#2025 Budget

[kp777]

By Jessica Corbett

Common Dreams

March 20, 2024

"Trump has tried to walk back his support for Social Security and Medicare cuts," said the head of Social Security Works. "This budget is one of many reasons why no one should believe him."

Defenders of Social Security and Medicare on Wednesday swiftly criticized the biggest caucus of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives for putting out a budget proposal for fiscal year 2025 that takes aim at the crucial programs.

The 180-page "Fiscal Sanity to Save America" plan from the Republican Study Committee (RSC) follows the release of proposals from Democratic President Joe Biden and U.S. House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas)—who is leading the fight to create a fiscal commission for the programs that critics call a "death panel" designed to force through cuts.

The RSC document features full sections on "Saving Medicare" and "Preventing Biden's Cuts to Social Security," which both push back on the president's recent comments calling out Republican attacks on the programs that serve seniors.

The caucus plan promotes premium support for Medicare Advantage plans administered by private health insurance providers as well as changes to payments made to teaching hospitals. For Social Security, the proposal calls for tying retirement age to rising life expectancy and cutting benefits for younger workers over certain income levels, including phasing out auxiliary benefits.

The document also claims that the caucus budget "would promote trust fund solvency by increasing payroll tax revenues through pro-growth tax reform, pro-growth energy policy that lifts wages, work requirements that move Americans from welfare to work, and regulatory reforms that increase economic growth."

In a lengthy Wednesday statement blasting the RSC budget, Social Security Works president Nancy Altman pointed out that last week, former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee to face Biden in the November election, "toldCNBC that 'there's a lot you can do' to cut Social Security."

"Everyone who cares about the future of these vital earned benefits should vote accordingly in November."

"Now, congressional Republicans are confirming the party's support for cuts—to the tune of $1.5 trillion. They are also laying out some of those cuts," Altman said. "This budget would raise the retirement age, in line with prominent Republican influencer Ben Shapiro's recent comments that 'retirement itself is a stupid idea.' It would make annual cost-of-living increases stingier, so that benefits erode over time. It would slash middle-class benefits."

"Perhaps most insultingly, given the Republicans' claim to be the party of 'family values,' this budget would eliminate Social Security spousal benefits, as well as children's benefits, for middle-class families. That would punish women who take time out of the workforce to care for children and other loved ones," she continued. "This coming from a party that wants to take away women's reproductive rights!"

The caucus, chaired by Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), included 285 bills and initiatives from 192 members in its budget plan—among them are various proposals threatening abortion care, birth control, and in vitro fertilization (IVF) nationwide.

"The RSC budget would also take away Medicare's new power to negotiate lower prices on prescription drugs, putting more money into the pockets of the GOP's Big Pharma donors," Altman warned. "And it accelerates the privatization of Medicare, handing it over to private insurance companies who have a long history of ripping off the government and delaying and denying care to those who need it."

"In recent days, Trump has tried to walk back his support for Social Security and Medicare cuts," she noted. "This budget is one of many reasons why no one should believe him. The Republican Party is the party of cutting Social Security and Medicare, while giving tax handouts to billionaires."

"The Democratic Party is the party of expanding Social Security and Medicare, paid for by requiring the ultrawealthy to contribute their fair share," Altman added. "Everyone who cares about the future of these vital earned benefits should vote accordingly in November."

Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler also targeted the Republican presidential candidate while slamming the RSC plan, saying that "Donald Trump's MAGA allies in Congress made it clear today: A vote for Trump is a vote to make the MAGA 2025 agenda of cutting Social Security, ripping away access to IVF, and banning abortion nationwide a hellish reality."

"While Trump and his allies push forward their extreme agenda, the American people are watching," Tyler added, suggesting that the RSC proposal will help motivate voters to give Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris four more years in the White House.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

John Knefel at MMFA:

Russ Vought, a frequent guest on right-wing media shows and key figure in Project 2025, a broad effort to staff a future Republican administration, will have a top role in drafting the platform for the GOP's convention this July, virtually ensuring the document will be a wishlist of MAGA priorities. The Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign made the joint announcement on May 15, highlighting Vought’s new role “as the committee's policy director” for the RNC’s 2024 Committee on the Platform and noting his previous tenure as director of the Office of Management and Budget under former President Donald Trump. In that position, Vought oversaw the administration’s attempts to remove supposed “critical race theory trainings” from federal programs and sought to coordinate the White House’s directives across the executive branch more broadly. 

