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Vance says shutdown firings are 'not targeting federal agencies based on politics'

admin - Latest News - October 1, 2025
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Vice President JD Vance discussed President Donald Trump’s comments about firing federal workers during the government shutdown, and assured any firings would not be targeted “based on politics.”



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Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleOct. 4, 2025, 7:30 AM EDTBy Steve KopackThe humble soybean is the latest flashpoint in the Trump administration’s campaign to reshape global trade.Used in everything from animal feed to fuel, soybeans regularly rank among the most valuable U.S. agricultural exports, towering over higher-profile crops like corn and cotton. More than $30 billion worth of American soybean products were exported in fiscal year 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.For American soybean farmers, their top overseas market has long been China, which bought around a third of the export crop — approximately $12 billion worth of American soybean products — in the last calendar year, USDA data shows.But not anymore.As President Donald Trump’s trade war leaves U.S.-China relations somewhere between frosty and openly hostile, America’s soybean farmers appear to be an early casualty.An embargo in all but nameSo far, China has not purchased any U.S. soybeans during this year’s main harvest period, with sales falling to zero in May. This has pushed many American farmers reliant on soybeans nearly to the breaking point. It has also complicated the Trump administration’s plans to provide billions in foreign economic aid to Argentina. Buenos Aires recently sold more than 2.5 million metric tons of soybeans to Beijing, after briefly suspending its export tax on the soy products. Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Tuesday.Greg Baker / AFP – Getty ImagesU.S. officials blame China for the looming crisis facing American soybean producers. “It’s unfortunate the Chinese leadership has decided to use the American farmers, soybean farmers in particular, as a hostage or pawn in the trade negotiations,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday on CNBC.Farmers view the situation differently, however. They want Trump to reach a trade deal with China that ends the unofficial embargo on soybeans. But instead, what they see is the White House preparing to bail out one of their chief rivals for the Chinese export market.“The frustration is overwhelming,” American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland said in a recent statement.Meanwhile, China — the world’s biggest buyer of soybeans —indicated last week that it won’t resume U.S. purchases unless more Trump tariffs are lifted. “As for soybean trade, the U.S. side should take proactive steps to remove relevant unreasonable tariffs, create conditions for expanding bilateral trade, and inject more stability and certainty into global economic development,” Commerce Ministry spokesperson He Yadong told reporters in Beijing.Emergency relief is comingThe Trump administration will announce new support for farmers, “especially the soybean farmers,” on Tuesday, Bessent said.“We’re also going to be working with the Farm Credit Bureau to make sure that the farmers have what they need for the next planting season,” he added.Bessent personally owns as much as $25 million worth of farmland in North Dakota that produces corn and soybeans, according to his recent financial disclosures.He said soybeans would be a topic of discussion at the upcoming meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum later this month.Mark German loading soybeans into a truck in Dwight, Ill., in August.Scott Olson / Getty Images fileTrump is also aware of the impact his trade policies are having on American farmers, starting with soybean growers.“The Soybean Farmers of our Country are being hurt because China is, for ‘negotiating’ reasons only, not buying,” the president posted Wednesday on Truth Social.“We’ve made so much money on Tariffs, that we are going to take a small portion of that money, and help our Farmers,” Trump added.The question is whether this aid will come soon enough to save this year’s massive harvest of soybeans.At the center of the firestorm is Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who warned this week that “this moment of uncertainty in the farm economy is real.” Speaking on Fox Business Network, she emphasized that Trump has long supported U.S. farmers.Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins outside the White House on Tuesday.Aaron Schwartz / Sipa USA via AP“President Trump and Secretary Rollins are always in touch about the needs of our farmers, who played a crucial role in the President’s November victory,” the White House said in a statement Thursday. “He has made clear his intention to use tariff revenue to help our agricultural sector, but no final decisions on the contours of this plan have been made.”The Argentina factorThe current U.S.-China stalemate over soybean exports is also complicating another American foreign policy conundrum: what to do about Argentina’s faltering economy.As U.S. soybean exports to China screech to a halt, Argentina’s farmers jumped at the opportunity to sell China their own soybeans. From their perspective, a potential U.S. economic aid package has nothing to do with their soybean exports, and everything to do with the personal and political alliance between Trump and libertarian President Javier Milei. Milei was the first foreign leader to visit Trump after his 2024 election victory, and he has become a familiar face at U.S. political events attended by the president’s MAGA supporters.At a Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, D.C. in February, Milei gifted then-Department of Government Efficiency chief Elon Musk a red chainsaw. Musk then waved it around onstage, calling it “the chainsaw for bureaucracy.” Elon Musk holding a chainsaw onstage at a CPAC conference in Oxon Hill, Md., in February.Andrew Harnik / Getty ImagesEight months later, Milei’s popularity with voters has plunged, raising doubts about the future of his market-friendly economic reforms and strict austerity measures.Local elections in early September dealt a blow to Milei’s party, triggering massive turmoil in Argentina’s stock and currency markets. A few weeks after the market plunge, Bessent announced on social media that the U.S. was prepared to deploy billions of dollars to support the South American country.A presidential delegation from Buenos Aires is expected to visit the White House next week to finalize the U.S. foreign aid deal.This has infuriated the soybean farmers. “U.S. soybean prices are falling, harvest is underway, and farmers read headlines not about securing a trade agreement with China, but that the U.S. government is extending $20 billion in economic support to Argentina while that country drops its soybean export taxes to sell 20 shiploads of Argentine soybeans to China in just two days,” Ragland said.President-elect Donald Trump with Argentine President Javier Milei at the America First Policy Institute gala at Mar-a-Lago in November.Carlos Barria / Reuters fileMeanwhile, Milei has also secured a currency swap line for Argentina from China, a situation that gives pause to some in Washington. In response, Milei has said Argentina will maintain its mutually beneficial trade and economic relationship with China. Tensions inside the Trump administration over China, Argentina and the soybean farmers broke into the open last week.While attending the U.N. General Assembly, Bessent received a text message from a contact labeled “BR.”“We bailed out Argentina yesterday … and in return, the Argentine’s removed their export tariff on grains, reducing their price, and sold a bunch of soybeans to China at a time when we would normally be selling to China,” read the message, widely presumed to come from Rollins.“Soy prices are dropping further because of it. This gives China more leverage on us,” the message concluded.Spokespeople for Bessent and Rollins did not respond to questions about the text message exchange.
