Trump Era 2025-2029 : Stock and Economic Comment

[finicky]

 

[over9k]

Markets are happy with this news.

Now, do any more toys get thrown out of the pram?

 

[over9k]

Nuh

The current figures are crazy. China is just saying we are both at peak crazy. We are not going to dignify any further increase with a response.

It is also offering an off ramp - if Trump wants to take it. Let's stop this now (because we won't play the game ) and start considering ways to reset the situation. These Tariffs make US/China Trade practically impossible. Does that make sense for either party ?

Oh no doubt. Doesn't mean he'll take it though.

 

[over9k]

Alright so the week ended with a bit of cautious optimism after china stated it won't be raising tariffs any further. Fingers crossed we won't see any more stupidity.

According to the news headlines from the U.S trade rep (can't remember his name) there's currently 15 offers on the table for other countries (all the U.S allies and so forth) so with any luck we'll start to see a drip feeding of "country X just signed a deal" "country Y just signed a deal" so on and so forth.

They've obviously got 3 months to bicker about the details but I'd like to think the majority of them will get finalised by then, it's not like there's only one guy doing the negotiations.

 

[divs4ever]

China blinks!

View attachment 197335

Now we see what the orangutan does with everyone else.

LOL

it MIGHT stop raising tariffs , but China has other levers like cutting exports to the US , resisting US company business interests in China , just stop investing new cash in US debt , maybe start funding ( US backed ) anti-terrorist activities , remember a lot of the US still believes in /uses 'just in time ' supply chains , even shipping delays might cause excessive discomfort

AND the US seems to have just recruited Vietnam to China's side ( not a huge economy but a growing one and growing fast ) , very possibly China's 'mini-me' within 10 years

if China and Vietnam start deep cooperation .. that is a LOT of coastline that the US has to blockade when the time comes

 

[Bellcose]

Very few question from the host which allowed for the interviewee to expanding on his thoughts.

 

[divs4ever]

Nuh

The current figures are crazy. China is just saying we are both at peak crazy. We are not going to dignify any further increase with a response.

It is also offering an off ramp - if Trump wants to take it. Let's stop this now (because we won't play the game ) and start considering ways to reset the situation. These Tariffs make US/China Trade practically impossible. Does that make sense for either party ?

China had plenty of practice living without US trade during 'the Bamboo Curtain era '

AND China remembers it's history and studies it

stopping US trade ( at any time ) will be possible for China , they they practiced that during the pandemic

 

[divs4ever]

Very few question from the host which allowed for the interviewee to expanding on his thoughts.

but in my opinion most Keynesian and MMT adherents are mathematically crippled ( otherwise we wouldn't be in the current economic situation that Trump is exploiting )

the government ( in most nations ) must cut spending but increase national income , so they can tax it without a rebellion , but who will ?

so far most are luxuriating in growing debt hoping to inflate their way out , now IF they could at least cap government spending , inflation might work in their favor ... but here we are

nations fudging official data is not helpful either it deprives public sentiment of being sensible on their own household budgets

 

[Bellcose]

Interesting flow on of possible impacts indicating a decoupling of relying on defense from usual supplier to European defense. I cannot find the link so it's anecdotal only but while the paper allows suppliers outside of the EU to participate, which would indicate the UK, the usual source was rebuffed. Well, I guess the EU could be doing what was demanded i.e. increase its defense spending, but rather than outsource, keep the jobs and suppliers in the EU as far as possible.

Future of European defence

White paper on the future of European defence sets out investment needs to deliver EU defence capabilities to secure Europe’s peace. Find out more.

commission.europa.eu

 

[TimeISmoney]

Interesting flow on of possible impacts indicating a decoupling of relying on defense from usual supplier to European defense. I cannot find the link so it's anecdotal only but while the paper allows suppliers outside of the EU to participate, which would indicate the UK, the usual source was rebuffed. Well, I guess the EU could be doing what was demanded i.e. increase its defense spending, but rather than outsource, keep the jobs and suppliers in the EU as far as possible.

Future of European defence

White paper on the future of European defence sets out investment needs to deliver EU defence capabilities to secure Europe’s peace. Find out more.

commission.europa.eu

Germans have been making military tanks in Brisbane for quite a while now.

