Inflation tends to drag many assets “higher” in nominal terms. I expect a lot of it down the road (next 3-5 years). The U of M sentiment survey released today shows consumers have raised their inflation expectations -
”Respondents also said they were bracing for prices to surge 6.7% in the year ahead.” (WSJ)
WABC is right that valuations are high. As investors we need to be selective. FWIW, here’s 20 low P/E stocks. That said, anything can happen over the next several months - so there may be / probably will be better times to buy.
Also - Lewis Braham authored a Barron’s article earlier this week highlighting funds that might do well under current “chaotic” conditions. Worth a look.
Re: ”Never met a rich chartist.” Good one!

IIRC, the PE ratio back in 1982 was in the single digits. That's what I call real capitulation. It's Just my WAG that current valuations are twice that after all the recent activity. I don't think that's where great bull markets typically start.
I don't believe in charts, so take my comments accordingly.

Great point. The 82 bull also came after the going nowhere years of 66-82. Back then it seemed all of a sudden the baby boomers then in their early thirties woke up one day and began thinking about their retirement and so began the rush into equities. The 80s were the best of times - music, movies, TV series, etc. I don’t believe in charts either. Never met a rich chartist.

Don’t shoot the messenger and disregarding politics here, my favorite momentum indicator is Zweig’s up volume vs down volume on the NYSE. I have referenced this several times over the years. Most great traders are terrible analysts and most great analysts are terrible traders. That said, one great amateur analyst I know (meaning he does not work for some Wall Street firm) is as bullish as ever based on Wednesday’s action. That day saw a 65 to 1 up volume over down volume on the NYSE - the highest ever. That was greater than the infamous 42 to 1 that launched the greatest bull market of all time on August 18, 1982. With the recent volatility we have seen recently it won’t take long to see if Wednesday was indeed THE day.

The OP is the usual argument I have heard for decades. There's no way to time markets; always stay invested, and eventually it will come back. All true, and what most investors should do.
The author can't guarantee how long it would take to come back to even or how deep the markets would fall.
There are investors who have enough and don't want to lose too much; for them, these generic articles don't have an answer. Most who believe in the above never tried, or tried and failed. It's not easy.
I'm not going to talk about me. There are a couple of traders where we discuss off the board what we do, and these traders have sold prior to every meltdown. What it a miracle? No, it wasn't. But you have to really trade for years to get there. You can't be a successful trader in a matter of days-months.
If you want to do better, start listening to Tom Bowley, he called this decline about 2 months ago, and usually he has been right most times.
============
"Since 1990, forward S&P 500 total returns for 1 yr., 2 yr., 3 yr., 4 yr., and 5 yr.
were always positive whenever the VIX closed above 50."
Where is the catch in the above? Smart authors look back in history and play with their numbers to make a statement to fit their narrative.
Why 50? Why not 45 or 40? All mean very high volatility.
The real question is how long it took an investor's portfolio to get back to equal.
If the SP500 was at 5K, went to 2.5K, and a year later it was at 3K, it is still not back to 5K.
This chart (https://schrts.co/chKgGjNr) from 1999 to 2014 shows you several points where VIX was pretty high over 40 in 2002 and 2003. How long did it take the SP500 to get back to even? Several years to 2007. What happened after 2007? Another 50+% decline, this time VIX was over 50, and again, it took years to get even.
Of course, most also know that the more you go down, the more % you need to go up. We also know that investors lose their cool and sell at the bottom. Many have a plan until they get hit in the face. Emotions are the number one problem for investors.
BTW, buy and hold is also a daily decision of not selling. Who can guarantee that all B&H investors are rational and all traders are fools?

Charlie Bilello and Peter Mallouk from Creative Planning discuss "How to invest during a bear market"
in light of recent market upheaval.
Over the last 100 years, US bear markets have historically ocurred once every four years on average.
However, we've had four bear markets in the last seven years.
Since 1929, bear markets on average lasted 14 months with a range of 1 month to 33 months.
Corresponding bear market declines averaged -35% with a range of -20% to -86% (Great Depression).
The recent S&P 500 bear market (from 2/19 high to 4/7 low) was the second fastest bear market in history.
Only March 2020 was faster.
The S&P 500 experienced its third largest daily percentage gain since 1950 on 4/9/2025.
Expect big swings to continue for the foreseeable future.
You're far more likely to get punished for market timing during a bear market than at any other time.
The VIX closed above 52 on 4/8/2025.
Since 1990, forward S&P 500 total returns for 1 yr., 2 yr., 3 yr., 4 yr., and 5 yr.
were always positive whenever the VIX closed above 50.
Video

@Old_Joe,
Yes, I realized the language being used. Hope I did not offend you. If so, please accept my apology.
I like old computer languages that advance the space program for so many years. They just simply work. Today Ai is being deployed in many applications I used today and they are not necessary making my work easier. I prefer my version, Ri, that stands for real intelligence or simply years of training and experience.