[...]

After Trump’s loss in 2020, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, where he has consistently pushed a Christian nationalist agenda. He has called for an “army” of right-wing activists with “biblical worldview” to serve in the next Republican administration, and wrote an op-ed for Newsweek in 2021 with the headline: “Is There Anything Actually Wrong With 'Christian Nationalism?' As Politico reported, “One ​​document drafted by CRA staff and fellows includes a list of top priorities for CRA in a second Trump term. ‘Christian nationalism’ is one of the bullet points.” 

The Center for Renewing America has emerged as a key player in the MAGA-aligned think tank world. It’s one of the more than 100 conservative groups that make up Project 2025, an effort organized by The Heritage Foundation to provide staffing and policy proposals to a future GOP presidency. Vought plays a central role in the effort, including as the author of a chapter in Project 2025’s guiding document, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, in which he argued that the “enormous power” of the executive branch should be exclusively the purview of the president rather than dispersed within agencies and departments.

Though that argument may sound anodyne, Vought’s vision has radical implications. First and foremost, Vought advocates for implementing a policy known as “Schedule F,” which would reclassify tens of thousands of federal employees as political appointees — thus stripping them of union protections. If Trump is reelected in November and chooses to go forward with Schedule F, he could fire career civil servants from agencies and departments en masse and replace them hardcore MAGA foot soldiers, potentially decimating the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Labor, the Department of Education, and other frequent right-wing targets. “What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” Vought has said, according to The New York Times.

Center For Renewing America founder and key Project 2025 influencer Russ Vought was appointed to the RNC's Platform Committee for the upcoming convention in Milwaukee this July. #RNC2024

[the-tenth-arcanum]

why am I already stressing about the time I'll have to move out. girl you only just bought a wardrobe. chill

[gamer-comix]

you didn't give them enough money for rebellion 2

[dinersaturn]

I know MAPPA is good but how the hell are they going to top “there are a lot of people at Versailles today”? HOW?

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Biden reacts to the GOP's proposal to gut social security

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 21, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 22, 2024

In the past few weeks, Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo has deepened our understanding of the right-wing attempt to impose Christian nationalism on the United States through support for Trump and the MAGA movement. On March 9, Kovensky explored the secret, men-only, right-wing society called the Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR), whose well-positioned, wealthy, white leaders call for instituting white male domination and their version of Christianity in the U.S. after a “regime” change. 

On March 19, Kovensky explained how that power was reaching into lawmaking when he reported on a September 2023 speech by Russ Vought, a key architect of the plans for Trump’s second term, including Project 2025. In the speech, which took place in the  Dirksen Senate Office Building, Vought explained the right wing’s extreme border policies by explicitly marrying Christian nationalism and an aversion to the pluralism that is a hallmark of American democracy. Vought argued that the U.S. should model immigration on the Bible’s Old Testament, welcoming migrants only “so long as they accepted Israel’s God, laws, and understanding of history.”

These religious appeals against the equality of women and minorities seem an odd juxtaposition to a statement by United Auto Workers (UAW) union president Shawn Fain in response to the claim of the Trump campaign that Trump’s “bloodbath” statement of last Saturday was about the auto industry. Fain is also a self-described Christian, but he rejects the right-wing movement.   

“Donald Trump can’t run from the facts,” Fain said in a statement to CBS News. “He can do all the name-calling he wants, but the truth is he is a con man who has been directly part of the problem we have seen over the past 40 years—where working class people have gone backward and billionaires like Donald Trump reap all the benefits…. 

“Trump has been a player in the class war against the working class for decades, whether screwing workers and small businesses in his dealings, exploiting workers at his Mar a Lago estate and properties, blaming workers for the Great Recession, or giving tax breaks to the rich. The bottom line is Trump only represents the billionaire class and he doesn’t give a damn about the plight of working class people, union or not.” 

In the 1850s the United States saw a similar juxtaposition, with elite southern enslavers heightening their insistence that enslavement was sanctioned by God and their warnings that the freedom of Black Americans posed an existential threat to the United States just as white workers were beginning to turn against the system that had concentrated great wealth among a very few men. While white southern leaders were upset by the extraordinary popularity of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the 1852 novel that urged middle-class women to stand up against slavery, it was Hinton Rowan Helper’s 1857 The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It that made them apoplectic. 