 

[farmerge]

China had plenty of practice living without US trade during 'the Bamboo Curtain era '

AND China remembers it's history and studies it

stopping US trade ( at any time ) will be possible for China , they they practiced that during the pandemic

And to add a bit, the US of A has no longer a market in China for their beef they exported there previously. The new tariff imposed by China along with couple of other points make it too prohibitive to get the red meat over there.
The good news in the short to medium term is China is now sourcing white infused beef from Australia.
Hopefully this will push up the saleyard prices to a more sustainable mark.
As a Euro cross cattle breeder, we have exactly what they want.

 

[basilio]

Jonathan Last offers excellent analysis of the Trump Tariff war and the wider issues of market liquidity and RISK as the bedrock of the Bond markets

Risky Business: Everything You Need to Understand Trump's Tariff Insanity​

You can’t make stupidity make sense.​

Jonathan V. Last
Apr 11, 2025
∙ Paid



Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on April 09, 2025, with zero regard for either irony or karma. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

We’re going to take a journey today to understand what just happened. We’ll range from the ludicrous attempts to sane-wash Trump’s tariffs to the dishonesty of the “art of the deal” bs.

But the real meat comes in #3 where we’ll talk about the bond market. Because at the heart of everything is the idea of risk.

The United States economy has been the center of global finance for 80 years for one simple reason: Year in and year out, we have been the safest place to do business. The ground rules remained constant and when they changed around the margins, they did so slowly and transparently.

Investing money is always risky—but America had the lowest level of risk on the planet. Our government, legal system, and business community worked hard to make that happen and the rewards we reaped for it were tremendous.

Donald Trump destroyed 80 years of that work over the last week. America is now a risky place to do business. A place where the rules change from day to day. Where no business can trust in the sturdiness of its long-term plans or count on its revenue projections even for the next quarter.

This abstract problem is going to create real-world economic hardship. Let’s dive in.

---

1. That Ain’t It​

In the last week some anti-anti-Trump types have squinted as hard as they could to see a sane version of Trump’s tariff regime. Ross Douthat and Ben Thompson (and even Democrats such as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer1 and Rep. Chris Deluzio) talked about how the old free-trade regime needed reform, and tariffs are an important tool, and the problem is just that Donald Trump has gone too far, too indiscriminately, and—blah blah blah.

STOP IT.

Stop sane-washing this insanity. Right now.

Here are three true things:

(1) Trade policy can always be reformed. There has never been a moment in American history when trade policy was perfectly optimal. Such a state does not exist, because all of the factors (domestic political concerns, economic reality, foreign affairs challenges) are constantly in flux.

Policy is like fashion. It’s never finished. Saying that our trade policy needs reform is meaningless. Everything needs reform, always, because life is a cycle of reformation and counterreformation.

(2) Tariffs can be a useful tool. I’ll let you in on a secret: All tools can be useful in the right situation. For example: If you have to either write a dissertation or perform an emergency tracheotomy, then the BIC Soft Feel Jumbo pen is a useful tool. But if you are in a lifeboat in open water and I hand you a BIC, it’s useless.

(3) We are currently in an economic meltdown caused by a president’s singlehanded desire to wreck the global financial system by imposing blanket tariffs across the world.2 These tariffs were not “reciprocal.” They were not designed to protect strategic industries. They were based on the illiterate idea that trade deficits are economic losses.

For the love of all that’s holy: Stop pretending that this is a rational, nuanced discussion where it’s important to acknowledge the fair points being raised by Donald Trump.

This is not that.

---

Imagine a wildfire raging out of control in a city. The fire was started by the mayor, intentionally. He campaigned for office on a platform of arson. His fire destroys half of a city. As it burns, eating up businesses and properties, is it relevant to spend time talking about how important fire is to human civilization?

Or how controlled burns can be a useful tool in managing fuel levels and preventing wildfires?

No. These observations are not “nuance.” They’re non sequiturs.3

And someone who, in the midst of a crisis, insists on proclaiming non sequiturs is either deeply stupid or playing an angle.

Share

---

2. Declaring Victory​

So Trump’s tariffs are off.

Or rather, “off.” Sort of. Mostly. For now. Subject to revision.

