Weak demand and domestic prices at four-year lows led to a 6% annual decline in Chinese coal imports in March, according to official data.
Last month, China imported a total of 38.73 million metric tons of coal, compared to 41.38 million tons in imports in the same month of 2024, per data from the General Administration of Customs cited by Reuters on Monday.
The domestic Bohai-Rim Bay thermal coal price index indicated that the domestic price for medium-grade coal slipped at the end of last week to its lowest level since March 2021, according to estimates by Reuters.
China’s combined January-February coal imports – reported together to smooth out Lunar New Year effects – had increased by 2% from the same period of 2024.
But the dip in March means that Chinese coal imports for the first three months of 2025 were 0.9% lower than in the first quarter of last year.
In view of the low domestic coal prices, weaker demand, and high coal inventories at ports, China’s import decline in March wasn’t a surprise, and analysts will not be surprised if the trend of lower coal imports continues for the next few months.
Globally, China is the leader in renewable energy capacity installations, but it is also a leader in coal-fired power and continues to be the key driver of record-high global coal demand.
Thermal power generation, which is overwhelmingly dominated by coal, rose by 1.5% in 2024 from a year earlier, to a record high of 6.34 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh), data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics showed.
The persistent growth in Chinese coal demand, including for power generation, goes to show that coal remains the baseload of China’s power system to back up the surge in renewables and will stay such for years to come as power demand jumps with the increasing electrification of homes and transport.
I’m as excited as anyone about the prospect of a return of American manufacturing. But there are huge barriers, among which is the profitability metrics of accounting. Will it make sense from an economic point of view? Without that piece in place, political wishes and national determination will not be enough.
The United States has outsourced vast amounts of its once-mighty manufacturing power to China, Mexico, and elsewhere. It seemed mutually beneficial for decades until we took note of how strange it all is that America should have so few industries it can call its own.
There are a number of ways to tackle this problem. But the scale of it is not widely understood. The wage differentials between the United States and other countries are gigantic and not easily overcome. Other production cost differentials matter too, as does the problematic value of the dollar. Its status as the world reserve currency cements the economic rationale of imports over exports.
There are other issues besides, among which is something more fundamental: the American work ethic. This is a cultural problem emerging from decades of easy money and a loss of enterprising drive.
A quick story from yesterday. I got in a grocery line behind a person with a huge basket full of groceries but they were arranged in a strange way. As she put them on the belt for checkout, she began to use the separators, not based on the kind of product but on some other basis.
I watched carefully as she put paper bags in each pile. After the first tranche went through, she pulled out a card and paid. She repeated this. Then I figured it out. She was shopping for Instacart, not just for one person but fully five households.
I reverse-engineered her process. As she entered the store, she had a huge list and as she went through each aisle, she had pulled groceries for each client, carefully separating them and maintaining that separation through checkout, payment, bagging, and eventually transportation.
The possibility of mistakes must be huge in this kind of operation. One error and the customer would surely complain.
I was a bit awestruck by the engineering feat that was unfolding before my eyes. I made inquiries about what was going on and she said she was doing this but did not say much more. Her English was broken so there were language difficulties. More importantly, she was simply too busy to chit-chat with some guy standing around making inquiries for an article.
As I thought about it, I watched her work with some degree of amazement. It was marvelous. Based on her language skills, she is very likely a recent immigrant, probably with no “higher” education but with some mad skills.
How did she get so good at this? Repetition and the improvement that comes thereby. That’s where skill comes from. Why did she repeat this so often? Because she had to in order to earn money. The need creates the discipline and the discipline fosters the skill.
A quick example. Let’s say you bring home four swiveling bar stools from the home store but they need to be assembled. The first one is a mess with screws and confusion and you might have to do it over once or even twice, while juggling the instructions. It’s awful. The second one is better. By the time you get to the fourth one, you are assembling the stool in a fraction of the time.
You might think, “Wow, I’m so good at this I could make it a business to assemble these.” But it is just one skill you now possess. You gain it over a couple of intense hours, but you now have it. This is how focus, discipline, drive, purpose, and experience feed skill and value in the workplace.
Tim Cook of Apple has made clear that the real reason iPhones and other Apple products are made in China rather than the United States is not wages. It is technical skill and precision. These products require extreme discipline, knowledge, and deep experience. The number of workers who can do this in China is large; in the United States it is tiny.
