China waiving tariff hikes on US soybeans, pork

China is waiving punitive tariffs on U.S. soybeans and pork while the two sides negotiate a trade deal, the Ministry of Finance said Friday.

Beijing promised in September to lift the tariffs, adding to conciliatory steps that raised hopes for a settlement. The government announced then that Chinese importers were placing orders but no details of when the tariff exemption would take effect were released.

China is “carrying out the exclusion,” the Ministry of Finance said on its website. The ministry and the Ministry of Commerce did not respond to requests for further information.

Negotiators are working on the details of a “Phase 1” agreement announced in October by President Donald Trump.

The two sides have raised tariffs on billions of dollars of each other’s goods, disrupting global trade and threatening to depress economic growth.

Another U.S. tariff hike on an additional $160 billion of Chinese imports is due to take effect Dec. 15.

Chinese spokespeople have expressed hope for a settlement “as soon as possible,” but Trump spooked global financial markets this week by saying he might be willing to wait until after the U.S. presidential election late next year.

A sticking point is Chinese insistence that Washington must roll back punitive tariffs as part of any deal.

A Chinese spokesman repeated Thursday that Beijing expects such a move in a “Phase 1” agreement.

Pelosi, Biden lose their cool as impeachment battle intensifies

Nancy Pelosi reacts when asked if she hates President Trump then says she prays for him after calling Trump a

Nancy Pelosi was calm and controlled, almost scripted, as she announced—to no one’s surprise—that the House will begin drafting articles of impeachment.
Then a reporter got under her skin.
And she let loose, against President Trump and the journalist.
It was a rare spontaneous moment in what has increasingly seemed an orchestrated kabuki dance. In fact, Trump now wants to speed up the performance.
“If you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast, so we can have a fair trial in the Senate, and so that our Country can get back to business,” the president tweeted.
He also accused the Democrats of trying to impeach him “over NOTHING.”
The Twitter comments made clear that Trump, like just about everyone else, now fully expects the House Democrats to impeach him. The only remaining questions are the timing (the Dems are hellbent on finishing before Christmas) and the scope (stick with Ukraine or throw the kitchen sink into the actual articles).
Pelosi had taken the rhetorical high road, announcing the next steps on impeachment “with confidence and humility, with allegiance to our founders and a heart full of love for America.” She also made these points at a news conference before walking off.
Some reporters shouted questions, which is customary, and the House speaker suddenly stopped in her tracks.
James Rosen, the former Fox News correspondent now with Sinclair Television, was asking: “Do you hate the president, Madam Speaker? Because Representative Collins…”
Pelosi snapped back: “I don’t hate anybody.”
ROSEN: Representative Collins –
PELOSI: I was raised Catholic—
ROSEN: The reason I ask is…
PELOSI: I don’t hate anybody in the world. Don’t you accuse me—
ROSEN: I did not accuse you—
PELOSI: You did. You did.
ROSEN: I asked a question.
PELOSI: You did.
Rosen finally got out his question about the Judiciary panel’s ranking Republican: “Representative Collins yesterday suggested that the Democrats are doing this simply because they don’t like the guy.”
Pelosi, walking back to the podium, unloaded on Trump as a “coward” for his handling of gun violence and the dreamers. Then she said: “As a Catholic, I resent your using the word hate in a sentence that addresses me. I don’t hate anyone. I was raised in a way that is a heart full of love and always pray for the president. And I still pray for the president. I pray for the president all the time. So don’t mess with me when it comes to words like that.”
With that, Pelosi completely obscured everything she’d said before.
I wouldn’t have asked the original question like that, using “hate,” but her reaction was totally out of proportion to the query, in which Rosen was attempting to quote a GOP congressman. They had tangled a couple of weeks ago, when Pelosi responded to a politely phrased question by calling Rosen “Mr. Republican Talking Point.”
Trump later chimed in with his review: “Nancy Pelosi just had a nervous fit.”
Emotions are clearly rising in this impeachment mess. Kevin McCarthy unloaded on Pelosi at a presser after hers.
Some liberals have been slamming law professor Jonathan Turley for testifying against impeachment--he's been inundated with threatening messages and demands that George Washington University fire him. Turley had testified before the same panel in favor of impeaching Bill Clinton.
Some conservatives have been skewering pro-impeachment professor Pamela Karlan for stupidly doing a play on words involving Barron Trump’s name, opening herself up to attack (from Melania, among others) that she was dragging the president’s son into the public arena.
Joe Biden went off on a voter who challenged him on Ukraine and his son Hunter, calling the guy a “damn liar” and challenging him to a pushup contest as well as an “IQ test.”
It’s as if the impeachment battle is polluting an already toxic political atmosphere as we hurtle toward the inevitable outcome that everyone already expects.