Yesterday the president put a 90-day pause on tariffs. Except for tariffs on China, which he increased to 125 percent. And tariffs on Canada and Mexico, which are at 10 percent. Or 25 percent. Or 30 percent. No one really seemed to know, for sure. And the baseline global tariffs seem to still be at 10 percent. And 15 other countries did not get a 90-day reprieve, though the president did not immediately identify which countries those were.4

---

The president made this announcement while his U.S. trade representative, Jamieson Greer, was testifying before Congress. Greer was literally in the middle of explaining how beneficial the tariffs were for the American economy when word got out that the tariffs were off. You can see it happen live at the 3:32:50 mark in the hearing:


Rep. Steven Horsford is the one to ask Greer about the tariff “pause.” It’s amazing theater. Greer tries to pretend that he isn’t surprised and knew the pause was coming all along. Horsford asks him why, then, he spent the previous three hours extolling the virtues of tariffs. Greer says he just didn’t want to divulge sensitive information.

At which point Horsford says, Oh yeah? Then tell me the details of this pause that you knew all about?

And Greer freezes up like a third-grader caught doing a book report without having done the reading.5

Share

---

The decision to levy tariffs was not rational.

The administration’s mixed messages about the tariffs—they are forever; they are subject to negotiation—were not rational.

The decision to pause (some of) the tariffs is not rational.

The decision to increase (some of) the tariffs is not rational.

There is no 5D chess. There is no hidden masterstroke. There is no “art of the deal” on display here.

---

Whenever Trump declares victory, his explanation is always “art of the deal.”

Certainly all of these things Trump said or did might look foolish, but they were just part of a negotiation.

This is an unfalsifiable proposition. If everything a person says is merely part of a negotiation and cannot be evaluated as true/false, smart/stupid, or helpful/unhelpful, then nothing means anything.6

Leave a comment

---

3. Bonds​

One last true thing: You cannot negotiate with a market. You can manipulate it in the short run, but in the long run markets do what they do.

This truism holds for the stock market, but it really holds for the bond market. And the bond market is not having any of Trump’s nonsense.

William Cohan had an excellent explanation last night of where the bond market is after Trump’s tariff pause. I’m going to simplify it, but you should read the whole thing.

• The bond market can be broadly understood as a device that measures risk. The riskier an economic environment is, the higher the yield on bonds goes.
• Over the course of Trump’s brief tariff regime the 10-year yield on T-bills went from 3.86 percent to 4.54 percent—a 17.6 percent climb in less than a week. That’s a screaming klaxon alarm.
• Yesterday, after Trump announced his 90-day pause, the yield only dropped back to 4.4 percent. Which suggests that the bond market was not especially reassured.
• Cohan notes that the high-yield bond market (junk bonds) is where “risk goes to hide.” When you want to see the bleeding edge of bond-market sentiment, look at the yields on junk bonds.
  • Two weeks ago, the average junk bond yield was 7.2 percent. On Monday, it was 8.2 percent. After Trump’s tariff pause it moved to 8.5 percent. People are still seeing lots of risk.
• One of the big risks is China. China holds $760b in U.S. Treasuries. Should the Chinese decide to lower their purchasing of T-bills at the next auction, that will drive up the yield as the Treasury Department has to make them more attractive in the face of slackening demand.
  • Which would in turn ratchet the entire bond market up another level of fear.

---

Why do bonds matter? Because bonds are how people finance debt—they are a rough approximation of the belief that it is safe to extend credit. And without credit, financial markets can’t function.

Here’s Cohan:

A credit crunch or credit freeze, where sources of debt capital disappear as fear ratchets up, is to be avoided at all costs. Way back in the fall of 1989, when Citibank could not syndicate a loan in support of the large management buyout of United Airlines, a pall was cast across the vast credit markets. It was virtually impossible to get banks to lend or bond investors to pony up capital to support corporate financings or financings related to deals. Bankruptcies exploded. The credit freeze lasted for years, until 1994 or so. That’s why the focus of many on Wall Street is turning to the effect that Trump’s shenanigans are starting to have on the debt markets.

Risk. It’s all about risk.

Donald Trump’s erratic and foolish actions have turned the most desirable financial haven in the world into a whirlpool of risk.

The safest way to conduct business now is to avoid the United States to the greatest extent possible.

This is not the art of the deal. It’s the destruction of stability and the start of a long, slow slide into a vortex.