I think about all the “white collar” workers I’ve known who would blow a mental gasket if ever asked to do anything remotely this complicated. Forget assembling an iPhone. They couldn’t possibly shop for five households simultaneously, bag the groceries, and deliver them.
It is a skill that is out of reach, and they would be annoyed at the asking. They would probably complain to HR and prepare a lawsuit. They would mess up the first order, deal with irate customers and an officious boss, and reach for the pill bottle or the THC soda to make the pain go away.
At this point in history, I’m just not sure that the professional class in the United States is up to this kind of productivity. The tabooed reality of the lockdown period is that most people truly enjoyed two years of luxurious living and only pretending to work. That period also shattered the drive of many, spoiling an entire generation of elite workers into thinking that making money is easy and effortless.
For 25 years of artificially low interest rates—particularly since 2008—the Fed has cultivated a sense that the entire system is based on a kind of illusion. Sure, some people are rich and some are poor but the difference has nothing to do with the work they do. It’s all about birth, class, credentials, and the luck of the demographic draw.
This is a tragic perception, one completely inconsistent with the traditional American ethos of hard work and class mobility. A feature of the Trump agenda is to recapture and rebuild that idea with a shift in economic structures, including deregulation and tax cuts. The tariffs are part of that, pushed on the assumption that Americans have the stuff necessary to make things again.
A presumption behind this policy is that American investors, entrepreneurs, business builders, and workers are going to hop to it and make wonderful things, while enjoying the protection that the tariffs provide against foreign competition. Even if that happens—it’s a big if—are Americans really ready to go there? The outsourcing of so much manufacturing has gone on for the better part of 50 years.
The actions of this one shopper for Instacart, engaged in a tremendous act of managerial prowess, underscore the point. For generations now, we’ve been told that intelligence and skill are disproportionately distributed in the upper tiers of the U.S. class structure.
Personally, I don’t believe it. It is more likely the opposite: the people who struggle for a living, working two and three jobs to pay the bills, have more skills than most people in the upper third of the income distribution who have never had to worry about paying the bills.
Talk to any serious person in any midsize company today and they will tell you of their struggles. The regulations and taxes are vexing but it is the labor problems day-to-day that really inhibit their operations and progress. It is exceedingly difficult to find workers who will do what they are supposed to do in a timely way, with attention to detail, and without constant hand-holding and praise.
This decline of the American work ethic traces to the educational institutions in part, but also to the reality that most young people in the top half of income earners have never worked a day in their lives until after having earned their credentials.
They are clueless about what it means to embrace a hard job and stick with it until they are done. They resent the authority structures in the workplace and attempt to game the system in the same way that they gamed school for 16-plus years.
It’s one thing to develop skills for survival in classrooms, and a radically different thing to have skills for a new world of manufacturing. Shop classes in high school are mostly gone (only 6 percent of students take them versus 20 percent in the 1980s) and two-thirds of teens eschew remunerative employment completely, simply because it is not necessary. It’s been generations since most people knew anything of farm life, to say nothing of factory life.
Trump is seeking to solve a half-century-old problem in four years. This is a serious challenge, and I cannot say that I’m optimistic. That said, there are real opportunities now for people like the shopper I mentioned above, people who work hard, work well, stick to the task, and are grateful for their opportunities. Sadly, those traits largely elude the graduates of our nation’s most prestigious educational institutions.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Trump Slams Biden, Zelensky & Putin For Ukraine War: ‘Everybody Is To Blame’
President Donald Trump while speaking with the press in the Oval Office on Monday once again blasted President Biden for the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, a war which Trump has repeatedly stressed should have never happened.
“That’s a war that should have never been allowed to start and Biden could have stopped it and Zelensky could have stopped it and Putin should have never started it,” Trump said. “Everybody is to blame.”
Trump added: “If Biden were competent and if Zelenskyy were competent, and I don’t know that he is, we had a rough session with this guy — he just kept asking for more and more.”
But he seemed to reserve his most aggressive criticisms for Zelensky, once again blasting him for asking for more and more weapons and money, while knowing full well Ukraine can’t defeat Russia, which is “twenty times your size” – as Trump said. Watch:
Trump has fully turned on Zelenskyy: “He’s always looking to purchase missiles. Listen, when you start a war, you gotta know you can win a war. You don’t start a war against somebody that’s 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles.” pic.twitter.com/1hBWeyu2hg
Clearly last month’s Oval Office showdown involving J.D. Vance and Zelensky going at it still looms large in Trump’s mind. Trump had separately in a Monday Truth Social post also lamented that Biden and Zelensky “did an absolutely horrible job in allowing this travesty to begin.”