Hinton Helper was a white southerner himself and showed no abolitionist sympathies in his deeply racist book. What that book did was to show, using the statistics that had recently been made available from the 1850 census, that the American South was falling rapidly behind the North economically. Helper blamed the system of slavery for that economic backwardness, and he urged ordinary white men to overthrow the system of enslavement that served only a few wealthy white men. The cotton boom of the 1850s had created enormous fortunes for a few lucky planters, as well as a market for Helper’s book among poorer white men who had been forced off their land. 

White southern elites considered Helper’s book so incendiary that state legislatures made it illegal to possess a copy, people were imprisoned and three allegedly hanged for being found with the book, and a fight over it consumed Congress for two months from December 1859 through January 1860. The determination of southern elites to preserve their power made them redouble their efforts to appeal to voters through religion and racism. 

In today’s America, the right wing seems to be echoing its antebellum predecessors. It is attacking women’s rights; diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; immigration; LGBTQ+ rights and so on. At the same time, it continues to push an economic system that has moved as much as $50 trillion from the bottom 90% to the top 10% since 1981 while exploding the annual budget deficit and the national debt.

Yesterday the far-right Republican Study Committee (RSC), which includes about two thirds of all House Republicans, released a 2025 budget plan to stand against Biden’s 2025 budget wish list. The RSC plan calls for dramatic cuts to business regulation, Social Security, Medicaid, and so on, and dismisses Biden’s plan for higher taxes on the wealthy, calling instead for more than $5 trillion in tax cuts. It calls the provision of the Inflation Reduction Act that permits the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over prices “socialist price controls.” 

Biden responded to the RSC budget, saying: “My budget represents a different future. One where the days of trickle-down economics are over and the wealthy and biggest corporations no longer get all the breaks. A future where we restore the right to choose and protect other freedoms, not take them away. A future where the middle class finally has a fair shot, and we protect Social Security so the working people who built this country can retire with dignity. I see a future for all Americans and I will never stop fighting for that future.”

Biden’s version of America has built a strong economy in the last two years, with extremely low unemployment, extraordinary growth, and real wage increases for all but the top 20%. Inequality has decreased. Today the White House announced the cancellation of nearly $6 billion in federal student loan debt for thousands of teachers, firefighters, and nurses. Simply by enforcing laws already on the books that allow debt forgiveness for borrowers who go into public service, the administration has erased nearly $144 billion of debt for about 4 million borrowers. 

At the same time, the administration has reined in corporations. Today the Department of Justice, along with 15 states and the District of Columbia, sued Apple, Inc., for violating the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act. They charge that the company, which in 2023 had net revenues of $383 billion and a net income of $97 billion, has illegally established a monopoly over the smartphone market to extract as much revenue as possible from consumers. The company’s behavior also hurts developers, the Department of Justice says, because they cannot compete under the rules that Apple has set. 

At the end of February, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued to block the merger of Kroger and Albertsons, a $24.6 billion takeover affecting 5,000 supermarkets and 700,000 workers across 48 states. The merger would raise grocery prices, narrow consumer choice, and hurt workers’ bargaining power, the FTC said. The attorneys general of Arizona, California, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Wyoming joined the FTC’s lawsuit.  

The benefits of the administration’s reworking of the government for ordinary Americans have not gotten traction in the past few years, as right-wing media have continued to insist that Biden’s policies will destroy the economy. But as Shawn Fain’s position suggests, ordinary white men, who fueled the Reagan Revolution in 1980 when they turned against the Democrats and who have made up a key part of the Republican base, might be paying attention. 

In June 2023 the AFL-CIO, a union with more than 12.5 million members, endorsed Biden for president in 2024 in its earliest endorsement ever. In January the UAW also endorsed Biden. Yesterday the United Steelworkers Union, which represents 850,000 workers in metals, mining, rubber, and other industries, added their endorsement.