Does Pelosi have the votes for impeachment?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called for House Democrats to "proceed with articles of impeachment" against President Trump, but questions remain over whether she has secured enough Democrats to vote for impeachment as the effort barrels forward at breakneck speed.
Pelosi, during her televised remarks about impeachment on Thursday, did not suggest any particular timeline for a vote, saying only, "We will proceed in a manner worthy of our oath of office."
The timing of such a vote could be indicative of whether Pelosi has enough Democrats to vote to impeach: Pelosi is a master at reading her caucus. If she has the votes, she’ll likely give the green light to impeach on the floor. If she doesn’t have the votes, impeachment could wait -- conceivably until the New Year.
A major milepost, though, could come at 5 p.m. Friday: Democrats have said the Trump administration has until the close of business to decide if it will cooperate with the investigation or try to defend the president. If the administration says it’s willing to play, then impeachment could stretch out a bit. If not, Democrats may operate under a compressed timeframe.
"This is a hard vote to make one way or the other," Rep. Jeff Van Drew, D-N.J., who opposed the inquiry before it began and remains skeptical of the impeachment efforts, told reporters Thursday.
A simple majority -- 216 of 431 members -- is needed to impeach. There are 233 Democrats, meaning that presuming anti-Trump independent Rep. Justin Amash backs impeachment, Democrats can lose 18 of their own and still impeach the president
A member of Pelosi’s leadership team told Fox News this week that the backlog of bills up this month in the House “works against” a December impeachment vote, explaining that impeachment “doesn’t fit the holiday spirit.”
Van Drew was one of just two Democrats who opposed the inquiry, alongside Minnesota's Collin Peterson, but Republicans are hoping that the 31 Democrats from districts that supported Trump in 2016 could be the key to defeating the impeachment effort.
Sensing a possible opening, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has ramped up the pressure on these Democrats in pro-Trump districts. As reported by The Daily Caller, the RNC is running ads urging voters to pick a lawmaker who “won’t waste taxpayer $$$ on partisan impeachment.”
Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Deputy Editor Dan Henninger told Fox News that some of these 31 Democrats are "really reluctant to take this vote," especially at this point in time.
"Do those Democrats really want a vote on virtually Christmas Eve?" he asked.
Henninger predicted that an impeachment trial could go into February. Not only could that slow down the momentum Democrats have built with the swift pace of the inquiry in recent weeks, it also places a burden on senators who will be in the thick of the presidential primary season. The Iowa caucuses are set for Feb. 3, with the New Hampshire primary Feb. 11, and contests in Nevada and South Carolina later that month.
While Democrats may use impeachment as an anti-Trump talking point on the campaign trail, candidates -- including Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Michael Bennet, D-Col. -- could end up spending valuable days of the primary season torn between their campaigns and a Senate trial should Trump actually be impeached.
An impeachment trial at that stage of the game would put the senators at a disadvantage, while candidates such as South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former Vice President Joe Biden and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg would be free to continue their efforts.
"This impeachment is beginning to overwhelm the real politics that the Democrats should be interested in," Henninger said, "which is trying to get themselves a presidential nominee."
On Thursday, Pelosi delivered a statement urging House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., to proceed with impeachment after a hearing a day earlier featured constitutional scholars presenting arguments for and against it.
“The president leaves us no choice but to act, because he is trying to corrupt, once again, the election for his own benefit," Pelosi said regarding Trump's request to have Ukraine announce an investigation of Biden and his son Hunter.
Amid the impeachment effort, lawmakers also have to deal with a looming government shutdown that could take effect Dec. 20 unless Congress passes spending legislation to avoid it. With just over two weeks to do so -- and holidays coming soon after -- impeachment could find itself on the House's back burner until the new year.
During a press conference in the hours following her impeachment announcement, Pelosi fielded a question about the timeline of the impeachment process, stating that "we feel comfortable with all of the time that has gone into this." She pointed out that it has been two and a half years since Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel "and all that has transpired since then."
Following Pelosi's announcement, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., took Democrats to task for not putting pressing legislative matters ahead of impeachment.
"We've argued that American families deserve better than this partisan paralysis where Democrats literally obsess over impeachment and obstruct everything else," McConnell said on the Senate floor. "This very morning, for example, the Speaker gave a speech on national television to push forward her rushed and partisan impeachment. Not one word, not one word on the outstanding legislation the American people actually need. Nothing on USMCA or the NDAA or funding for our armed forces. It's all impeachment, all the time."
Pelosi responded to this during a news conference in the hours following her impeachment announcement by stating, "No, we have 275 bipartisan bills on your desk."
Senior House leadership sources have acknowledged to Fox News that they think it would be a challenge to have a proper debate and rush articles of impeachment through the Judiciary Committee and to the House floor before Christmas, while also working to avoid a shutdown. Pelosi indicated Thursday that the House has a number of bills on the agenda in the coming week, pointing to bills including legislation dealing with insider trading and voting rights.
"It's too complex," a senior member of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's leadership team told Fox News earlier this week.
That complexity could be increased by the need to carefully draft articles of impeachment that would draw enough support to pass in a vote by the full House of Representatives. A Capitol Hill source told Fox News that committee members were looking to Wednesday's testimony from law professors to formulate articles that would have the best chance of passing.
Republicans have united behind Trump against the impeachment efforts, meaning Democrats cannot afford to lose many votes from their own party.
Some Democrats, like Van Drew, remain skeptical of the effort. "Is this really an impeachable situation?" Van Drew asked in an interview with USA Today, noting the rarity of presidential impeachment in American history, and the fact that no president has ever been removed via that process.
"At the end of the day, nobody's ever been convicted," he said. "There's a reason for that. Our founding fathers had tremendous concern with the idea of impeachment. The idea of taking an elected leader regardless of how good or poor you think that elected leader is, out of office and disenfranchising hundreds of millions of voters does a lot that isn't so good for this country."
Fox News' Chad Pergram, Gillian Turner, Adam Shaw, and Gregg Re contributed to this report.