Leave a comment

1
The more I see of her, the less impressive she looks.
2
Excepting Russia!
3
If you absolutely must have a discussion about the usefulness of tariffs, we’ll limit it to a footnote:
Certain sectors are so vital to national security that they must be incubated, even if doing so is not economically self-sustaining. For instance: A first-world power must have a homegrown aerospace industry and the ability to manufacture weapons systems. It is helpful to be able to manufacture microchips.
If these industries cannot survive global competition on their own, then it is appropriate to use available policy tools—subsidies, tariffs, etc.—to sustain them.
But always the nation is balancing sacrifices in efficiency with national security needs. Because every dollar being spent to prop up a vital, but uncompetitive, sector incurs opportunity cost for the broader economy.
4
Maybe the econ professors at Trump University taught that the way to encourage investment was to create an environment of maximum chaos and uncertainty because business owners get bored easily and like surprises?
5
The Republican party is like the 1930s Comintern. For years it was Communist dogma that the Soviet Union was the glorious people’s republic and that the fascist Germans were the enemy. On the day the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was announced, the party line shifted and—effective immediately—Nazi Germany became a great friend to the workers of the world.
6
As a rhetorical strategy, saying “it’s all part of the negotiation” is a trick used to arbitrarily set the moment of judgment for an action at the most advantageous point for the person deploying it.
For instance: Trump imposes tariffs. The stock market loses $5t in value the first day. The “art of the deal” argument says that you can’t judge Trump’s tariffs by what happened on day one. Or two. Or three. And you can’t judge them by what happens a month from now, or five years from now. You have to judge them by what happened on April 9, 2025.
Because when he reversed them on April 9, stocks went up. So the decision to do the tariffs in the first place was a good idea because it was the art of the deal!

Risky Business: Everything You Need to Understand Trump's Tariff Insanity

You can’t make stupidity make sense.

www.thebulwark.com

 

[divs4ever]

Interesting flow on of possible impacts indicating a decoupling of relying on defense from usual supplier to European defense. I cannot find the link so it's anecdotal only but while the paper allows suppliers outside of the EU to participate, which would indicate the UK, the usual source was rebuffed. Well, I guess the EU could be doing what was demanded i.e. increase its defense spending, but rather than outsource, keep the jobs and suppliers in the EU as far as possible.

Future of European defence

White paper on the future of European defence sets out investment needs to deliver EU defence capabilities to secure Europe’s peace. Find out more.

commission.europa.eu

what will be interesting to see is IF the EU gets a good bang for their euro

energy costs have rocketed , am not sure Euro-tech is as good as the US or Russia ( or China )

sure they will save some money , but will they get a competitive product , and will they be delivered on schedule

i suppose it really doesn't matter the EU major enemy is it's own residents , it doesn't need fancy bling , just personnel willing to use the weapons against neighbors, family and former friends

 

[divs4ever]

Jonathan Last offers excellent analysis of the Trump Tariff war and the wider issues of market liquidity and RISK as the bedrock of the Bond markets

Risky Business: Everything You Need to Understand Trump's Tariff Insanity​

You can’t make stupidity make sense.​

Jonathan V. Last
Apr 11, 2025
∙ Paid


View attachment 197417
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on April 09, 2025, with zero regard for either irony or karma. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

We’re going to take a journey today to understand what just happened. We’ll range from the ludicrous attempts to sane-wash Trump’s tariffs to the dishonesty of the “art of the deal” bs.

But the real meat comes in #3 where we’ll talk about the bond market. Because at the heart of everything is the idea of risk.

The United States economy has been the center of global finance for 80 years for one simple reason: Year in and year out, we have been the safest place to do business. The ground rules remained constant and when they changed around the margins, they did so slowly and transparently.

Investing money is always risky—but America had the lowest level of risk on the planet. Our government, legal system, and business community worked hard to make that happen and the rewards we reaped for it were tremendous.

Donald Trump destroyed 80 years of that work over the last week. America is now a risky place to do business. A place where the rules change from day to day. Where no business can trust in the sturdiness of its long-term plans or count on its revenue projections even for the next quarter.

This abstract problem is going to create real-world economic hardship. Let’s dive in.

---

1. That Ain’t It​

In the last week some anti-anti-Trump types have squinted as hard as they could to see a sane version of Trump’s tariff regime. Ross Douthat and Ben Thompson (and even Democrats such as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer1 and Rep. Chris Deluzio) talked about how the old free-trade regime needed reform, and tariffs are an important tool, and the problem is just that Donald Trump has gone too far, too indiscriminately, and—blah blah blah.

STOP IT.

Stop sane-washing this insanity. Right now.

Here are three true things:

(1) Trade policy can always be reformed. There has never been a moment in American history when trade policy was perfectly optimal. Such a state does not exist, because all of the factors (domestic political concerns, economic reality, foreign affairs challenges) are constantly in flux.