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Sept. 25, 2025, 11:52 AM EDT / Updated Sept. 25, 2025, 3:36 PM EDTBy Steve KopackA group of the country’s top economic leaders, including every living former Federal Reserve chair, filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court on Thursday in support of Fed governor Lisa Cook, who President Donald Trump is seeking to remove.The group, led former central bank chiefs Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, said that “allowing the removal of Governor Lisa D. Cook while the challenge to her removal is pending would threaten that independence and erode public confidence in the Fed.” The bipartisan group, which also includes former Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Hank Paulson, Jack Lew and Timothy Geithner, added that “the independence of the Federal Reserve, within the limited authority granted by Congress to achieve the goals Congress itself has set, is a critical feature of our national monetary system.”As the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve is part of the U.S. government and its leaders are put in place by elected officials, but it also retains a considerable amount of independence that is meant to allow it to make decisions purely out of economic concerns rather than political ones. The former economic officials said that an erosion of Fed independence could result “in substantial long-term harm and inferior economic performance overall.”The Supreme Court is considering whether Trump has the authority to fire Cook, who has been a target for the White House for weeks as part of a broader pressure campaign to push the Fed to more aggressively cut interest rates.Cook’s attempted removal stems from allegations of mortgage fraud, made in August by top Trump ally and Federal Housing Finance Authority Director Bill Pulte.Cook has repeatedly denied the allegations and has not been charged with any crime. Documents reviewed by NBC News in mid-September appeared to contradict Pulte’s allegations.Two courts have so far blocked Cook’s removal, leading Trump to ask the Supreme Court a week ago to allow him to fire her. In a court filing, Solicitor General D. John Sauer said a judge’s ruling that blocked the firing constituted “improper judicial interference.”In a filing to the Supreme Court on Thursday, Cook’s lawyers said that “she committed neither ‘fraud’ nor ‘gross negligence’ in relation to her mortgages.”Cook asked the court to deny Trump’s attempt to remove her while the case is argued. The White House has repeatedly maintained that Trump “lawfully removed Lisa Cook for cause.”The brief filed Thursday is a who’s who of the country’s top economic minds. Former Fed governor Dan Tarullo is also listed as a signatory to the brief, as well as the economists Ken Rogoff, Phil Gramm and John Cochrane.Glenn Hubbard, Greg Mankiw, Christina Romer, Cecilia Rouse, Jared Bernstein and Jason Furman, a group who served as top officials on the White House’s council of economic advisers during Republican and Democrat administrations, also signed the brief.None of the officials who signed the filing have served in either of Trump’s administrations.Lisa Cook is sworn in during a Senate Banking hearing in 2023.Drew Angerer / Getty Images fileTrump is the first president in U.S. history to try to remove a sitting Fed official. “There is broad consensus among economists, based on decades of macroeconomic research, that a more independent central bank will lead to lower and more stable inflation without creating higher unemployment — thus helping to achieve the Federal Reserve’s statutory objective of price stability and maximum employment,” the officials said in the brief.”The Federal Reserve walks a careful line in pursuit of its goals.”They noted that “elected officials often favor lowering interest rates to boost employment, particularly leading up to an election.””Although that approach may satisfy voters temporarily, it does not lead to lasting gains for unemployment or growth and can instead lead to persistently higher inflation in the long-term and thus ultimately harm the national economy.”The former Fed chairs and economic officials, in their filing, highlight a notorious case of political pressure on the Fed: “In the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon famously exerted political pressure over then-Chair of the Fed Arthur Burns to lower unemployment by reducing interest rates. During this period ‘the Fed made only limited efforts to maintain policy independence and, for doctrinal as well as political reasons, enabled a decade of high and volatile inflation.’ This contributed to an ‘inflationary boom’ and deep recession that took years to bring back under control.”Steve KopackSteve Kopack is a senior reporter at NBC News covering business and the economy.Lawrence Hurley contributed.
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