Just as it was in the 1850s, the right-wing emphasis on religion and opposition to a modern multicultural America today is deeply entwined with preserving an economic power structure that has benefited a small minority. That emphasis is growing stronger in the face of the administration’s effort to restore a level economic playing field. In the 1850s, those who opposed the domination of elite enslavers could only promise voters a better future. But in 2024, the success of Biden’s policies may be changing the game.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[alkamiltravel]

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[futurefatum]

Important predictions for 2024-25 (Tone: 175)

Big shifts are coming in 2024! India enters Mars Mahadasha, with potential geopolitical changes & global tensions brewing. #Astrology #Predictions

Published January 13th, 2024 by @AbhigyaAnandAstrology Important predictions for 2024-25 | Analyze with Abhigya Anand ABOUT THIS VIDEO: The video by Abhigya Anand focuses on predictions for global and Indian geopolitics in 2024 and 2025, grounded in astrological analysis and historical cycles. Anand emphasizes that 2024 will be a significant turning point, especially for India, as it enters a…

[headspace-hotel]

USAmericans

Read the Project 2025 manifesto RIGHT NOW

It's MUCH worse than y'all have been hearing

There is so much here you'll have to look at it for yourself, but the climate policy alone is nightmare fuel.

The republican coalition wants to essentially end funding for green energy, dramatically promote and expand fossil fuel industries, and eliminate funding and regulations in all sectors promoting climate change mitigation. Task forces and offices related to clean energy and lowering carbon emissions will be eliminated and replaced with offices for promoting fossil fuels.

They want to LOG NATIONAL FORESTS TO "THIN" THE TREES TO STOP WILDFIRES.

THEY WANT TO FORCE OREGON AND CALIFORNIA TO LOG THEIR NATIONAL FORESTS AND TREAT THEM AS FOR TIMBER PRODUCTION

There are specific provisions in Project 2025 to essentially destroy the Endangered Species Act, causing it to defer to the rights of "economic development" and "private property." The plan includes delisting gray wolves, cutting the budget so that a "triage" system is used to determine which species will get protection, removing funding for research, removing experts and specialists from the decision-making process, and preventing "experimental" populations of animals from being established.

This is so much worse than I expected it to be and there's much more past that: They want to deregulate pesticides and remove much of the EPA's ability to regulate pollutants as well.

Also included in the manifesto is that we should

withdraw from nuclear weapons nonproliferation agreements, build more nuclear weapons, and resume nuclear weapons testing

The manifesto comprehensively outlines the scorched-earth elimination of abortion access, down to ensuring doctors aren't even trained to perform abortions. There are plans in here to disrupt abortion access GLOBALLY, not just domestically.

Not only that,the Republicans plan on reframing family planning programs around "fertility awareness" and "holistic family planning."

I can't even describe it all. I'm trying to give screenshots of the most important things but there's so much.

The foreign policy is a nightmare. They plan to push fossil fuels onto the Global South and promote the development of fossil fuel industry in the "developing world."

It is aggressive and antagonistic towards other nations, strongly pro-military, proposing that we INCREASE (!!!!!) defense spending, improve public opinion of the military and military recruitment, and increase the power to fund new weapons technology.

Just read the Department of Defense section. It's about greatly increasing and strengthening the military-industrial complex, collaborating more closely with weapons manufacturers, removing regulatory barriers to arming our allies and to inventing new military weapons, and recruiting more people into the military. They include provisions to develop AI technology for surveillance. And of course, continuing to support Israel is in there.

Elsewhere it proposes interfering in foreign countries with creepy pro-USA propaganda campaigns, even establishing international educational programs where faculty have to pledge to promote USA interests.

There's a line in here about getting rid of PBS because SESAME STREET is LEFTIST for God's sake.

HOW are people claiming democrats have the same policies. I feel like i'm losing my mind.

[wausaupilot]

Marathon County committee approves continued funding for The Women’s Community and Judicare

A final decision on support will come from the Marathon County Board of Supervisors.

Damakant Jayshi Marathon County’s Public Safety Committee on Tuesday approved continued funding for The Women’s Community, Inc. and Judicare Legal Aid for its mediation services for the 2025 budget. The Public Safety approved $55,000 for The Women’s Community, a non-profit that helps victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, human trafficking and other emergency services. A final…

[kp777]

By Jake Johnson

Common Dreams

July 30, 2024

"Trump's Project 2025 agenda will take us backward and leave more Americans sick, uninsured, and burdened with crushing medical debt."

Congressional Democrats marked Medicare's 59th anniversary on Tuesday by releasing a tool showing the potential district-by-district impact of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's proposal to roll back the Inflation Reduction Act, a law that capped insulin costs for seniors at $35 a month.