Policy is like fashion. It’s never finished. Saying that our trade policy needs reform is meaningless. Everything needs reform, always, because life is a cycle of reformation and counterreformation.

(2) Tariffs can be a useful tool. I’ll let you in on a secret: All tools can be useful in the right situation. For example: If you have to either write a dissertation or perform an emergency tracheotomy, then the BIC Soft Feel Jumbo pen is a useful tool. But if you are in a lifeboat in open water and I hand you a BIC, it’s useless.

(3) We are currently in an economic meltdown caused by a president’s singlehanded desire to wreck the global financial system by imposing blanket tariffs across the world.2 These tariffs were not “reciprocal.” They were not designed to protect strategic industries. They were based on the illiterate idea that trade deficits are economic losses.

For the love of all that’s holy: Stop pretending that this is a rational, nuanced discussion where it’s important to acknowledge the fair points being raised by Donald Trump.

This is not that.

---

Imagine a wildfire raging out of control in a city. The fire was started by the mayor, intentionally. He campaigned for office on a platform of arson. His fire destroys half of a city. As it burns, eating up businesses and properties, is it relevant to spend time talking about how important fire is to human civilization?

Or how controlled burns can be a useful tool in managing fuel levels and preventing wildfires?

No. These observations are not “nuance.” They’re non sequiturs.3

And someone who, in the midst of a crisis, insists on proclaiming non sequiturs is either deeply stupid or playing an angle.

Share

---

2. Declaring Victory​

So Trump’s tariffs are off.

Or rather, “off.” Sort of. Mostly. For now. Subject to revision.

Yesterday the president put a 90-day pause on tariffs. Except for tariffs on China, which he increased to 125 percent. And tariffs on Canada and Mexico, which are at 10 percent. Or 25 percent. Or 30 percent. No one really seemed to know, for sure. And the baseline global tariffs seem to still be at 10 percent. And 15 other countries did not get a 90-day reprieve, though the president did not immediately identify which countries those were.4

---

The president made this announcement while his U.S. trade representative, Jamieson Greer, was testifying before Congress. Greer was literally in the middle of explaining how beneficial the tariffs were for the American economy when word got out that the tariffs were off. You can see it happen live at the 3:32:50 mark in the hearing:


Rep. Steven Horsford is the one to ask Greer about the tariff “pause.” It’s amazing theater. Greer tries to pretend that he isn’t surprised and knew the pause was coming all along. Horsford asks him why, then, he spent the previous three hours extolling the virtues of tariffs. Greer says he just didn’t want to divulge sensitive information.

At which point Horsford says, Oh yeah? Then tell me the details of this pause that you knew all about?

And Greer freezes up like a third-grader caught doing a book report without having done the reading.5

Share

---

The decision to levy tariffs was not rational.

The administration’s mixed messages about the tariffs—they are forever; they are subject to negotiation—were not rational.

The decision to pause (some of) the tariffs is not rational.

The decision to increase (some of) the tariffs is not rational.

There is no 5D chess. There is no hidden masterstroke. There is no “art of the deal” on display here.

---

Whenever Trump declares victory, his explanation is always “art of the deal.”

Certainly all of these things Trump said or did might look foolish, but they were just part of a negotiation.

This is an unfalsifiable proposition. If everything a person says is merely part of a negotiation and cannot be evaluated as true/false, smart/stupid, or helpful/unhelpful, then nothing means anything.6

Leave a comment

---

3. Bonds​

One last true thing: You cannot negotiate with a market. You can manipulate it in the short run, but in the long run markets do what they do.

This truism holds for the stock market, but it really holds for the bond market. And the bond market is not having any of Trump’s nonsense.

William Cohan had an excellent explanation last night of where the bond market is after Trump’s tariff pause. I’m going to simplify it, but you should read the whole thing.

• The bond market can be broadly understood as a device that measures risk. The riskier an economic environment is, the higher the yield on bonds goes.
• Over the course of Trump’s brief tariff regime the 10-year yield on T-bills went from 3.86 percent to 4.54 percent—a 17.6 percent climb in less than a week. That’s a screaming klaxon alarm.
• Yesterday, after Trump announced his 90-day pause, the yield only dropped back to 4.4 percent. Which suggests that the bond market was not especially reassured.
• Cohan notes that the high-yield bond market (junk bonds) is where “risk goes to hide.” When you want to see the bleeding edge of bond-market sentiment, look at the yields on junk bonds.
  • Two weeks ago, the average junk bond yield was 7.2 percent. On Monday, it was 8.2 percent. After Trump’s tariff pause it moved to 8.5 percent. People are still seeing lots of risk.
• One of the big risks is China. China holds $760b in U.S. Treasuries. Should the Chinese decide to lower their purchasing of T-bills at the next auction, that will drive up the yield as the Treasury Department has to make them more attractive in the face of slackening demand.
  • Which would in turn ratchet the entire bond market up another level of fear.

