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Lutnick Defends US Tariffs as Key to India-Pakistan Ceasefire

Lutnick Defends US Tariffs as Key to India-Pakistan Ceasefire

Bloomberg3 days ago

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The ceasefire between India and Pakistan earlier this month was only achieved after US President Donald Trump offered the two countries trading access, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a legal submission defending the White House's tariff policy.

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Can Trump fix the national debt? Republican senators, many investors and even Elon Musk have doubts

time35 minutes ago

Can Trump fix the national debt? Republican senators, many investors and even Elon Musk have doubts

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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt opened her briefing Thursday by saying she wanted 'to debunk some false claims" about his tax cuts. Leavitt said that the "blatantly wrong claim that the 'One, Big, Beautiful Bill' increases the deficit is based on the Congressional Budget Office and other scorekeepers who use shoddy assumptions and have historically been terrible at forecasting across Democrat and Republican administrations alike.' But Trump himself has suggested that the lack of sufficient spending cuts to offset his tax reductions came out of the need to hold the Republican congressional coalition together. 'We have to get a lot of votes,' Trump said last week. 'We can't be cutting.' That has left the administration betting on the hope that economic growth can do the trick, a belief that few outside of Trump's orbit think is viable. Tech billionaire Musk, who was until recently part of Trump's inner sanctum as the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, told CBS News: 'I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing." The tax and spending cuts that passed the House last month would add more than $5 trillion to the national debt in the coming decade if all of them are allowed to continue, according to the Committee for a Responsible Financial Budget, a fiscal watchdog group. To make the bill's price tag appear lower, various parts of the legislation are set to expire. This same tactic was used with Trump's 2017 tax cuts and it set up this year's dilemma, in which many of the tax cuts in that earlier package will sunset next year unless Congress renews them. But the debt is a much bigger problem now than it was eight years ago. 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  • Yahoo

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Forbes

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  • Forbes

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06/01 update below. This post was originally published on May 30 Bitcoin has fallen sharply since hitting an all-time high last week, down 6% despite the U.S. vice president JD Vance issuing a huge bitcoin prediction. Front-run Donald Trump, the White House and Wall Street by subscribing now to Forbes' CryptoAsset & Blockchain Advisor where you can "uncover blockchain blockbusters poised for 1,000% plus gains!" The bitcoin price has rocketed over the last two years, turbo-charged by Wall Street adoption led by the world's largest asset manager BlackRock and then U.S. president Donald Trump's embrace of the technology (with Elon Musk quietly plotting what could be a bitcoin price game-changer). 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