Here’s what he said in the post:
“The war between Russia and Ukraine is Biden’s war, not mine. I just got here, and for four years during my term, had no problem in preventing it from happening,” Trump wrote, adding that he “had nothing to do with this war” but is working “diligently to get the death and destruction to stop.”
“If the 2020 presidential election was not rigged, and it was, in so many ways, that horrible war would never have happened,” he continued. “President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy and Crooked Joe Biden did an absolutely horrible job in allowing this travesty to begin. There were so many ways of preventing it from ever starting. But that is the past. Now we have to get it to stop, and fast. So sad!”
Much of this seems in reaction to the Zelensky “60 Minutes” interview from Sunday, wherein the Ukrainian leader claimed that “Russian narratives are prevailing” in the US, while singling out Vance in particular.
Zelensky had said, “It’s a shift in tone, a shift in reality, really yes, a shift in reality, and I don’t want to engage in the altered reality that is being presented to me,”
And on Vance, he described: “First and foremost, we did not launch an attack [to start the war]. It seems to me that the Vice President is somehow justifying Putin’s actions. I tried to explain, ‘You can’t look for something in the middle. There is an aggressor and there is a victim. The Russians are the aggressor, and we are the victim’.”
Despite Trump’s newest attack on Zelensky, it remains that the United States is still supplying weaponry to Kiev, though reportedly in lesser quantities that previously, and is still providing limited intelligence.
Zelensky has likely had to restrain some of the criticisms he wishes to hurl back, give Kiev is deeply fearful the US could once again cut off the flow of arms and ammo, as it did briefly soon after Trump took office.
You can’t watch a newscast without someone talking about tariffs. There are some reported concerns that the price of goods will increase. Products that are at the forefront of tariffs are automobile parts.
With the possibility of prices on some auto parts increasing, the cost of one service everyone needs may also increase. Auto insurance rates may increase because of tariffs. But is this true, and if so, how much will rates increase?
How Tariffs Could Impact Car Insurance
Even under normal circumstances, an increase in an auto’s cost affects car insurance rates. A $50,000 car is going to cost more to insure than a $20,000 car. In other words, vehicles that cost more will have higher repair costs and, therefore, require higher insurance rates.
According to the White House, the new tariffs that went into effect on April 2, 2025, are for two aspects of vehicles. The first is 25 percent on imported passenger vehicles such as sedans, SUVs, crossovers, minivans, cargo vans, and light trucks.
But what concerns the insurance industry the most is the 25 percent tariff on key auto parts such as transmissions, powertrain parts, and electrical components.
For example, according to the Kelley Blue Book, a 2020 Ford Escape SEL transmission replacement currently costs between $4,952 and $7,505. In theory, with a 25 percent tariff on imported parts, these numbers would be 25 percent higher.
If the transmission is damaged in a collision, the insurance company would be forced to absorb the higher cost.
How Much Could Insurance Rates Increase?
Because of the increase in the cost of auto parts, the insurance industry will pay more for claims. According to MarketWatch, insurance companies are estimated to pay between $27 billion and $53 billion extra for claims in the next 12–18 months. They’ll be passing that increase on to their insureds.
Newswires reports that tariffs could add $324 to the average American’s car insurance costs by 2026. This would bring the average annual full-coverage car insurance premium to $2,759.
However, various states will be impacted differently. For example, New York is anticipated to have the highest increasing year-over-year costs. Premiums are expected to rise by up to 24 percent, or $911.
Americans had already been dealing with higher rates. Zebra, a car insurance comparison website, reported a 78 percent increase in premiums over the past decade.
When Will Increased Premiums Affect Drivers?
Americans will probably not see tariff-driven rate increases until the end of the year. That’s because raising rates is a slow-moving process.
Insurance companies would have to sustain losses due to the increase in the cost of parts for repair. Then, the insurers must prove to regulators that their losses outpace what they make in premiums.
These are state regulators, not federal. So, insurance companies must deal with regulators on a state-by-state basis.
Most state regulators aren’t going to approve of premium increases based on insurance companies’ anticipation that tariffs would increase costs.
If insurance companies do prove to regulators that they need the rate increases, these would show up when drivers renew their policies or to a new insurer.