Agree with @catch’s assessment on who is selling lots of treasury. The day is still young and this unwinding is far from being done.
Would you want to buy greenback with so much deficit and it is getting higher with the second Tac Cut Act. Somewhere over trillion of dollars in next ten years.
Wonder when a downgrade of US Treasury will come? Or should investors should invest in other foreign bonds?

From October 1993 to November 1994 US 10-year yields climbed from 5.2% to just over 8.0% fueled by concerns about federal spending in what became informally known as the "Great Bond Massacre." With some guidance from Robert Rubin, the United States Secretary of the Treasury, the Clinton administration and Congress made an effort to reduce the deficit, and 10-year yields dropped to approximately 4% by November 1998.

There was a surplus by the end of Clinton administration. Then came Bush was enacted tax cut that drove the country to have such huge deficits
today. Most Americans forgotten about Clinton administration’s achievements.

"...It's hard to argue that the analogy is NOT appropriate as McCarthy is widely regarded as one of the most powerful US Senators of all-time and his initiatives gripped the party and nation for years!"
Your analogy IS appropriate. I was adding an additional aspect for discussion. Jayzuz.

...For more than 40 years, US equity investors have benefited from buying on dips...

Great writer, but I am always skeptical of broad, over-generalized statements like that one:
MW recently did a detailed study of dip buying over time (that I think I've lined elsewhere) and showed pretty conclusively that from 2022-Current it has not worked very well. There was a heyday period, but it definitely did not span 40 years.

Disclaimer: These are OPINIONS being expressed here so the is no right or wrong.
That said...
___________________________
On your first point, McCarthy was used as an analogy of the dominance that one Red Party elected official had over the party. It's hard to argue that the analogy is NOT appropriate as McCarthy is widely regarded as one of the most powerful US Senators of all-time and his initiatives gripped the party and nation for years!
But it's the internet so...
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/18/1046648461/decades-before-trumps-election-lies-mccarthys-anti-communist-fever-gripped-the-g
___________________________
On your 2nd point, agreed that it will take time to recover. Disagree that we will at best only recover to be a 2nd tier nation.
There are a LOT of country tier designations, everything from rugby to advertising to economics.
If you are talking about the economic tiers, C'mon Man!
https://evadav.com/blog/tier-1-2-3-countries-list#:~:text=Tier 2: Developing or Emerging Economies&text=Tier 2 countries, such as,landscapes and growing purchasing powers.
____________________________
And on a personal note, I feel bad for anyone who has lost hope in the country, especially retirees/senior citizens like me and the missus.

John Rekenthaler writes that a new era would begin if Liberation Day tariffs are enacted.
Recent stock market history may not be helpful in navigating the situation.
Dare I say, this time will be different?
"President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs are the most radical economic proposal of my lifetime. If enacted, they will reverse a 75-year trend of increasing free trade and mutual cooperation among the world’s developed nations. The global marketplace would begin a new era."
"For more than 40 years, US equity investors have benefited from buying on dips. The last time that tactic failed with any regularity was during the 1970s and early 1980s, when the previously unknown condition of stagflation confounded the marketplace."
"We now face another unknown condition: high global tariffs. How that circumstance will play out is anybody’s guess. But it would be rash to assume that recent stock market history will repeat."
https://www.morningstar.com/economy/this-time-it-really-is-tariffs

We need to view the WH tariffs as a negotiating tool rather than a thoughtful and well planned policy. Exiting now also locking in permanent loss unless one have large gains from previous years. So think carefully and everyone situation may differ.

@Sven- yes sir, but that has to be taken in context: many others here did very, very well in equities the last couple of years while our investments were lucky to keep up with inflation. But that's fine- at our ages, we have enough to keep us comfortably, and we no longer need to play the more dangerous game. Everyone's playbook is a bit different, depending upon their individual circumstances.