The new tool, produced by Democrats on the House Budget Committee, allows users to plug in their address, ZIP code, or district to view how a repeal of the 2022 law would affect the costs of insulin and other medications.

In Pennsylvania, for instance, "830,000 seniors and people with disabilities in Pennsylvania" would have to "pay an average of $470 more every year for prescription drugs" if Trump and the right-wing groups behind Project 2025 get their way.

Project 2025's sprawling policy document—which at least 140 former Trump administration officials helped craft—calls for the "repeal of massive spending bills like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)."

"These programs are lifelines for millions of Americans, but the Trump-Vance ticket and their extreme allies threaten to cut funding."

Nationwide, Democrats on the House budget panel estimate that a repeal of the IRA would raise drug costs for at least 18 million seniors.

Project 2025 would also "make Medicare Advantage the default enrollment option" for seniors—a step toward the total privatization of Medicare.

"For 59 years, Medicare and Medicaid have served as a critical lifeline for seniors, families, children, Americans with disabilities, and so many others," Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), ranking member of the House Budget Committee, said in a statement Tuesday. "Unfortunately, extreme MAGA Republicans have a different, darker vision for our healthcare system."

"Trump's Project 2025 agenda would repeal the lifesaving provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, raise premiums on seniors, and risk their access to doctors and services under Medicare," Boyle continued. "House Republicans' budget plans show they are 100% on board with Trump's Project 2025 agenda, which will give Big Pharma a windfall while putting the tens of millions of Americans who get their health coverage through Medicare, Medicaid, and the [Affordable Care Act] on the chopping block."

"Make no mistake," he added, "Trump's Project 2025 agenda will take us backward and leave more Americans sick, uninsured, and burdened with crushing medical debt."

See the Impact of Trump's Project 2025 on Your Community. (Search to learn more about the impact of Project 2025's plans to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act on families in your community.)

Since President Joe Biden signed it into law, Trump has repeatedly assailed the IRA, calling it a "mammoth socialist law" and signaling that he would work to dismantle it should he win another four years in the White House.

While Trump and Republican lawmakers have postured as defenders of Medicare and Social Security—the GOP's 2024 platform vows to "fight for and protect Social Security and Medicare with no cuts"—their actions while in positions of power belie their rhetoric.

Trump proposed major cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs during each of his first four years in the White House, and a congressional panel comprised of three-quarters of the House Republican caucus released a budget blueprint last year that called for raising the retirement age—which would cut Social Security benefits across the board.

As recently as March, Trump declared in an interview that "there is a lot you can do... in terms of cutting" programs like Social Security and Medicare. The former president later tried to walk back the comments.

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Trump's running mate, once described Social Security and Medicare benefits as "the biggest roadblocks to any kind of real fiscal sanity."

"These programs are lifelines for millions of Americans, but the Trump-Vance ticket and their extreme allies threaten to cut funding—just like Trump proposed every year of his presidency—and undo the Biden-Harris administration's work to lower prescription drug costs for seniors," Alex Floyd, rapid response director for the Democratic National Committee, said Tuesday. "Trump and Vance's Project 2025 agenda to leave our seniors high and dry is destructive, extreme, and deeply unpopular—which the American people will make clear when they reject it in November."

Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign, echoed that sentiment, calling Trump "the biggest threat to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security since their inception."

"He tried cutting Social Security and Medicare every single year he was in office," Moussa said Tuesday. "There is only one candidate in this race who will protect and expand earned benefits programs that millions of Americans rely on—Vice President Harris."

[eshippro]

Impact of Budget 2024-2025 on India's Imports and Exports: A Focus on Middle East Trade Relations

The Union Budget 2024-2025, presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, is poised to bring significant changes to India's trade dynamics, particularly in the Middle East. With a series of strategic reforms and initiatives, the budget aims to enhance India’s import-export capabilities, boost economic growth, and strengthen trade ties with Middle Eastern countries. Here’s a detailed look at how this budget impacts India’s trade with the Middle East.

Strengthening Trade Infrastructure

One of the key highlights of the budget is the emphasis on strengthening trade

infrastructure. Significant investments have been allocated for developing ports, shipping, and logistics facilities. This development is crucial for enhancing India's trade efficiency, particularly with the Middle East, which is a major trading partner. Improved infrastructure will reduce transit times, lower logistics costs, and enhance the overall competitiveness of Indian exports in the global market. For instance, better infrastructure supports more efficient cargo freight forwarding and global forwarding services.

