Trade

No Shit?

Written by SK Ashby

Trump temporarily delayed his tariffs on $300 billion in Chinese goods, so everything is fine now, right?

No, because we're not the only ones who've noticed that Trump's trade war is playing out exactly how it did in November of 2018 when Trump delayed his decision to increase tariffs on Chinese goods from 10 to 25 percent.

Both in November of 2018 and June of 2019, Trump delayed his decisions while announcing that China would resume large-scale purchases of American farm goods, but that didn't happen then and it's not happening now. And some analysts are finally noticing what us laypersons already noticed.

LONDON (AP) — Global stock markets traded in fairly narrow ranges Tuesday as investors moved on from the latest truce in the costly U.S.-Chinese trade war. [...]

Yesterday’s optimism in equity markets is beginning to look a little over-eager, with some already drawing worrying parallels to the November 2018 G-20 summit, which was followed up by a dramatic fall for equities,” said Chris Beauchamp, Chief Market Analyst at IG.

“The past is not prologue, and the central bank outlook is very different to the end of 2018, as easing comes back on to the agenda, but with volumes drying up ahead of Independence Day and the next earnings season rapidly approaching equities are looking vulnerable to some near-term weakness.”

These people are paid a lot of money to draw parallels that they should have drawn before Trump even made his decision.

Trump's shtick is so blindingly-obvious, I can't believe the market still buys into "trade optimism" every time he opens his mouth and says happy words.