AOC called out after claiming Trump food-stamp revisions might have left her family 'starved'

Idiot

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., received pushback Thursday after claiming her family "might've just starved" had the Trump administration's tightened requirements for food stamp recipients been in place when her father died in 2008.
Critics claimed the freshman congresswoman misrepresented the new rule, pointing out that it applies only to childless, able-bodied adults under 50.
The Agriculture Department (USDA) finalized the first of three proposed rules targeting the Supplemental Nutrition Program, known as SNAP. The plan announced Wednesday will limit states from exempting work-eligible adults from having to maintain steady employment in order to receive benefits.
Ocasio-Cortez, 30, responded to the announcement on Twitter on Thursday:
“My family relied on food stamps (EBT) when my dad died at 48. I was a student. If this happened then, we might’ve just starved. Now, many people will,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “It’s shameful how the GOP works overtime to create freebies for the rich while dissolving lifelines of those who need it most.”
The New York Democrat was 19 and about to begin her sophomore year at Boston University when her father, Sergio Ocasio, died of lung cancer. It is likely her mother still would have claimed her as a dependent at that time.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think tank, challenged the “Squad” member’s claim, writing:
“The rule applies to able-bodied adults between the ages of 18 and 49 who do not have dependents. The rule wouldn’t apply to parents with minor children, the elderly, or disabled people.”
Several Twitter users also slammed the New York Democrat for spreading “Fake News” online by implying the new rule prevents children from receiving benefits. Some users also pointed out that able-bodied adults between ages 18 and 49 without dependents can still qualify for food stamps if they train or work a minimum of 20 hours a week.
“Create 'freebies' for the rich @AOC? You and your radical, socialist crew believe the Forgotten men and women, every day middle-class Americans are the 'rich'. Tax relief for hard working Americans is hardly a 'freebie,' Catalina Lauf, a Republican candidate seeking a U.S. House seat from Illinois’ 14th Congressional District, wrote in response to Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet. Lauf -- the 26-year-old daughter of a small-business owner and a legal immigrant from Guatemala – has been billed by some as the Republican counterweight to Ocasio-Cortez.
SNAP feeds more than 36 million people. Under current rules, work-eligible able-bodied adults without dependents and between the ages of 18 and 49 can receive only three months of SNAP benefits in a three-year period if they don’t meet the 20-hour work requirement.
The new rule, which will take effect on April 1, 2020, imposes stricter criteria for states to meet in order to issue waivers. Under the plan, states can only issue waivers if a city or county has an unemployment rate of 6 percent or higher. The waivers will be good for one year and will require the governor to support the request.
The USDA estimates the change would save roughly $5.5 billion over five years and cut benefits for roughly 688,000 SNAP recipients.  Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said the rule will help move people “from welfare to work.”
“We’re taking action to reform our SNAP program in order to restore the dignity of work to a sizable segment of our population and be respectful of the taxpayers who fund the program,” Perdue told reporters Wednesday. “Americans are generous people who believe it is their responsibility to help their fellow citizens when they encounter a difficult stretch. That’s the commitment behind SNAP, but, like other welfare programs, it was never intended to be a way of life.”
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said the plan will only serve to punish workers whose jobs are seasonal or unreliable. She is the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, & Forestry. “This administration is out of touch with families who are struggling to make ends meet by working seasonal jobs or part-time jobs with unreliable hours,” Stabenow said, according to The Associated Press.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also blasted the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce public benefits, saying: “Instead of combating food insecurity for millions, connecting workers to good-paying jobs or addressing income inequality, the administration is inflicting their draconian rule on millions of Americans across the nation who face the highest barriers to employment and economic stability.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Impeachment Cartoons