Simplification of GST

The simplification and standardization of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is another significant reform in the budget. By making the tax regime more straightforward and predictable, the government aims to reduce the compliance burden on exporters and importers. This reform is expected to make Indian goods more competitive, particularly in the Middle Eastern markets where price sensitivity is high. Lower logistics and production costs due to streamlined GST processes will further enhance the appeal of Indian products in these markets. This impacts various aspects of freight forwarding services, including freight forwarder quotes and international freight forwarding services.

Boosting Exports

The budget places a strong emphasis on boosting exports through various initiatives. These include incentives for export-oriented industries, subsidies, and support for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). For trade with the Middle East, this is particularly important as India exports a wide range of products, including textiles, machinery, and agricultural goods to these countries. Enhanced support and incentives will help Indian exporters expand their reach and increase their market share in the Middle East. Companies specializing in less-than-container load (LCL) shipping and door-to-door international shipping will benefit from these changes.

Promoting Sustainable Practices

Sustainability is a key focus of the budget, with several initiatives aimed at promoting green and sustainable practices in trade. For instance, incentives for adopting renewable energy in production processes and using sustainable materials can enhance the appeal of Indian products in the Middle Eastern markets, which are increasingly valuing sustainable practices. This shift towards sustainability can open new avenues for trade and cooperation with Middle Eastern countries, which are also investing heavily in green technologies. Freight forwarding companies near me that focus on sustainable practices will find new opportunities.

Enhancing Bilateral Trade Relations

The budget also emphasizes strengthening bilateral trade relations with key partners, including countries in the Middle East. By fostering closer economic ties, the government aims to create a conducive environment for trade and investment. This includes negotiating favourable trade agreements, reducing trade barriers, and enhancing cooperation in areas like technology and innovation. Strengthened bilateral relations will facilitate smoother and more profitable trade with Middle Eastern countries, benefiting global freight services and shipping companies in UAE.

Investment in Technology and Innovation

Investment in technology and innovation is another cornerstone of the budget. By promoting technological advancements and innovation in industries, the government aims to enhance the quality and competitiveness of Indian products. For trade with the Middle East, this is particularly relevant as the region is known for its high standards and demand for quality products. Enhanced technological capabilities will enable Indian exporters to meet these standards and capture a larger market share. This includes improving the efficiency of ocean freight forwarders and global freight services.

Focus on Logistics and Supply Chain Management

Improving logistics and supply chain management is a key aspect of the budget. Efficient logistics are crucial for timely and cost-effective trade, especially with distant markets like the Middle East. The budget allocates funds for modernizing logistics infrastructure, adopting advanced supply chain technologies, and improving connectivity between production hubs and ports. These measures will ensure that Indian goods reach Middle Eastern markets faster and at a lower cost, enhancing their competitiveness. This is essential for effective freight forwarding, whether through less-than-container load (LCL) shipping or door-to-door shipping services.

Conclusion

The Union Budget 2024-2025 is set to bring transformative changes to India's import-export landscape, with a particular focus on enhancing trade relations with the Middle East. Through strategic investments in infrastructure, simplification of GST, promotion of sustainable practices, and strengthening bilateral trade relations, the budget aims to boost India's trade capabilities and competitiveness. These initiatives will not only enhance the volume and value of trade with Middle Eastern countries but also position India as a key player in the global trade arena. As these reforms take effect, India is poised to experience significant growth in its trade with the Middle East, driving economic prosperity and development, and benefiting from the services of freight forwarders and shipping companies in UAE.

[govtshutdown]

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4766002-legislative-branch-funding-bill-house/

Backtracking a little. It seems the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act (H.R.8772) failed in the House over a disagreement about a pay raise for members of Congress.

[bhaskarlive]

Union Budget: Infra push, structural reforms for sustainable growth key industry wish-list

With the government set to present the Union Budget 2024-25 on July 23, industry leaders and experts have reiterated the importance of structural reforms to drive sustainable and inclusive economic growth, especially the critical role of infrastructure development towards India becoming the third largest economy.

According to industry chambers, by prioritising structural reforms, strategic infrastructure development, targeted sectoral initiatives and a rationalised tax system, India can navigate current challenges and emerge as a stronger, more competitive economy in the long run.

Source: bhaskarlive.in