You will get tired of all the liberating
By The first 20 years of Trump’s second term have been exhausting:
President Trump‘s barrage of new tariffs drove stocks lower on Monday and moved trade tensions back to the forefront on Wall Street.
Trump took to his Truth Social platform Monday afternoon to announce the U.S. would impose 25% tariffs on goods from Japan and South Korea. He later revealed that other nations, including Laos and Malaysia, would face higher levies. With each post, the major stock indexes fell further. Oil prices and bond yields rose, reflecting concerns that heavier tariffs would lead to higher inflation.
Before extending their deadlines to Aug. 1, the U.S. was set to reimpose “reciprocal” tariffs on Wednesday for dozens of countries. And even after he singled out Japan and South Korea for higher levies, Trump said their tariff rates could move lower (or higher) depending on how those countries adjusted their trade practices with the U.S.
“The announcements seem to be changing every 30 minutes,” said John Belton, portfolio manager for growth equities at Gabelli Funds. “This is more Trump-style negotiations, and the market has grown tired of it the longer it drags on.”
The S&P 500 fell 0.8% to 6229.98, still close to the all-time high the index hit last week. The Nasdaq composite and the Dow Jones Industrial Average gave up 0.9%.
The September contract for Brent crude oil rose 1.9%, and the 10-year Treasury yield climbed 0.05 percentage point to 4.394%.
I am beginning to think that this is not a carefully considered economic policy being executed by a master negotiator and that Trump is just impulsively flailing around, going back to his greatest hits because he’s unable to actually make deals.
Glad that we elected the policy detail and cognitive ability candidate!
The only saving grace here is that randomly high tariffs are the one thing a Republican president can do short of completely crashing the economy that causes markets to react negatively, which Trump doesn’t like.