I'm astounded that the Chinese were able to break the Trump administration in one weekend. Did they threaten to dump treasuries (or simply point out that they could not continue to afford buying them if their source of dollars stopped)? Or did they just pay a bribe?
I think it is simpler than that. Trump is an incredibly weak negotiator. He started off with a poor hand and played it poorly. Trump has at most less than two years to get the economy humming better than it was (which will be tough because things were going pretty well when he took office) or the Republicans will lose seats--probably a lot of them, in the midterms. We've all seen the headlines. There are lot of US business that depend on imports, and they were about to get hit in the chin if nothing was done.
The Chinese on the other culturally are used to playing the long game. The CCP will be still be in charge in two years or four years regardless. Trump and his team (apparently) were hoping to manufacture a quick crisis and get some big concessions. But China didn't blink. They knew Trump was too weak to go through with it and didn't make a move. Now we're back to essentially pre-Liberation Day and no actual deal has been signed.
I'd argue that America is not back to pre-Liberation Day . . . the nation as a whole has been significantly weakened from that point. Trade relations with the world are worse than they were, and every other country in the world is working to avoid doing business with the States.
Especially since the tariffs never actually went away! They're just back down to 30% (someone probably forgot it was originally supposed to be 34%) plus the 20% levees for "most" stuff - with a pinkie swear of a 90 day hold at that level for imported goods from China from a man who perpetually breaks his word, breaks the law, throws truth to the ground, and has pissed on the social contract of civil society. How the bloody hell is this even
remotely "pre-Liberation Day"?
I am
appalled at the complete lack of critical reading skills within this very community and the greater financial markets some days... because, seriously, claims like this are playing into and reinforcing the gaslighting of the entire world by this man! Literally nothing has changed except a walk-back of the punitive triple digit tariffs on the American public for Chinese goods, and even that is only a "pause".
NOTHING HAS ACTUALLY CHANGED! IT'S ALL PERFORMATIVE DOG AND PONY SHOWS TO KEEP YOU ON THE STRING DANCING AND HOLDING THE BAG! NOTHING STOPPED THE TRADE WAR! THIS IS A MARKET RALLY FUELED BY COPIUM!
When the bloody hell are you lot here (not you, Steve - I'm talking collective MMM community
you, here) going to get it through your thick skulls that the tariffs AREN'T GOING AWAY UNDER TRUMP! The entire purpose of these fucking tariffs are to partially starve out tax collection with the IRS to further starve out the power of the legislative purse, and move it into direct collection by the DHS through punitive consumption taxes on the poor into a purse for spending
directly controlled by the Executive. It doesn't matter that it's bad policy when he's basically using it as a means to directly tax and skim off the top of every item sold in this country for his own discretionary fund. That's all that matters!
Anyone who read
both Project 2025 and Agenda 47 should be able to understand this. The only schizophrenic stance on tariffs came from Project 2025 where both camps warred over the policy with some reasonably competent financial whoremongers pushing back realizing how stupid it is for trade and business, but Agenda 47? Trump's personal agenda? All tariffs, all the time - no exception, just like he's been saying since the 1980's, baby!
It's likely also why Russia and North Korea have no tariffs - it's not because they're embargoed, it's a bigger picture play for after a point when the dirty business with "divvying up" eastern Ukraine for the Russian Motherland according to Dugin's master plan for "stability" through a racist Russian New World Order and de-Americanized Western Europe are achieved (no, they never wanted
all of Ukraine, only the eastern bits), and the Russian embargoes are lifted in the west. The high Chinese and SE Asian tariffs basically kills direct American-Chinese commerce, and Russia and its organized crime syndicates step in and smuggle Chinese goods into the States as "Russian made" products sold to the US for less than buying directly from China, despite the middle man markup. Likely the same will be done with laundering Chinese, South Korean and Japanese products through North Korea after "normalizing" relationships there, too. This would be an economic war move made by Russia to tame China's paper tiger and put it back under their thumb and influence. Again, another Dugin plot point in from 30 years ago.
