Aurelia Butler

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former President Donald Trump’s Save America group has quickly become one of the top Republican fundraising organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 congressional elections. But so far it has been stingy with its spending on Republican efforts to win in November compared to the expenditures of other groups, according to a Reuters analysis of financial disclosures made to the Federal Election Commission.Trump has already drawn attention for giving only small amounts to Republican candidates, but the findings of the Reuters analysis showing the sharp contrast in spending have not been previously reported.Since Trump founded Save America in November 2020, the group has raised $124 million — the largest war chest ever built by an ex-president — but spent only about $14 million, or around 11%. Much of that has gone to funding rallies and ads that ostensibly promote Republicans running for Congress but focus more on Trump himself. By comparison, his party’s main fund for supporting Senate candidates has spent about 80% of the $135 million it raised since the start of 2021, while its main fund for House of Representatives candidates spent more than half of the $162 million it raised in the same period, FEC filings show. Save America’s limited spending has raised questions among campaign finance experts and political observers, who say it might signal that he is reserving cash for a presidential run.     Taylor Budowich, the director of communications for both Save America and Trump, said the former president was supporting candidates through direct contributions, rallies, and joint fundraisers.   “Save America will not be telegraphing specific tactics or expenditures through the press,” Budowich said in a statement to Reuters. “Every dollar raised will go to ensuring President Trump’s America First agenda is advanced through his endorsed candidates and causes.” Trump registered Save America as a leadership PAC, or political action committee. Under election laws, it can only spend on election campaigns of people other than Trump but campaign finance experts said there may be ways of tapping into the PAC’s war chest if Trump makes another bid for the White House.Trump has not announced his candidacy for 2024, which would require him to set up a separate fundraising account for his campaign, but he regularly hints at his political rallies that he intends to run for president again.ODD SPENDING PATTERN It is still early in the election cycle and Trump could ramp up his spending between now and November to support his Republican Party, which hopes to win control of Congress. But at this point in a midterm election year, leadership PACs are typically already spending generously on candidates, said Michael Beckel, research director at Issue One, a nonpartisan group that advocates for campaign finance reform. “It’s atypical for someone to amass such a large political war chest in their leadership PAC and not be spending very much directly on elections,” Beckel said. Justin Sayfie of Ballard Partners, a Florida-based lobbying firm with ties to Trump, said it was smart to hold off on spending now so Trump could have a bigger impact closer to election day.”I would determine which 30 seats are the best pickup opportunities for Republicans once the primaries are over,” said Sayfie. “And then pour all my money into those races from August to Election Day.”CONSULTING, ADS AND HOTELSTrump’s biggest outlays have been to pay for his rallies, which many political observers see as potential preparation for 2024 as he connects with crowds and collects data about attendees. Save America spent more than $3 million on events through February, according to FEC financial disclosures filed ahead of a March 20 reporting deadline.Save America also spent more than $2 million on consulting services, close to $300,000 on ads and about $200,000 in contributions to Republican congressional candidates. At least $170,000 has been spent at hotels owned by Trump, covering Save America expenses on lodging, meals and the renting of hotel facilities.The Republican Party’s main congressional funds gave about $300,000 to congressional candidates but they spent massive sums elsewhere, including more than $20 million on ads and more than $25 million on text messaging and access to voter lists, which they use to target voters for political mailings and door-knocking campaigns.”TWO WORDS” Trump has used his rallies to urge supporters to vote for Republican congressional candidates but they mainly focus on him.At a frigid gathering in a South Carolina airport on March 12, Trump paused his remarks so that Russell Fry, a state representative endorsed by Trump to challenge incumbent Republican U.S. Representative Tom Rice, could speak. “Why don’t you just say two words and we’ll then get the hell out of here because it’s cold,” Trump said. After Fry spoke briefly, Trump continued for about 20 minutes, describing how his agenda would transform the country after the next presidential election. “In 2024 we are going to take back that beautiful White House,” he said. “I wonder who will do that. I wonder, I wonder.”A Democratic fundraising group filed a complaint last week with the Federal Election Commission alleging Save America’s spending on rallies amounted to presidential campaigning, a violation of election laws. The FEC is unlikely to crack down on Trump, even if he announces a presidential run and tries to channel Save America money to his campaign, according to Beckel and other campaign finance experts.The FEC’s leadership is split evenly between commissioners aligned with Republicans and Democrats and has deadlocked on most contentious issues in recent years. “It’s a free for all,” said Ann Ravel, a Democrat who was a commissioner at the FEC from 2013 to 2017.Trump spokesperson Budowich said complaints raised by Democrats were “frivolous” and had “zero merit.” One legal strategy Trump could employ to use Save America money on a presidential campaign would be to sever his formal ties with the group, Ravel and other experts said. Trump could also transfer Save America funds to an allied group. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States and its Western allies are assessing whether Russia should remain within the Group of Twenty (G20) grouping of major economies following its invasion of Ukraine, sources involved in the discussions told Reuters on Tuesday.The likelihood that any bid to exclude Russia outright would be vetoed by others in the club – which includes China, India, Saudi Arabia and others – raised the prospect of some countries instead skipping G20 meetings this year, the sources said.The G20 along with the smaller Group of Seven – comprising just the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and Britain – is a key international platform for coordinating everything from climate change action to cross-border debt.Russia is facing an onslaught of international sanctions led by Western nations aiming to isolate it from the global economy, including notably shutting it out of the SWIFT global bank messaging system and restricting dealings by its central bank.”There have been discussions about whether it’s appropriate for Russia to be part of the G20,” said a senior G7 source. “If Russia remains a member, it will become a less useful organization.”Asked whether U.S. President Joe Biden would move to push Russia out of the G20 when he meets with allies in Brussels this week, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at the White House Tuesday: “We believe that it cannot be business as usual for Russia in international institutions and in the international community.” However, the United States plans to consult with its allies before any other pronouncements are made, he said. A European Union source separately confirmed the discussions about Russia’s status at forthcoming meetings of the G20, whose rotating chair is currently held by Indonesia.”It has been made very clear to Indonesia that Russia’s presence at forthcoming ministerial meetings would be highly problematic for European countries,” said the source, adding there was however no clear process for excluding a country.The G7 was expanded to a new “G8” format including Russia during a period of warmer ties in the early 2000s. But Moscow was indefinitely suspended from that club after its annexation of Crimea in 2014.Earlier on Tuesday, Poland said it had suggested to U.S. commerce officials that it replace Russia within the G20 group and that the suggestion had received a “positive response.”A U.S. Commerce Department spokesperson said that a “good meeting” had been held last week between Polish Economic Development and Technology Minister Piotr Nowak and U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo but added:”She (Raimondo) welcomed hearing Poland’s views on a number of topics, including the operation of the G20, but did not express a position on behalf of the U.S. Government with respect to the Polish G20 proposal.”The G7 source said it was seen as unlikely that Indonesia, currently heading the G20, or members like India, Brazil, South Africa and China would agree to remove Russia from the group.”It’s impossible to remove Russia from G20″ unless Moscow makes such a decision on its own, said an official of a G20 member country in Asia. “There’s simply no procedure to deprive Russia of G20 membership.”If G7 countries instead were to skip this year’s G20 meetings, that could be a powerful signal to India, the source said. It has drawn the ire of some Western nations over its failure to condemn the Russian invasion and support Western measures against Russian President Vladimir Putin.Russia’s status at other multilateral agencies is also being questioned.In Geneva, World Trade Organization officials said numerous delegations there were refusing to meet their Russian counterparts in various formats.”Many governments have raised objections to what is happening there and these objections have manifested themselves in a lack of engagement with the member concerned,” WTO spokesperson Keith Rockwell said.One source from a Western country said those not engaging with Russia at the WTO included the European Union, the United States, Canada and Britain. No confirmation from those delegations was immediately available. More

BALTIMORE, Md. (Reuters) -Top trade officials from the United States and Britain will meet in Scotland in April after two days of talks in the U.S. port city of Baltimore on forging deeper and more inclusive trade relations, and a surprise deal on cutting tariffs.British trade minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan told reporters on Tuesday the meetings had energized efforts by the two historic allies to work together more closely and “stay ahead of the game in a fast-changing global economy.”Trevelyan and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai met with industry executives and labor unions, toured the Baltimore port, and visited a minority-owned digital technology firm as part of wide-ranging dialogues aimed at finding new ways to expand trade and investment between the two countries.”America is at its best when we are working closely with our allies,” Tai told a news conference. “Secretary Trevelyan and I want to preserve the historic nature of our special relationship while ensuring it properly addresses the urgent challenges of today’s world.”They both noted that close cooperation between Washington and London in their response to Russia for its invasion of Ukraine underscored the power of cooperation by democracies.The two trade officials spoke shortly before Trevelyan met with U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and sealed an agreement that lifted U.S. tariffs on UK steel and aluminum, and retaliatory British tariffs on U.S. motorcycles, whiskey and other products.In a joint statement on the trade dialogues, Tai and Trevelyan said they had identified areas for deeper cooperation, including protecting labor rights and the environment, promoting supply chain resilience, and supporting the low-carbon transition.They said it was also vital to make it easier for small- and medium-sized businesses to take part in global trade, including through enhanced access to financing, and ensure that the benefits of trade were distributed across their countries.Asked about resuming formal negotiations on a bilateral free trade agreement, Tai said such deals were “very 20th century tools” and it was important to look for creative, innovative solutions given new challenges.While the United States and the European Union had set up a trade and technology council, Tai cautioned that “one size does not fit all,” and said the United States and Britain had their own particular shared values. Trevelyan said Britain stood ready to pull together a free trade agreement, but added that the purpose of the U.S.-UK current dialogue was “to really be able to think about where we want to be going with our relationship.” More