I use ntp because that is the way I learned it years ago.

I've been following Mr. Levine for a couple of years now. Not sure if one has to signup on yahoo or not to receive his emails but that's where I did it. Always interesting reads if somewhat long-winded at times but worth the nuggets.

While I read Matt Levine almost daily, I don't believe that I've ever reproduced his work here on MFO before. However, his commentary today is of extraordinary interest under the present circumstances.
Nondelegation
Part 1:

The stock market continued to crash this morning because of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs announced last week. Despite widespread criticism of the tariffs, Trump is unmoved. He gets to decide, and he has decided that the tariffs are good.
But does he get to decide? In some ways the simplest solution to the tariff problem is the one that I wrote about last Thursday. The US Constitution says that “the Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.” The power of taxation is the most fundamentally legislative function, so much so that the Constitution also says that “all Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.” This was at the very center of constitutional design, and in fact of the founding of America. As a history of the House puts it:

Congress—and in particular, the House of Representatives—is invested with the “power of the purse,” the ability to tax and spend public money for the national government. Massachusetts’ Elbridge Gerry said at the Federal Constitutional Convention that the House “was more immediately the representatives of the people, and it was a maxim that the people ought to hold the purse-strings.”
English history heavily influenced the Constitutional framers. The British House of Commons has the exclusive right to create taxes and spend that revenue, which is considered the ultimate check on royal authority. Indeed, the American colonists’ cry of “No taxation without representation!” referred to the injustice of London imposing taxes on them without the benefit of a voice in Parliament.

Tariffs are uncontroversially taxes — “duties, imposts and excises” are listed in the constitutional text, and they are designed to raise revenue — so only the House of Representatives can originate them. It is simply an error for President Trump to impose tariffs. He can’t, that’s not his job, this is all a misunderstanding, and the tariffs will go away as soon as anyone notices.
Of course it is not that simple. Congress has in fact delegated tariff powers to the president for over 100 years, and courts have generally said that that’s fine.
But there are some differences between those precedents and the current situation. For one thing, Trump’s tariffs were imposed under a law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, which allows the president to regulate imports if he declares a national emergency.[1] The IEEPA had never been used to impose tariffs before Trump used it in February to impose tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico; he also used it on “Liberation Day” last week to impose much broader tariffs. Here is what the IEEPA says:

Any authority granted to the President by section 1702 of this title may be exercised to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat.
The authorities granted to the President by section 1702 of this title may only be exercised to deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat with respect to which a national emergency has been declared for purposes of this chapter and may not be exercised for any other purpose. Any exercise of such authorities to deal with any new threat shall be based on a new declaration of national emergency which must be with respect to such threat.

What is the “unusual and extraordinary threat” that requires these tariffs? The declaration of the tariffs says that there is a “national emergency posed by the large and persistent trade deficit that is driven by the absence of reciprocity in our trade relationships and other harmful policies like currency manipulation and exorbitant value-added taxes (VAT) perpetuated by other countries.”
The idea seems to be that every trade policy of every country in the world, over the past several decades, constitutes an “unusual and extraordinary threat.” This is a strange way to use words! How can every instance of trade with every country be unusual? How, after decades of trade deficits, is a trade deficit extraordinary?
It is also a strange way to use law. The US is in a perpetual state of emergency with respect to every country forever, allowing the president to use emergency powers to bypass the Constitution to impose tariffs.
The other thing that has changed, as we have discussed a few times, is that US federal courts, and particularly the Supreme Court, have recently become more interested in “nondelegation” challenges to executive action. The idea is that Congress often gives executive agencies the power to make rules, and there is a longstanding, largely conservative legal tradition objecting to this: The Constitution gives Congress “all legislative powers” of the federal government, so only Congress, not executive agencies, should be writing substantive rules.
So sometimes people challenge regulations, saying that they are unconstitutional because only Congress, not regulatory agencies, can legislate. These challenges rarely work. The current state of the law is that Congress must give the executive “an intelligible principle to guide the delegee’s use of discretion,” and for the last 90 years or so courts have usually found that it has. But there seems to be revived interest in nondelegation challenges: The Supreme Court case I quoted in the last sentence, from 2019, was a 5-3 decision in which four justices expressed interest in “reconsider[ing] the approach we have taken for the past 84 years” and limiting the ability of Congress to delegate its powers to the executive. (Also, disclosure-brag, my wife argued it.) With the current personnel on the Supreme Court, there might be five votes for a more robust nondelegation doctrine.
Would it apply to tariffs? I don’t know. The modern revival of nondelegation is often about agency rulemaking: People object to unelected regulators making rules, because (say) the US Securities and Exchange Commission is not as democratically accountable as Congress is. The president is elected, and there is some democratic accountability for the impacts of his tariffs; perhaps Congress should be allowed to give him a blank check to invent tariffs.
But the Constitution really does say that only Congress can impose tariffs. Arguably either the IEEPA does have an “intelligible principle” that limits the president’s ability to impose tariffs — they have to be a necessary response to an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” not just general economic policy — in which case the current blanket tariffs seem suspect, or it doesn’t, in which case it is unconstitutional. So you could imagine two sorts of legal challenges to the current round of IEEPA tariffs:

