at nato as a fruitful exchange and he said the american people are well-served when it comes to negotiations by this president. as a lawyer, you have a president that is strong, supporter and advocate of the interests of the american people and the american country. he s a great negotiator. shepard, one of the coincidences there of that comment is that italy is not one of the countries that has lived up to the moment to its spending goals, 2% of gdp to military spending. the president said he wants to see it get to 4%. italy right now is 1%. they have a handful of years to get there. shepard: he talked, blake, about trade with the european union as a whole. he did. we re still asking questions about a comment that he made at the tale end. last week he made a statement
between our countries. this friction that we re having, as long as it results in lowering barriers and making it easier for us to access foreign markets and have reciprocal trade agreements, that s great. that s hopefully where we can end up with this. who will ask the last question? sam ryan came with work to dad today. sam ryan gets the distinction of that today. have a good one. take care. republican house speaker paul ryan talking about trade, talking about tariffs. we will have much more after the break. ere. [telephone ring] ahoy-hoy. alexander graham bell here. no, no, my number is one, you must want two! two, i say!!
hurt. they are having a girl. congrats to them. steve: supposed to be blue. thank you very much. ainsley: no, girl. pink. steve: missed that part. proof is in the numbers. the federal reserve chair firing back at democrats ominous fears of a trade war with everybody. robust job gains. rising after tax income and optimism among households have lifted consumer spending in recent months. difficult to predict the ultimate outcome of current discussions over trade policy. overall we see the risk of the economy unexpectedly weakening roughly balanced with the economy growing faster than we currently anticipate. brian: stuart varney host of varney and company fox business network one the top stories today because have you a lot of the talk about trade. so far no fear revealed in those numbers. well, let me translate what the fed chair just said the translation is the economy is strength in the face of trade trouble. let me translate that america is negotiating trade deals with a strong ec
is the bad guy. the key swoeword is tribal. to some people loyalties are absolute. i think different people are much more committed and loyal to a set of ideas and getting to the question of trump is to me the most interesting question in american politics and american foreign policy to to what extent does trumpism outlive trump? . that suggests he s less the creator than has tapped into something. can i ask the question? obama, the biggest person on the political stage since ronald reagan, how much did obamaism outlive obama? very little but trump has two things. there s a body of ideas about immigration, about trade, a set of concerns and at the moment he s got a demographic base within the country that feels the future of this country is more of a threat than a source of reassurances to them and some of it crosses party lines. you see some of bernie sanders support also there.
meeting with the french president, though the two did speak later. and then there was this friendly esh change with the canadian prime minister justin trudeau about trade. let s listen. justin has agreed to cut all tariffs and all trade barriers between canada and the united states. nafta is in good shape. but we are actually working on it. but our relationship is very good. all right, joking aside there, this face-to-face we saw between these two leaders very different than the twitter barbs we ve seen play out before the summit. is the relationship truly in good shape, or as they say, can common ground be found here? i think there s two things. one is there are clear very, very serious frictions between the europeans and the united states. i think the united states sees a changing world, and there are