Ways to Curb the Premium Rate Increases
You can take control of what you pay for auto insurance, but it may take a little sacrifice. There are several ways to cut your insurance premium.
One way is by increasing your deductible. It’s old but good advice. And although you’re increasing your potential for out-of-pocket repairs, you could ultimately save on your premium. If you’re a safe driver, consider increasing your deductible from $500 to $1,000.
Pay for a One-Car Accident
If you have an accident that doesn’t involve another vehicle, consider paying for the damage to your vehicle out of pocket. This is only for minor damage where no one is injured.
For example, if you scrape your bumper on a parking meter, paying for the damage yourself could save you money.
But keep in mind that what looks like minor damage could cost more than you think. Have a repair shop give you an estimate before deciding to pay out of pocket.
An Independent Agent Can Save Money
If you don’t want to shop your insurance around on your own, consult with an independent insurance agent. They represent several companies and will shop your insurance for you. There may be some insurance companies not on your radar that may give you a good deal. The independent agent can find them for you.
Report Your Mileage to Your Insurance Company
Report your mileage if you drive under 10,000 miles per year. Insurance companies factor in the amount of driving when determining premiums. Some companies have verified mileage programs. You’ll receive savings by reporting your odometer reading on a regular basis.
Insurance Companies Expect Higher Costs
In a consumer survey, Zebra found that nearly 40 percent of Americans believe tariffs will impact rates. But the anticipated premium prices for next year are estimates. There’s a question mark as to how tariffs will affect insurance premiums.
‘This Is Not About Tariffs’: Ray Dalio Fears “Something Worse Than A Recession”
Billionaire investor Ray Dalio warned that President Trump’s shifting tariff policy is part of a broader set of economic and geopolitical pressures that could trigger a crisis “worse than a recession.”
“I think that right now we are at a decision-making point and very close to a recession,” Dalio said.
“And I’m worried about something worse than a recession if this isn’t handled well.”
The founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press that the foundation of the American economy – the “monetary order” — is under threat.
“We have a breaking down of the monetary order. We are going to change the monetary order because we cannot spend the amounts of money. So we have that problem.
…We are having profound changes in our domestic order, how ruling is existing. And we’re having profound changes in the world order. Such times are very much like the 1930s.”
“I’ve studied history,” Dalio adds, noting that “this repeats over and over again.”
Dalio explained that the US economy is confronting several overlapping challenges: rising debt, internal political divisions, growing geopolitical tensions, and shifts in global power.
“Such times are very much like the 1930s,” he warned.
“If you take tariffs, if you take debt, if you take the rising power challenging the existing power – those changes in the orders, the systems, are very, very disruptive.”
Asked about the worst-case scenario, Dalio pointed to a potential breakdown of the dollar’s role as a store of wealth, combined with internal conflict beyond the norms of democratic politics and escalating international tensions – potentially even military conflict.
“These breakdowns have occurred before,” he said. “The existing monetary and geopolitical order began in 1945. These systems go in cycles, and I worry about the breakdown—particularly because it doesn’t have to happen.”
“That could be like the breakdown of the monetary system in ‘71. It could be like 2008. It’s going to be very severe,” Dalio said.
“I think it could be more severe than those if these other matters simultaneously occur.”
Dalio said history is shaped by five major forces:
monetary cycles like credit and debt;
internal political conflict;
shifting global power dynamics;
technological change;
and natural disasters such as pandemics.
In his view, all five are currently in play.
In a post on X, Dalio went into more detail, playing down the tariffs as a specific catalyst but playing up far more systemically challenging scenarios:
At this moment, a huge amount of attention is being justifiably paid to the announced tariffs and their very big impacts on markets and economies while very little attention is being paid to the circumstances that caused them and the biggest disruptions that are likely still ahead. Don’t get me wrong, while these tariff announcements are very important developments and we all know that President Trump caused them, most people are losing sight of the underlying circumstances that got him elected president and brought these tariffs about. They are also mostly overlooking the vastly more important forces that are driving just about everything, including the tariffs.
The far bigger, far more important thing to keep in mind is that we are seeing a classic breakdown of the major monetary, political, and geopolitical orders. This sort of breakdown occurs only about once in a lifetime, but they have happened many times in history when similar unsustainable conditions were in place.
