Isn't it clear that Trump is a Russian asset. He's not trying to
improve the U.S. trading position. He's sowing uncertainty, and
uncertainty is like sand in the gears of the Western economy. It
doesn't matter that he "pauses" the tariffs. The tax isn't the point.
Even that his own family can make a $B or so on the pump&dump isn't the
point. It's the uncertainty itself that is the point.
Brent
On 4/10/2025 4:24 AM, John Clark wrote:
*I note that yesterday Trump blinked and reduced his very very
imbecilic tariffs so that now they're only very imbecilic. With two
exceptions Trump put a 10% tariff on every nation in the world, which
is still extremely high, during the Obama administration when the
economy was growing at an extremely rapid rate the average tariff was
only about 2.5%. *
*
*
*One exception is Russia, Trump put a 0.0% tariff on Russia but put a
10% tariff on Ukraine. The other exception is what is perhaps our most
important trade partner, China. Yesterday Trump increased the Chinese
tariff from 105% to 125%, although in practice that increase makes
little difference because either figure effectively brings any trade
between the two nations to a complete halt; China, of course,
retaliated and put an 84% tariff on US goods sent to China. Most of
the goods we sent to China are agricultural products, so this would
hurt farmers the most and they are some of Trump's strongest
supporters. This is a classic lose lose solution.**
*
*Apparently what convinced Trump to back down is that historically
when we had a huge stock market drop like we've had over the last few
days there was a corresponding increase in the safe haven of
government bonds, but that didn't happen this time. There was weak
demand for new US Treasury debt because foreign countries were not
buying new US Treasury bonds and were selling the ones they already
had. *
*Inside Trump’s tariff retreat: How fears of a bond market catastrophe
convinced Trump to hit the pause button*
<https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/09/politics/trump-tariffs-retreat-bond-market/index.html>
*John K Clark *
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