Trump news: President explodes in astonishing attack on Federal Reserve and orders US companies to cease trading with China 'immediately'

Billionnaire political lobbyist and Republican donor David Koch has passed away.

The world's 11th richest man was aged 79.

In the last hour, China has announced tariff hikes on $75bn (£61bn) of US products in retaliation for Trump's planned increases, deepening the trade war that threatens to tip the global economy into recession. 

The tariffs of 10 per cent and 5 per cent take effect on two batches of goods on 1 September and 15 December, the official Xinhua News Agency said. It gave no details of precisely which goods would be affected, but the timing matches Trump's planned duty hikes. 

The spiraling conflict over China's trade surplus and technology ambitions has fueled concern among companies and investors that it might drag down already weakening global economic growth. 

China's government appealed to Trump this week to compromise in order to break a deadlock in negotiations. 

Trump previously announced plans to raise tariffs on an additional $300bn (£245bn) of Chinese goods after talks broke down in May. They were due to take effect on 1 September but some have since been postponed until 15 December.

Massachusetts congressman Seth Moulton has just become the latest 2020 Democratic presidential contender to drop out of the race, following Jay Inslee, John Hickenlooper and Eric Salwell to the exit.

These responses were kind and generous...

... this one somewhat less so.

Georgia congressman Doug Collins, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, going in hard here on chairman Jerry Nadler over impeachment.

A British journalist has said he was stopped at a US airport by a border agent who accused the writer of being part of the “fake news media”. 

James Dyer, online editor-in-chief at Empire Magazine, said he was questioned by the Customs and Border Protection agent after he displayed his journalist visa at Los Angeles International Airport border control.

“He wanted to know if I’d ever worked for CNN or MSNBC or other outlets that are ‘spreading lies to the American people’,” Dyer tweeted of the incident on Thursday. “He aggressively told me that journalists are liars and are attacking their democracy.” 

Here's Tom Embury-Dennis's report.

Loretta Mester, CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, has been on CNBC's Squawk Box with Steve Liesman ahead of the gathering of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and answered the president's persistent griping by insisting that the Fed is "as transparent as possible".

Here's what else she had to say.

Mester's much-maligned boss, Fed chair Jerome Powell, has also been speaking in Wyoming and says the US economy is in a "favourable place" and the central bank will "act as appropriate" to keep the current economic expansion on track, offering few clues about whether he will cut interest rates at its next meeting or not.

The chair, under pressure from Trump to cut rates soon and deeply, listed a series of economic and geopolitical risks that the Fed is monitoring - many of them, Powell noted, linked to the administration's trade war with China and other countries.

But "the US economy has continued to perform well overall," Powell said in keynote remarks at an annual Fed economic symposium at this mountain retreat. "Business investment and manufacturing have weakened, but solid job growth and rising wages have been driving robust consumption and supporting moderate overall growth."

If the trade wars have disrupted business investment and confidence and contributed to "deteriorating" global growth, Powell said the Fed could not set all that right through monetary policy.

There are "no recent precedents to guide any policy response to the current situation," Powell said, adding that monetary policy "cannot provide a settled rulebook for international trade."

Between that, the possibility of a hard Brexit, tension in Hong Kong, an economic slowdown in places like Germany and other overseas troubles, Powell said the Fed needed to "look through" short-term turbulence and focus on how the US is performing. Powell did note that rate cuts in the 1990s helped keep an expansion intact.

But the overall tone of his statement may disappoint investors expecting the Fed the cut rates at its September meeting and possibly several more times this year. The central bank reduced rates in July in what Powell referred to as a mid-cycle adjustment.

Jerome Powell (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

It is also likely to disappoint Trump, both in focusing on the impact that trade uncertainty is having on the global economy, and in not giving a clear signal that more cuts are coming.

The Fed must "look through what may be passing events, focus on how trade developments are affecting the outlook and adjust policy to promote our objectives" of 2 per cent inflation and strong employment.

Reuters

Denmark's prime minister Mette Frederiksen says she spoke to Trump by phone yesterday after their spat over Greenland and the pair had a "constructive conversation".

I wonder when White House staff were last able to say the same...

Top Democrat and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has a message for Trump in relation to that Vanity Fair article we mentioned earlier: disembowelling Medicare, as he is said to be considering should be win a second term, is no laughing matter.

Blimey. Trump is so frustrated about Jerome Powell's refusal to commit to cutting interest rates in Wyoming just now he's asking whether the Fed chairman is a bigger enemy to America than Chinese premier Xi Jinping, who just oversaw massive tarrif hikes on US goods.

Remember Powell was a Trump appointment.