---

Why do bonds matter? Because bonds are how people finance debt—they are a rough approximation of the belief that it is safe to extend credit. And without credit, financial markets can’t function.

Here’s Cohan:


Risk. It’s all about risk.

Donald Trump’s erratic and foolish actions have turned the most desirable financial haven in the world into a whirlpool of risk.

The safest way to conduct business now is to avoid the United States to the greatest extent possible.

This is not the art of the deal. It’s the destruction of stability and the start of a long, slow slide into a vortex.

Leave a comment

1
The more I see of her, the less impressive she looks.
2
Excepting Russia!
3
If you absolutely must have a discussion about the usefulness of tariffs, we’ll limit it to a footnote:
Certain sectors are so vital to national security that they must be incubated, even if doing so is not economically self-sustaining. For instance: A first-world power must have a homegrown aerospace industry and the ability to manufacture weapons systems. It is helpful to be able to manufacture microchips.
If these industries cannot survive global competition on their own, then it is appropriate to use available policy tools—subsidies, tariffs, etc.—to sustain them.
But always the nation is balancing sacrifices in efficiency with national security needs. Because every dollar being spent to prop up a vital, but uncompetitive, sector incurs opportunity cost for the broader economy.
4
Maybe the econ professors at Trump University taught that the way to encourage investment was to create an environment of maximum chaos and uncertainty because business owners get bored easily and like surprises?
5
The Republican party is like the 1930s Comintern. For years it was Communist dogma that the Soviet Union was the glorious people’s republic and that the fascist Germans were the enemy. On the day the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was announced, the party line shifted and—effective immediately—Nazi Germany became a great friend to the workers of the world.
6
As a rhetorical strategy, saying “it’s all part of the negotiation” is a trick used to arbitrarily set the moment of judgment for an action at the most advantageous point for the person deploying it.
For instance: Trump imposes tariffs. The stock market loses $5t in value the first day. The “art of the deal” argument says that you can’t judge Trump’s tariffs by what happened on day one. Or two. Or three. And you can’t judge them by what happens a month from now, or five years from now. You have to judge them by what happened on April 9, 2025.
Because when he reversed them on April 9, stocks went up. So the decision to do the tariffs in the first place was a good idea because it was the art of the deal!

Risky Business: Everything You Need to Understand Trump's Tariff Insanity

You can’t make stupidity make sense.

www.thebulwark.com

the major flaw with 'the art of the deal ' is the assumption that both parties WANT to trade

now China would like to trade with everybody , BUT it doesn't NEED to trade with everybody ( and any cost )

maybe Trump didn't learn much from the pandemic ( and what China did for the next 4 years ) ,i was watching and tilting towards South East Asia ( especially businesses exporting to South East Asia )

now i prefer a smooth path for my investments so prefer India , Indonesia ( and Malaysia/Singapore )

but others have chosen the ( current ) adversaries , one side or trying to juggle between both

 

[TimeISmoney]

the major flaw with 'the art of the deal ' is the assumption that both parties WANT to trade

now China would like to trade with everybody , BUT it doesn't NEED to trade with everybody ( and any cost )

maybe Trump didn't learn much from the pandemic ( and what China did for the next 4 years ) ,i was watching and tilting towards South East Asia ( especially businesses exporting to South East Asia )

now i prefer a smooth path for my investments so prefer India , Indonesia ( and Malaysia/Singapore )

but others have chosen the ( current ) adversaries , one side or trying to juggle between both

The more and more I look at Trump, it seems that trying to turn the rest of the world against China was his main plan all along and not the manufacturing. I suspect it might be part of the deal-making to turn other nations against China with the tariffs.

There just doesn't seem to be much planning or thought with the move to manufacturing in the US. Delaying everyone's tariffs and making the Chinese tariffs higher is definitely a bully tactic.

Trying to cause chaos and disruption across world markets is like showing the punished he can dish out, but if you're main intention was to manufacture, you'd get on with the task and not bother any other nation, and when it's all running sweet, you'd let the punishment rip.

