“Saying low- and middle-income people should just buy less or buy more expensive stuff misses an important point,” Hornung said. “We have large swaths of the country that don’t make enough money to afford to buy expensive things, and it’s very important to them whether or not something costs 5 percent or 10 percent or 20 percent or 100 percent more.”
Exactly. Grass (ordinary folks) always suffer.
Lecturing people to buy less is also what Communists literally do. What makes Trump think government is in the business of telling what and how much people buy?
Trump is just a dumber version of Mao. Way dumber.
Trump folded as expected. I don’t think Chinese tariffs will go back to pre Trump level. Maybe extra 30% or so? Not as extreme as 145% but not gonna be 0% either.
Massive rally.
Much ado about nothing.
I have better understanding of Trump now. Dude has no core value. He just wants to be worshipped and craves attention. He fancies himself as the biggest star in the biggest show on earth.
His presidency is just a series of ad hoc drama, with him in the center of everything. As soon as Trump realized Putin is not going to stop anytime soon he lost interest in the Ukraine situation. It’s not going to be a quick Trump win and therefore not good for TV.
The flip flop on tariffs also fits this pattern. The market hangs on Trump’s every word and he gets to be the center of the entire world’s attention. But now that market is souring on tariffs impact it’s not good for TV anymore. Time to do a 180 and plays hero putting out the fire he himself set.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a news conference in Geneva Monday that U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods would be reduced from 145 to 30 percent. China said it would cut its blanket tariffs from 125 to 10 percent starting Wednesday.
I said the following on 4/11. Today is 5/12 and the highlighted part just happened:
So will the 2nd part follow?
If so equities will explode higher. Short term we may even see new ATH.
My thesis is that this new ATH, if it happens, will be short lived, dragged down by a shallow recession. Some pain in the latter half of the year before Fed cuts.
Higher speculative. Random musing. I am not going to bet any money on it. But it’s fun to speculate.
Why Nvidia is the tech winner of the US-China tariff truce
NVDA and AAPL are beneficiary of the 90-pause.
10Yr keeps going up. Not gonna be good for housing market.
I think we are already in recession.
I’m old enough to remember people said Kamala is bad because she’s a price-fixing communist.
Also, isn’t China paying the tariffs? What is left for Walmart to “eat” if China already ate everything?
5/19: Bitcoin already set another all time high. S&P about 4% off from another ATH.
But dark cloud already gathering not far away. Bond yields keep climbing higher. 30yr at 20 year high.
Bond yields are rising globally. The yield on Japan’s long term debt is also at a decades high. German bunds have a rising yield as well.
…too which I might add - look at a 1 year chart of the 10Y. We’re in the same trading range we’ve been in all that time. Rates are actually a bit lower today than they were a year ago.
Turns out just claiming national emergency doesn’t necessarily make it so.
Futures are up sharply.
Biggest problem of stuffing cabinet with low IQ yes men is that these people tend to mess things up. They aren’t very sharp.
There are only 3 major EDA companies in the world. EDA is the software for designing chips. Without it you can’t make anything, even at legacy nodes that China can fab.
China has some EDA firms but their scope and capabilities are nowhere near the majors.
This news doesn’t get a lot of attention but it’s really important. This “rumor” has since been confirmed. Decoupling is moving full steam ahead.
The issue is about semi dominance.
USA wants to widen its current dominance.
China wants to narrow USA’s dominance.
The tariff war gives third nations a window to catch up with them. So it is to their benefits to come up with a solution asap.