More specifically:
The monetary/economic order is breaking down because there is too much existing debt, the rates of adding to it are too fast, and existing capital markets and economies are supported by this unsustainably large debt. The debt is unsustainable because the of the large imbalance between a) debtor-borrowers who owe too much debt and are taking on too much debt because they are hooked on debt to finance their excesses (e.g., the United States) and b) lender-creditors (like China) who already hold too much of the debt and are hooked on selling their goods to the borrower-debtors (like the United States) to sustain their economies. There are big pressures for these imbalances to be corrected one way or another and doing so will change the monetary order in major ways. For example, it is obviously incongruous to have both large trade imbalances and large capital imbalances in a deglobalizing world in which the major players can’t trust that the other major players won’t cut them off from the items they need (which is an American worry) or pay them the money they are owed (which is a Chinese worry). This is a result of these parties being in a type of war in which self-sufficiency is of paramount importance. Anyone who has studied history knows that such risks under such circumstances have repeatedly led to the same sorts of problems we’re seeing now. So, the old monetary/economic order in which countries like China manufacture inexpensively, sell to Americans, and acquire American debt assets, and Americans borrow money from countries like China to make those purchases and build up huge debt liabilities will have to change. These obviously unsustainable circumstances are made even more so by the fact that they have led to American manufacturing deteriorating, which both hollows out middle class jobs in the U.S. and requires America to import needed items from a country that it is increasingly seeing as an enemy. In an era of deglobalization, these big trade and capital imbalances, which reflect trade and capital interconnectedness, will have to shrink one way or another. Also, it should be obvious that the U.S. government debt level and the rate at which the government debt is being added to is unsustainable. (You can find my analysis of this in my new book How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle.) Clearly, the monetary order will have to change in big disruptive ways to reduce all these imbalances and excesses, and we are in the early part of the process of it changing. There are huge capital market implications to this that have huge economic implications, which I will delve into at another time.
The domestic political order is breaking down due to huge gaps in people’s education levels, opportunity levels, productivity levels, income and wealth levels, and values—and because of the ineffectiveness of the existing political order to fix things. These conditions are manifest in win-at-all-cost fights between populists of the right and populists of the left over which side will have the power and control to run things. This is leading to democracies breaking down because democracies require compromise and adherence to the rule of law, and history has shown that both break down at times like those we are now in. History also shows that strong autocratic leaders emerge as classic democracy and classic rule of law are removed as barriers to autocratic leadership. Obviously, the current unstable political situation will be affected by the other four forces I’m referring to here—e.g., problems in the stock market and economy will likely create political and geopolitical problems.
The international geopolitical world order is breaking down because the era of one dominant power (the U.S.) that dictates the order that other countries follow is over. The multilateral, cooperative world order the U.S. led is being replaced by a unilateral, power-rules approach. In this new order, the U.S. is still largest power in the world and is shifting to a unilateral, “America first” approach. We are now seeing that manifest in the U.S. led trade-war, geopolitical war, technology war, and, in some cases, military wars.
Acts of nature (droughts, floods and pandemics) are increasingly disruptive, and
Amazing changes in technology such as AI will be highly impactful to all aspects of life, including the money/debt/economic order, the political order, the international order (by affecting interactions between countries economically and militarily), and the costs of acts of nature.
Changes in these forces and how they are affecting each other is what we should be focusing on.
Dalio concludes by urging readers to not to let news-grabbing dramatic changes like the tariffs draw your attention away from these five big forces and their interrelationships, which are the real drivers of Overall Big Cycles changes.
OPEC Lowers 2025 Oil Demand Forecast On Trade Tensions
OPEC has revised its global oil demand growth forecast for 2025, citing escalating trade tensions and weaker-than-expected economic indicators, according to Reuters and OilPrice.com.The cartel now anticipates a demand increase of 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) for 2025, down 150,000 bpd from its previous projection. Similarly, the 2026 forecast has been adjusted downward to 1.28 million bpd.
OPEC’s latest report highlights that Trump’s tariff war has dampened economic activity, leading to a more cautious outlook on oil consumption. The organization also revised its global economic growth forecast, now projecting a 3% expansion for 2025, down from the earlier estimate of 3.1%.
Last week, eight OPEC+ countries announced they would phase-out voluntary oil output cuts by ramping up output by 411,000 barrels per day in May–equivalent to three monthly increments. In other words, the Saudis are signaling they might be willing to give up their long-time role as OPEC’s swing producer in an attempt to take a tougher stance against countries that continue to violate the output pact, most notably Kazakhstan, the UAE and Iraq.
