Cartoon

Trump’s America

Written by SK Ashby

(Cartoonist - Rob Rogers)

In other news, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says Trump will impose his next round of tariffs on $150 billion in Chinese goods on December 15th if there's no deal after Trump's upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Meanwhile, International Monetary Fund has cut its growth forecast for 2019 to the lowest level since the 2008 financial crisis because of Trump's trade war with China.

Finally, St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard says the Fed is preparing for a "ordinary recession," whatever that means. He also doesn't believe Trump's trade war will end anytime soon.

Daily threats and counter-threats in the trade war, or announcements or rejections of tentative deals, “are just the manifestations of ongoing negotiations and manifestations of the trade regime uncertainty,” Bullard said of the U.S.-China row.

“I’m not expecting any of this to go away in the years ahead,” he added, later telling reporters that the tensions had opened a “Pandora’s box” on a potential reversal of global trade openness.

Bullard also outlined the Fed’s playbook for dealing with a potential “ordinary recession”. He said the options to slash borrowing rates to zero, restart assets purchases and provide supportive policy promises, were still “state of the art”.