Stacking the deck: Impeachment hearing spotlights anti-Trump professors

I didn’t expect much from the House Judiciary hearing, and I wasn’t disappointed.
Democrats have already decided to impeach Donald Trump, and stacked the witness table with three professors who passionately insisted that the House has no choice. Only one professor said impeachment was absolutely not warranted.
These are smart and learned academics, but the deck was obviously stacked.
The committee’s top leaders set the tone Wednesday.
Chairman Jerry Nadler declared that “never before in the history of the republic” has “the president engaged in a course of conduct that included all of the acts that most concerned the Framers.” The New York Democrat added that Trump’s “level of obstruction is without precedent.”
Ranking minority member Doug Collins blamed the proceedings on “a deep-seated hatred” of Trump.
“This is not an impeachment. This is just a simple railroad job…You just don’t like the guy,” the Georgia Republican said.
And his party forced roll-call votes on such matters as postponing the hearing and forcing Adam Schiff and the whistleblower to testify, just to shake things up and make a point.
Whether or not you buy the president’s case that impeachment is a “hoax” and a “witch hunt”—a “dirty word,” Trump said from NATO in London--no one can deny that the process has been bathed in partisanship.
Democrats served notice they were firmly in charge by leaking, to Politico, Nadler’s private assurance to his colleagues that “I’m not going to take any s---.”
Any faint hope that the four professors would be appearing just as expert fact-finders was quickly dashed.
Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina said that Trump’s abuses of power “are worse than the misconduct of any prior president.”
Pamela Karlan of Stanford said that “if we are to keep faith with the Constitution and our Republic, President Trump must be held to account.”
She got into it with Collins, who said the witnesses couldn’t have digested the Intel Committee’s report on impeachment, declaring: “I’m insulted by the suggestion that as a law professor I don’t care about those facts.”
It quickly emerged that Karlan had recently donated a thousand bucks to Elizabeth Warren.
Jonathan Turley of George Washington University, the only critical witness, said Democrats were using “the shortest proceeding, with the thinnest evidentiary record, and the narrowest grounds ever used to impeach a president.”
Turley made a point of saying he didn’t support Trump politically and had voted against him in 2016. But he said he is mad about this impeachment, as are his wife, his kids and his dogs. He got so much airtime that at times it seemed like the Turley Show.
But critics will note that Turley told the very same committee in 1998 that he supported Bill Clinton’s impeachment.
This was a check-the-box hearing, following the GOP’s example two decades ago, a bow in the direction of debating the standards for impeaching a chief executive. But relentless partisanship carried the day.
At one point, GOP congressman Steve Chabot quoted Nadler saying that impeachment would unnecessarily divide the country—back when Clinton was facing removal from office over the Monica Lewinsky debacle.
The public is growing tired of the process, and support for impeachment and removal seems stuck at 50 percent. Wednesday's hearing added to the sense that House Democrats know full well what they want to do—and are determined to do it before Christmas.
By the same token, Senate Republicans know what they want to do and will acquit Trump in January, unless it drags on into February.
That’s why the Judiciary hearing felt like an empty exercise that didn’t move the needle and isn’t destined to be a ratings smash.

