Breitbart Business Digest: The Week Trump Danced Circles Around His Critics, China, and Putin

Tariffs Still Aren’t Raising Prices, Putin Gets Sanctioned, and Democrats Shattered by Chandeliers

Welcome back to Friday! This is the Breitbart Business Digest weekly wrap, where we review the economic news of the past seven days while practicing our best ballroom dance moves.

Since the last time we wrapped, the “lapse in appropriations” completed its third week of lapsation and is now headed into its fourth week with no signs of a pending unlapse. This was not, however, allowed to stand in the way of the Department of Labor reporting on consumer prices. The Trump administration imposed new sanctions meant to punish Putin for boring Trump with lessons about Russian history. Trump also broke off trade talks with Canada to punish Ontario for deceptively editing a speech by Ronald Reagan. Trump’s critics decided that American democracy is threatened by plans to build a ballroom in the East Wing of the White House.

The Tarifflation Bogeyman Refuses To Die

Economic data nerds rejoiced Friday when we finally received our first official government economic release in weeks: the Labor Department’s consumer price index. The report arrived thanks to a force even more powerful in Washington than immoveable partisan gridlock—the unstoppable power of Social Security benefits. The government uses third-quarter inflation to calculate the annual cost-of-living adjustment, so the September CPI was deemed an essential government function that could not be delayed any further.

Inflation in September was milder than expected, once again humiliating the tariff fearmongers who insisted import duties would push up prices. Core CPI rose 0.2 percent—slower than analysts anticipated and down from the prior month. Annualized six-month core inflation excluding shelter, the measure Jerome Powell has said he watches closely, is running at 2.8 percent. Since Trump took office, prices are up just 1.5 percent, an annualized rate of 2.6 percent.

Compared with a year ago, CPI is up three percent on both the headline and core measures. That prompted several legacy media outlets to declare that inflation was at its highest rate since January—misleadingly implying it’s getting worse instead of better.

“Consumer prices rose 3% in September compared to a year ago, extending a monthslong uptick that has sent inflation to its highest level since January,” ABC News reported with shameless disdain for accuracy. “An acceleration of price increases over recent months has coincided with a flurry of tariffs issued by President Donald Trump.”

This misrepresents both the data and the timeline. There has been no “acceleration” in recent months. The headline index barely rose 0.1 percent in July, then 0.3 percent in both August and September. Core prices rose 0.2 percent in July, 0.3 percent in August, and 0.2 percent in September. The year-over-year uptick mostly reflects inflation from before Trump took office—those 0.3-to-0.4 percent monthly gains from September through January. Since Trump’s inauguration, inflation has run between 0.2 and 0.3 percent, marking a clear deceleration.

As for ABC’s “flurry of tariffs,” (can you order that at Dairy Queen?) the claim is nonsense. The biggest contributor to September’s headline inflation was higher gasoline prices—an untariffed import. Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs specifically exempted oil, gas, and refined energy products.

The real story in the September CPI is the continuing absence of evidence that tariffs are raising consumer prices, much less driving inflation overall. Clothing prices are down 0.1 percent from a year ago. Toy prices are flat, up just 0.2 percent. Computer prices are down, smartphone prices have crashed 14.9 percent, and televisions are down 6.7 percent. Household furnishings are up three percent—matching overall inflation—while major appliances are down 0.6 percent.

Russia, Russia, Russia! (And China and India too!)

If there’s one thing world leaders should have learned by now, it’s that you don’t lecture Donald Trump—or try to bury him in endless meetings and meaningless negotiations. Trump is a man of action. Vladimir Putin, by contrast, prefers monologues. He relishes the chance to hold forth on the glories of Russian history and to draw out discussions that lead nowhere.

“Every time I speak with Vladimir, I have good conversations and then they don’t go anywhere,” Trump said Wednesday.

This week, Putin learned the limits of Trump’s patience the hard way. The president abruptly canceled a planned meeting in Budapest and announced a new package of sanctions targeting Russia’s oil industry.

The move wasn’t just about Moscow. The message was global. China, too, has been attempting to string the U.S. along with “good conversations” that ultimately “don’t go anywhere.” The Chinese perfected the art of the endless negotiation centuries ago. When the Han faced stronger nomads to the north, they sent emissaries, exchanged gifts, and held talks that never truly ended. The purpose wasn’t peace—it was delay. Buy time, appear reasonable, lull the enemy. The same strategy is visible today, as Beijing strings Washington along with “constructive dialogues” that go nowhere while it fortifies its industrial position.

India has also been engaging in its own version of endless talks that produce no results. The Arthashastra, the ancient manual of statecraft, advised rulers to negotiate only when weak and strike only when strong. That tradition of strategic patience still shows. But the new U.S. sanctions on Russian oil are making New Delhi—one of Moscow’s biggest petroleum customers—uncomfortable.

Trump’s message to India may be the same as to Russia and China: the time for fruitless talk is over.

Don’t Lie About Reagan’s Trade Policies, Eh?

The week’s most absurd diplomatic episode came from north of the border, where the government of Ontario decided to spend tens of millions of Canadian taxpayers’ money airing a U.S. television ad featuring Ronald Reagan criticizing tariffs.

The ad lifts Reagan’s voice from a 1987 radio address in which Reagan was announcing new tariffs on Japanese semiconductors. But the Ontario government sliced out the part where he explains why he imposed tariffs on Japan and leaving only the abstract warnings about “fierce trade wars.” The effect is to make it sound as though Reagan were condemning the very tariffs he was defending.

Here’s what Reagan actually said: “We had clear evidence that Japanese companies were engaging in unfair trade practices that violated an agreement between Japan and the United States. We expect our trading partners to live up to their agreements. As I’ve often said: Our commitment to free trade is also a commitment to fair trade.” Sounds positively Trumpian.

Trump, unsurprisingly, didn’t take this Canadian deceptive advertising well.

“Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED,” he posted on Truth Social late Thursday.

Reagan actually went on to note how important it is that the president of the U.S. have a free hand in economic negotiations—a principle Trump is now defending in the federal courts.

“So, with my meeting with Prime Minister Nakasone and the Venice economic summit coming up, it’s terribly important not to restrict a President’s options in such trade dealings with foreign governments. Unfortunately, some in the Congress are trying to do exactly that,” Reagan said.

Ballroom Drama

The Democrats and their media echo chamber beclowned themselves this week over news that President Trump has begun construction of a ballroom in the East Wing of the White House. The reaction was pure hysteria—the best evidence yet that the left’s collective mind has been thoroughly sautéed by Trump Derangement Syndrome.

A few years ago, we were warned that democracy dies in darkness. Now, apparently, the fatal blow will come from the light of a crystal chandelier or the gleam of gilded moldings.

The most ludicrous charge was that the project’s private funding is somehow corrupt. No serious person believes Apple, Amazon, Comcast, Microsoft, T-Mobile, and Meta are buying influence by helping build a ballroom. But in the minds of American progressives, any cooperation with Trump is corruption itself. Anything short of resistance is treated as a moral failing—even if it’s just remodeling a side building on the White House grounds.

Our biggest worry is the possibility that Trump won’t use the ballroom to hold actual balls—the kind with small orchestras, waltzes, and foxtrots.

Come on, Mr. President: let’s make America dance again.