 

[basilio]

Today's contribution from Jonathan Last on the behaviour of the US Bond market. It is a grim outlook for the US firstly and then I suppose everyone else. If market confidence in the US political/economic structure evaporates what is left to hold up the current financial structures?

2. Yield​

You know what can’t be bullied, deceived, or manipulated?

The bond market.

Yesterday we talked about how the bond market is a device that measures risk. If the financial order is safe, bond rates are low. When risk enters the system, bond rates increase.

Well after a full day of Trump’s tariff “pause,” bonds reacted by pushing rates higher.



Bond rates aren’t supposed to move this much, this fast. What’s happening is that investors are pulling out of everything.1 (See below)

On that chart of the 10-year Treasury yield I marked April 2. That was Trump’s Liberation Day. Bond rates fell immediately because the stock market was cratering and money was flowing to the safest haven it could find. After that initial flight to safety, rates climbed for a week after. But then, after Trump reversed himself they . . . kept rising.

Meaning that the bond market does not believe that the danger is past.

Trump cannot assuage the bond market. He cannot convince it that he is “normal” and should be given the benefit of the doubt. He cannot scare it into submission. He cannot bribe it.

The bond market is not like the Supreme Court, or Paul Weiss, or Columbia University, or any of the other institutions Trump has conquered, co-opted, or corrupted.

What’s extraordinary about what’s happening in the bond market at the moment is that rates went higher yesterday even as the stock market was crashing.



That’s not supposed to happen, either. When money is leaving the stock market, it’s supposed to flow into bonds. The only way the bond market tightens up is if it believes there is systemic risk.

Donald Trump is the living embodiment of “systemic risk.”

And right now, the bond market is one of the few institutions able to see this fact clearly and act accordingly.

1
The dollar is also falling, meaning that foreign investors are getting out of America. They are leaving the stock market, selling treasuries, and even getting rid of their dollars.
Why?
Because they no longer think America is a safe economic environment.

Trump Finally Met an Adversary Totally Immune to His Bullshit

And it’s not the Supreme Court.

www.thebulwark.com

 

[divs4ever]

The more and more I look at Trump, it seems that trying to turn the rest of the world against China was his main plan all along and not the manufacturing. I suspect it might be part of the deal-making to turn other nations against China with the tariffs.

There just doesn't seem to be much planning or thought with the move to manufacturing in the US. Delaying everyone's tariffs and making the Chinese tariffs higher is definitely a bully tactic.

Trying to cause chaos and disruption across world markets is like showing the punished he can dish out, but if you're main intention was to manufacture, you'd get on with the task and not bother any other nation, and when it's all running sweet, you'd let the punishment rip.

absolutely TRYING , but so was the administrations before him ,

but China understands SOFT power ( as well as hard power )

the problem is China saw this coming over a decade back , maybe they had inside intel and maybe the pattern was so predictable , what responses have they in their bag of tricks

any Tai Chi students among the members ?

they will be able to explain it better

 

[farmerge]

absolutely TRYING , but so was the administrations before him ,

but China understands SOFT power ( as well as hard power )

the problem is China saw this coming over a decade back , maybe they had inside intel and maybe the pattern was so predictable , what responses have they in their bag of tricks

any Tai Chi students among the members ?

they will be able to explain it better

@divs4ever or just a hard nosed leader (Chinese) who gives nothing away when you look into that face of steel.
No inkling of what might be going through his head.

 

[over9k]

they no longer think America is a safe economic environment

And here's where we get the whole "perception is reality" part.

Fun fact: Vast sums of capital actually flowed into the united states during the GFC despite the fact that it was the global epicenter of the crisis. That's how much faith there was in the U.S dollar at the time.

Comically, if trade with the rest of the world gets shut down or at least dramatically reduced then the americans aren't really going to care about currency fluctuations too much.

Additionally, perhaps the only *thing* more important than the U.S dollar, the oil price, has tanked far more than their currency has, so the knock-on effect might actually be lower inflation, not higher.

But, with all this being said, we can't say anything with certainty until we get the first batches of data once the tariff levels are actually decided and implemented. Data dumps are meaningless in the meantime.

The huge dump in the oil price seems to have gone over everyone's respective heads and it is really, really significant.

 

[over9k]

The only way the bond market tightens up is if it believes there is systemic risk.

credit spreads. look at credit spreads