The revised forecasts have also impacted oil prices, with Brent crude trading near $66 per barrel, influenced by both the demand outlook and recent tariff exemptions. Analysts suggest that continued trade disputes could further affect market dynamics and investor confidence?
On Monday, April 14, at 11:44 a.m., Brent crude was still trading under $65 per barrel, with the only good news being that it was trading flat instead of down, up a slight 0.05%. The U.S. crude benchmark, West Texas Intermediate (WTI), was trading down 0.24% at $61.35.
For traders, all eyes now will be awaiting the monthly oil market report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), which is set to be released on Tuesday.
The number of properties foreclosed in March as well as the first quarter of this year registered an increase amid elevated interest rates, according to real estate data company ATTOM.
“There were a total of 35,890 U.S. properties with foreclosure filings in March 2025,” the company said in an April 11 statement. “That figure was up 11 percent from February 2025 and up 9 percent from March 2024.”
This continues the month-over-month rising trend seen in February and January. For the first quarter of 2025, there were a total of 93,953 filings, up 11 percent from the fourth quarter of 2024.
“Following three consecutive quarters of decline, foreclosure activity ticked up in the first quarter of 2025,” ATTOM CEO Rob Barber said, adding that there was “notable growth” in both foreclosure starts and completions.
“While levels remain below historical averages, the quarterly growth suggests that some homeowners may be starting to feel the pressure of ongoing economic challenges. However, strong home equity positions in many markets continue to help buffer against a more significant spike in distress.”
The rise in foreclosure filings for the first quarter came as mortgage rates continued to remain elevated, putting pressure on homeowners.
The rate on a 30-year-fixed-rate mortgage has remained above 6.5 percent for every single week in the first quarter.
High mortgage rates can raise monthly payments for certain homeowners, like those who have taken loans at variable rates. This could squeeze them financially, potentially pushing some into foreclosures.
Among the 225 metropolitan statistical areas with a population of at least 200,000 people, Columbia, South Carolina, saw the highest foreclosure rate in the first quarter.
This was followed by Lakeland, Florida; Bakersfield, California; Riverside, California, and Chico, California, rounding up the top five.
Some rate relief for homeowners may be coming.
“We think mortgage rates will move even lower within the next quarter and ultimately close the year at approximately 6.3 percent,” said Mark Palim, chief economist at Fannie Mae.
Foreclosure Policies
Trump administration agencies have taken several actions regarding property foreclosures.
Some lawmakers have criticized, while others welcomed, reports of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) planning to end the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase (VASP) program, which assists veterans facing foreclosure on their properties.
House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Ranking Member Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) criticized the decision in an April 4 statement.
“President Trump has chosen to put the 15,000 veterans using the VASP program at financial risk and end a program that could help nearly 80,000 veterans who are in danger of foreclosure,” he said. “Veterans and their families rely on the VASP program to avoid housing insecurity and homelessness.”
Converely, House Committee on Veterans Affairs Chairman Rep. Mike Bost (R-Ill.) and Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity Chairman Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) backed the Veterans Affairs department’s move to phase out the VASP initiative in an April 3 statement.
They said the program was created for political purposes by the prior Biden administration to undercut the VA Home Loan program.
“Since 1943, the VA home loan program has helped millions of veterans, and their families, own a home. The Biden-Harris administration wrongfully jeopardized the future of this benefit by allowing billions of dollars to be used towards bailouts for lenders by creating the VASP program,” the lawmakers said in a statement.
“We—along with many of our colleagues—had serious concerns about the impact VASP would have on not only the future of VA’s home loan program, but the mortgage lending business as a whole. Today, the Trump administration rightfully put an end to VA’s VASP program.”
Meanwhile, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced this past week that it was extending foreclosure relief to more than a million borrowers of Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans recovering from the impacts of Hurricanes Milton and Helene.
The hurricanes affected parts of Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Virginia.
The moratorium prohibits mortgage services from starting or completing foreclosure actions on FHA-insured single-family forward or Home Equity Conversion mortgages in presidentially-declared major disaster areas (PDMDAs) resulting from Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
This 90-day moratorium will remain in effect until July 10 and is the second extension of the moratorium. The first moratorium expired on April 11. FHA insures more than a million single-family mortgages in the Milton and Helene PDMDAs.
