge will be to secure a majority in next month’s parliamentary election for a political movement that is barely a year old, rebranded as La Republique En Marche (“Onward the Republic”), in order to implement his program.
EUROPE DEFENDED
Outgoing president Francois Hollande, who brought Macron into politics, said the result “confirms that a very large majority of our fellow citizens wanted to unite around the values of the Republic and show their attachment to the European Union”.
Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, told Macron: “I am delighted that the ideas you defended of a strong and progressive Europe, which protects all its citizens, will be those that you will carry into your presidency.”
Macron spoke by phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, with whom he hopes to revitalize the Franco-German axis at the heart of the EU, saying he planned to visit Berlin shortly.
Trump tweeted his congratulations on Macron’s “big win”, saying he looked forward to working with him. Chinese President Xi Jinping said China was willing to help push Sino-French ties to a higher level, according to state news agency Xinhua.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also congratulated Macron.
“Fading political risk in France adds to the chance that euro zone economic growth can surprise to the upside this year,” said Holger Schmieding, an analyst at Berenberg Bank.
Macron will become France’s youngest leader since Napoleon. A 39-year-old former investment banker, he served for two years as economy minister under Hollande but has never previously held elected office.
Le Pen, 48, said she had also offered her congratulations. But she defiantly claimed the mantle of France’s main opposition in calling on “all patriots to join us” in constituting a “new political force”.
Her tally was almost double the score that her father Jean-Marie, the last far-right candidate to make the presidential runoff, achieved in 2002, when he was trounced by the conservative Jacques Chirac.
Her high-spending, anti-globalisation “France-first” policies may have unnerved financial markets but they appealed to many poorer members of society against a background of high unemployment, social tensions and security concerns.
RESHAPING THE LANDSCAPE
Despite having served briefly in Hollande’s deeply unpopular Socialist government, Macron managed to portray himself as the man to revive France’s fortunes by recasting a political landscape moulded by the left-right divisions of the past century.
“I’ve liked his youth and his vision from the start,” said Katia Dieudonné, a 35-year-old immigrant from Haiti who brought her two children to Macron’s victory rally.
“He stands for the change I’ve wanted since I arrived in France in 1985 – openness, diversity, without stigmatizing anyone … I’ve voted for the left in the past and been disappointed.”
Macron was due to attend a ceremony marking the Western allies’ World War Two victory in Europe on Monday. The ceremony in Paris marks the 72nd anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.
Macron’s team successfully skirted several attempts to derail his campaign – by hacking its communications and distributing purportedly leaked documents – that were reminiscent of the hacking of Democratic Party communications during Hillary Clinton’s U.S. election campaign.
Allegations by Macron’s camp that a massive computer hack had compromised emails added last-minute drama on Friday night, just as official campaigning was ending.
While Macron sees France’s way forward in boosting the competitiveness of an open economy, Le Pen wanted to shield French workers by closing borders, quitting the EU’s common currency, the euro, radically loosening the bloc and scrapping trade deals.
Macron will become the eighth – and youngest – president of France’s Fifth Republic when he moves into the Elysee Palace after his inauguration next weekend.
Opinion surveys taken before the second round suggested that his fledgling movement, despite being barely a year old, had a fighting chance of securing the majority he needed.
He plans to blend a big reduction in public spending and a relaxation of labor laws with greater investment in training and a gradual reform of the unwieldy pension system.
A European integrationist and pro-NATO, he is orthodox in foreign and defense policy and shows no sign of wishing to change France’s traditional alliances or reshape its military and peacekeeping roles in the Middle East and Africa.
NEW GENERATION
His election also represents a long-awaited generational change in French politics that have been dominated by the same faces for years.
He will be the youngest leader in the current Group of Seven (G7) major nations and has elicited comparisons with youthful leaders past and present, from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to British ex-premier Tony Blair and even the late U.S. president John F. Kennedy.
But any idea of a brave new political dawn will be tempered by an abstention rate on Sunday of around 25 percent, the highest this century, and by a record share of blank or spoiled ballots – submitted by more than 11 percent of those who did vote.
Many of those will have been supporters of the far-left maverick Jean-Luc Melenchon, whose high-spending, anti-EU, anti-globalisation platform had many similarities with Le Pen’s.
Melenchon took 19 percent in coming fourth in the first round of the election, and pointedly refused to endorse Macron for the runoff.
France’s biggest labor union, the CFDT, welcomed Macron’s victory but said the National Front’s score was still worryingly high.
“Now, all the anxieties expressed at the ballot by a part of the electorate must be heard,” it said in a statement. “The feeling of being disenfranchised, of injustice, and even abandonment is present among a large number of our citizens.”
The more radical leftist CGT union called for a demonstration on Monday against “liberal” economic policies.
Like Macron, Le Pen will now have to work to try to convert her presidential result into parliamentary seats, in a two-round system that has in the past encouraged voters to cast ballots tactically to keep her out.
She has worked for years to soften the xenophobic associations that clung to the National Front under her father, going so far as to expel him from the party he founded.
On Sunday night, her deputy Florian Philippot distanced the movement even further from him by saying the new, reconstituted party would not be called “National Front”.