Rep. Al Green rips slams committee over impeachment experts: 'not one person of color'

A Texas congressman slammed his fellow Democrats Wednesday after “not one person of color” was called as an expert to testify during the first day of impeachment hearings conducted by the House Judiciary Committee.
Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, rebuked his colleagues in a speech on the House floor before the committee hearing began. Three legal scholars later testified at the request of Democrats in the first Judiciary Committee impeachment inquiry hearing. Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, was the sole witness called by the GOP.
“I rise because I love my country, but I also rise today with heartfelt regrets. It hurts my heart, Mr. Speaker, to see the Judiciary Committee hearing experts on the topic of impeachment — one of the seminal issues of this Congress — hearing experts... and not one person of color among the experts,” Green told the House floor.
“What subliminal message are we sending to the world when we have experts but not one person of color? Are we saying that there are no people of color who are experts on this topic of impeachment?” Green continued. He claimed the House committee was taking advantage of black voters without affording them equal representation in the impeachment process.
“I refuse to be ignored and taken for granted. I came here to represent the people who are ignored and taken for granted. Not one person of color among the constitutional scholars,” he said. “It seems that there’s a desire among some to have the output of people of color without input from the people of color.”
“I rise today to say that this is not about Democrats. It’s not about Republicans. It’s about fairness,” Green said. “It’s about whether or not we have matured to the point in this country where we’re going to treat all people equally.”
Turley argued against impeaching President Trump. Stanford Law professor Pamela Karlan, Harvard Law professor and Bloomberg columnist Noah Feldman and University of North Carolina Law professor Michael Gerhardt were called by Democrats on the committee, and they said Trump's actions were impeachable.
Green’s speech comes a day after a leading progressive activist lamented that only white candidates will grace the upcoming Democratic presidential debate stage following Sen. Kamala Harris’s departure from the 2020 race.
"It's a sad state of affairs to have six white candidates on stage, many of whom don't necessarily speak with black women, who are the powerhouse voters -- and we're at this moment where we went from the most diverse set of candidates in the history -- certainly in my lifetime -- to an all-white stage," Aimee Allison told MSNBC on Tuesday.
Allison is the founder and president of She the People, a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring “that women of color will never be taken for granted again in elections."
Fox News' Sam Dorman and Brian Flood contributed to this report.

Matt Gaetz grills impeachment witnesses over Democratic donations, slams professor's dig at Barron Trump

House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., grilled three of the four impeachment panel witnesses for their past support for Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton, and admonished one for making a joke at the expense of the teenage son of President Trump.
Gaetz began his allotted five minutes of question time by responding to the previous questioner, House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem S. Jeffries, D-N.Y., who noted that Americans had elected a Democrat majority in the House to serve as a check on Trump.
"The will of the American people also elected Donald Trump to be president of the United States in the 2016 election, and there's one party that can't seem to get over it," Gaetz said, adding that unlike Jeffries' caucus, Republicans haven't focused all of their resources on attempting to remove the top official in the opposing party, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
"Frankly, we'd love to govern with you," he added.
Turning to the professors, he asked UNC-Chapel Hill Professor Michael Gerhardt to confirm that he donated to President Barack Obama.
"My family did, yes," Gerhardt responded.
Shifting his attention to Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman, Gaetz noted the educator has written several articles that portray Trump in a negative light.
"Mar-a-Lago ad belongs in impeachment file," Gaetz said, repeating the title of an April 2017 piece Feldman wrote for Bloomberg Opinion.
Gaetz further pressed Feldman, asking him: "Do you believe you're outside of the political mainstream on the question of impeachment?"
Responding to Gaetz, Feldman said impeachment is warranted whenever a president abuses their power for personal gain or when they "corrupt the democratic process." The professor added he was an "impeachment skeptic" until the July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky.
After the exchange, Gaetz turned to Stanford Law Professor Pamela Karlan and challenged her on reported four-figure donations to Clinton, Obama and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
"Why so much more for Hillary than the other two?" he added, smiling.
The Florida lawmaker went on to criticize Karlan for a remark she made while answering an earlier question by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas.
Karlan had told Jackson Lee that there is a difference between what Trump can do as president and the powers of a medieval king.
"The Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility, so while the president can name his son 'Barron', he can't make him a baron."
Gaetz fumed at the remark, saying it does not lend "credibility" to her argument.
"When you invoke the president's son's name here, when you try to make a little joke out of referencing Barron Trump... it makes you look mean, it makes you look like you are attacking someone's family: the minor child of the president of the United States."
Later, First Lady Melania Trump ripped Karlan for bringing up her son, claiming she should be ashamed for using a child in the pursuit of public "pandering."
"A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics," Mrs. Trump wrote. "Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child to do it."