Houthis Issue Total Death Toll After Month Of US Attacks, Claim 19th Reaper Downing
Since the collapse of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire the renewed US anti-Houthi campaign over Yemen and in the Red Sea has been waged with intensity, now reaching the one-month mark.
US aerial attacks continued to pummel the capital of Sanaa over the weekend. A fresh statement from the Houthis denounced attacks on a factory near Sanaa Sunday night which reportedly killed seven people and wounded 29 others, including five children. Over 100 Yemenis have been killed since March 15.
The new Houthi military statement blasted the “blatant US aggression on the homeland and its direct targeting of civilian objects and civilians.”
“This crime, added to the criminal record of the American-Zionist enemy, is a full-fledged war crime and a flagrant violation of all international laws and conventions,” it added.
The Houthis’ al-Masirah satellite news channel in the aftermath showed streets littered with debris and firefighters battling a raging fire which resulted from the airstrikes.
Yemen’s Houthi-run Health Ministry further on Monday issued a new total death toll since the US air campaign began a month ago (since the collapse of the Gaza ceasefire), per Al Jazeera:
Since its start nearly a month ago, the intense campaign of U.S. airstrikes under President Donald Trump targeting the rebels over their attacks on shipping in Mideast waters — related to the Israel-Hamas war — has killed over 120 people, according to casualty figures released Monday…
It is unknown how many of these were militants vs. civilians. Last week the Houthis declared that if the US stops its attacks, it in turn will cease targeting US warships off Yemen’s coast. A senior leader for the group had told Drop Site News in a rare interview, “We do not consider ourselves at war with the American people. If the US stops targeting Yemen, we will cease our military operations against it.”
Meanwhile, the Houthis have claimed yet another shoot-down of a MQ-9 Reaper drone, this time over Yemen’s Hajjah governorate, which is in the northwest of the country.
A statement said the Houthis targeted the drone with “a locally manufactured missile” – among its arsenal of surface-to-air missiles which have been used frequently in the conflict.
As usual US Central Command (CENTCOM) did not confirm or deny the loss of a drone, but only said it is aware of “reports” that the drone was downed.
The following unverified video footage has been circulating on social media accounts Monday:
🇺🇸🇾🇪 Yemeni Houthis have downed another U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone, the 4th in 14 days, 19th in total. pic.twitter.com/QszdDrUONE
The total number of US Reaper drowns allegedly downed by Houthi fire is approaching 20. The Pentagon has confirmed only a few of these instances since October of 2023, when the Gaza war and Red Sea hostilities began. Each one is estimated to be over $30 million.
The tariff doomsday machine is roaring again. This time, it’s over talk of a 50% tariff on certain imports.
Predictably, the panic-peddlers are out in force, warning that such a tariff means retail prices will skyrocket 50%.
It’s an easy line to chant, but it’s wrong — flat wrong — and anyone with a basic grasp of economics should know better.
Let’s make one thing clear: a tariff applies to the transaction value, not the final retail price. The transaction value is what the importer pays the exporter, plus freight and insurance. That cost is just the first step in a long supply chain. By the time a product reaches the consumer, it’s been marked up to cover domestic shipping, warehousing, employee wages, utilities, sales tax, and profit margins for every hand it passes through. The tariff is just one input among many.
Take a simple example.
A retailer imports a widget with a $100 transaction value. Add a 50% tariff, and the cost to the importer becomes $150. That importer then sells it wholesale — perhaps at $200 — to a retailer, who marks it up again to $300 for sale. That $50 tariff is now 16.7% of the retail price. Even if every penny of the tariff is passed along, you’re not looking at a 50% increase in retail price — you’re looking at something closer to 17%.
But here’s the kicker:tariffs are not always fully passed on to the consumer. Importers and retailers know they can’t raise prices beyond what the market will bear. Sometimes they absorb part of the cost, cut expenses, renegotiate contracts, or shift to different suppliers. The market reacts; it doesn’t just lie down and take it.
Still not convinced? Look at the real-world data.
The National Bureau of Economic Research analyzed the 2018–2019 U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods. They found that for every 10% tariff, retail prices rose 1–2%. So even a 50% tariff, if applied, might cause retail prices to edge up 5–10% — not 50%. That’s a far cry from the alarmist headlines.
So why do politicians and media outlets keep pushing the scare narrative? Easy: Fear sells.
“Fifty percent” is a lot more dramatic than “maybe 5 to 10%.” It’s easier to provoke outrage than to explain how pricing actually works. They’re banking on the average person not understanding the difference between wholesale cost and retail price — or not caring enough to dig into the numbers.