The move would follow Tuesday’s parliamentary approval of a record $900 billion state budget for the 2022 fiscal year.The Nikkei newspaper reported separately that the government will likely tap 5.5 trillion yen ($45.41 billion) in reserves set aside under the fiscal 2022 budget to fund the package, instead of compiling an extra budget.Under pressure by politicians to ramp up spending ahead of an upper house election scheduled this summer, Kishida has said his administration is ready to take further stimulus steps to ease the pain of surging fuel and food costs on households and companies.($1 = 121.1300 yen) More

(Reuters) -Federal Reserve officials are helping shape market expectations for sharper interest-rate hikes to curb the surge in inflation, but have not managed to dispel fears the tightening cycle could blow a hole in the economy and labor market.”The Fed needs to move aggressively to keep inflation under control,” St. Louis Fed President James Bullard told Bloomberg TV on Tuesday, calling for the central bank to raise its benchmark overnight interest rate to 3% this year. Bullard dissented last week as the rest of his colleagues agreed to raise the federal funds rate by just a quarter of a percentage point from the near-zero level it had been since March 2020. “Faster is better,” he said Tuesday, and that view now appears to be gaining traction.On Monday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank must move “expeditiously” to raise rates. When asked what would prevent the central bank raising rates by half a percentage point at the May 3-4 policy meeting, he responded: “Nothing.” Big rate hikes will probably be needed at “some” of the remaining six Fed meetings this year, Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said Tuesday, as noted the ongoing impact of snarled supply chains on prices and echoed Powell’s concerns that Russia’s Ukraine war will push up on already too-high inflation. “I find it appealing to front-load some of the needed increases earlier rather than later in the process because it puts policy in a better position to adjust if the economy evolves differently than expected,” she said. By year end, Mester said, rates should be about 2.5%, and rates need to rise further next year to bring inflation down. San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly, among the more dovish of the U.S. central bank policymakers, was not asked about a possible half-point rate hike in a virtual event at the Brookings Institution earlier Tuesday. But she did say she wants to march rates higher, to a neutral level and perhaps above, to prevent high inflation from getting embeddedAll said they believed higher borrowing costs could also cool super-hot demand for labor without biting into jobs growth.The comments have prompted a flood of bets in futures markets on half-point interest rate increases in May and June. Traders now see the federal funds rate rising to the 2.25%-2.5% range by the end of the year – short of Bullard’s view but higher than the 1.9% suggested by Fed forecasts last week. Powell argued the economy is strong enough to withstand higher borrowing costs without damaging the labor market and argued the best thing the Fed could do to ensure continued labor market strength is to get inflation under control. But traders are now also building bets that the Fed will start cutting interest rates by 2024, pricing of futures contracts shows. “The fixed income market squarely does not believe Powell’s economic optimism: It is telling us that a soft landing, if the Fed goes down Powell’s path, will not only be challenging – it will be impossible,” wrote Roberto Perli, an economist at Piper Sandler. ‘HAWKISH PIVOT’It’s shaping up to be a rocky start for the Fed’s first round of rate hikes in three years, and particularly for the way its policymakers are communicating it.Ahead of last week’s interest rate increase, Powell had said the Fed would proceed “carefully” due to high uncertainty about the impact on the U.S. economy of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.In his news conference following the release of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) policy statement and projections, Powell said the Fed must be “nimble” in responding to the evolving outlook.And this week the Fed chief downplayed worries over the potential dent to economic growth and focused far more sharply on the likelihood the war in Ukraine could worsen U.S. inflation, which has hit a 40-year high and is about three times the central bank’s 2% target. The changes, wrote NatWest economist Kevin Cummins (NYSE:CMI), could reflect Powell’s ongoing personal “hawkish pivot” that began in late 2021. “In the near-term, Powell’s comments are obviously not the last word as for the size of the expected rate hike in May, especially since the May FOMC meeting is not for another six weeks and Fed actions will be driven by the data,” Cummins wrote.They may also reflect a broader sense inside the Fed that rates can rise quite far and not push the economy into a downturn, a feat the Fed achieved in the 1990s — especially with labor markets as strong as they are now.Job openings are at a near-record high, and employers are fighting so hard to hire employees, even from competitors, that Mester says one of her directors calls it the “Great Poaching.”Mester said she is “very optimistic” that the Fed can reduce excess demand for workers without reducing economic activity or jobs. More