Yes, tariffs matter. They influence trade behavior. They can increase some costs. They can disrupt certain supply chains. But they’re not some magic multiplier that doubles the price of your groceries or gadgets overnight.
Anyone pushing that line is either economically illiterate or deliberately misleading you.
The next time you hear that a 50% tariff will mean a 50% price hike, don’t nod along. Push back. Ask for the math. Demand the details.
Because when it comes to tariffs and retail pricing, the facts just don’t support the hysteria.
“Will Not Surrender” – Harvard Snubs Trump Admin’s Demands Tied To $9 Billion Funding
Update (1730ET): Harvard University will not comply with the Trump administration’s demands to dismantle diversity programs or limit student protests in exchange for continued access to federal research funding.
“We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement,” Harvard president Alan Garber wrote in a campus-wide message on Monday afternoon.
“The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”
The announcement comes amid a growing standoff between elite academic institutions and the federal government.
Garber officially took the helm at Harvard last August after his predecessor, Claudine Gay, resigned amid criticism over missteps at a congressional anti-Semitism hearing and multiple allegations of plagiarism.
He said the “majority” of those demands represent “direct governmental regulation of the intellectual conditions at Harvard.”
Harvard University’s professors sued the Trump administration on April 11 after it threatened to withhold nearly $9 billion in grants and contracts if the university fails to adopt the administration’s required structural changes.
The Harvard faculty chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) filed a lawsuit alleging that the administration’s action represents an “unlawful and unprecedented misuse of federal funding and civil rights enforcement authority to undermine academic freedom and free speech” on a university’s campus.
According to the court filing, the university received a letter from the administration on April 3 outlining the “non-exhaustive preconditions” it must meet in order to keep its government funding, following an investigation into the university’s failures to address anti-Semitism on campus.
Among the requirements are a review of programs that fuel anti-Semitic harassment on campus, to “improve viewpoint diversity, and end ideological capture” within the university. Harvard was also required to enact a mask ban and eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, according to the lawsuit.
It stated that the administration threatened to terminate at least $255.6 million in contracts and place more than $8.7 billion in multiyear grant commitments to Harvard University and its affiliates under review unless the university agrees to implement the proposed changes.
“Harvard, like all American universities, depends on federal funding to conduct its academic research. Threats like these are an existential ‘gun to the head’ for a university,” the lawsuit states.
The plaintiffs accused the administration of misusing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, an anti-discrimination law that applies to federally funded institutions, to “coerce universities into undermining free speech.”
“These sweeping yet indeterminate demands are not remedies targeting the causes of any determination of noncompliance with federal law. Instead, they overtly seek to impose on Harvard University political views and policy preferences advanced by the Trump administration and commit the University to punishing disfavored speech,” they state.
The professors asked the court to preliminarily and permanently enjoin any further investigation or review of the university’s federal funding. They also requested that it block the administration from using its authority to penalize Harvard over the viewpoints of its members.
“No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” said Harvard President Alan Garber in a message.
The Epoch Times reached out to the White House for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
Harvard University is one of 60 institutions of higher education currently under investigation for allegations of anti-Semitic discrimination and harassment on campus.
Protests erupted across universities in the United States after Israel launched a military operation in the Gaza Strip with the stated goal of eradicating the Hamas terrorist group. The operation was retaliation for Hamas launching a land, sea, and air attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7. 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking hostage 251 more. Last spring, pro-Palestinian protesters camped out on campus and, at one point, took over a building.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon has previously urged university leaders to prevent discrimination against Jewish students on campus or risk losing federal funding.
“The Department is deeply disappointed that Jewish students studying on elite U.S. campuses continue to fear for their safety amid the relentless antisemitic eruptions that have severely disrupted campus life for more than a year,” McMahon said in a statement on March 10.
“U.S. colleges and universities benefit from enormous public investments funded by U.S. taxpayers. That support is a privilege and it is contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal anti-discrimination laws.”
Harvard University’s professors also filed a motion on April 11 seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent the government from cutting funding while the litigation continues, saying that it would cause “severe irreparable harm” to the university and disrupt its research operations.
“No law in this country permits Trump to suspend billions from universities simply because he doesn’t like the constitutionally protected speech of their students & faculty,” Nikolas Bowie of Harvard’s AAUP said in a statement.