1.) The IEEPA doesn’t actually give the president to impose tariffs on every country just because he doesn’t like free trade. IEEPA powers are only for emergencies, and “international trade exists” can’t really be an unusual and extraordinary threat to the US.
2.) If the IEEPA did give the president sweeping powers to impose tariffs, that would be unconstitutional.

I called this argument “frankly pretty speculative” on Thursday, but obviously someone should try it. There are trillions of dollars at stake, and a lot of the conservative legal establishment is probably not thrilled with tariffs. Surely there will be cases.
As it happens, also on Thursday, somebody filed one. Bloomberg News reports:

A powerful legal group backed by conservative funding sued President Donald Trump, setting up an early legal clash over the significant US tariffs his administration announced this week.
The New Civil Liberties Alliance said Thursday the president illegally imposed an emergency tariff on Chinese goods. NCLA is representing a small retail stationery business named Simplified, which claims it will suffer “severe” harm from his “unconstitutional” tariffs on China.
The lawsuit filed in federal court in Florida may be the first legal challenge to the sweeping new US tariffs. The levies, which were announced by Trump on Wednesday, have roiled global markets and caused US stocks to plunge.

@Charles, lots of quick changes in bonds. Junk bonds that worked in last two years now are falling behind as the market is falling, while the safer and quality IG bonds are back this week. Quite a reversal. Yes, I like boring T bills, money market, and stable value as cash and cash equivalents. Now is not the time to catch a falling knife.
Right now the FED is in a tight spot when the inflation remains elevated and getting worse. Watch for the labor market where recession starts.
Is it economically feasible to reshoring manufacturing base to the States? Interesting but naive thinking in my honest opinion.
@JD_co, the tariffs is more revealing that meets the eyes. Excerpt from WSJ article.

But the tariff scheme he announced isn’t reciprocal and isn’t based on measuring foreign trade barriers. Instead, it simply measures bilateral trade deficits and comes up with tariff numbers from there. 
Those are two very different things, and could be one reason why global financial markets are reacting so badly.
The upshot is that, in the majority of cases, the Trump administration is now charging other countries more than what they charge the U.S.
Take the case of Vietnam. The U.S. will now charge Vietnam a 46% tariff for its exports to the U.S. But Vietnam’s simple average tariff is 9.4%, and its weighted average tariff—which is adjusted to account for the share of products coming in under different tariff rates—is just 5.1%, according to data from the World Trade Organization.

For Apple News subscribers, here is the link.
https://apple.news/AP0d-np1rQOSoanLTvSkaVQ

Here is a X post from a Shay Boloor, a financial/investment podcaster, that is making the rounds:
MY OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP The frustrating part is that I was on board for a reset. Truly. I’ve said it publicly. I’ve written about it in this very feed. I understood the need for a detox. For decades, the U.S. economy played the part of the rich guy at the table -- picking up the check for a global order that no longer worked in our favor. We hollowed out our industrial base. We enabled unfair trade imbalances under the illusion of diplomacy. We subsidized demand for cheap imports while outsourcing the hard questions about how our domestic workforce would adapt.
Eventually, that had to stop. It was unsustainable -- financially, politically, and morally. We couldn’t keep pretending that a consumption-led economy held together by zero-interest rates and global fragility was a long-term solution. I wanted a rebalancing. I welcomed the idea of a harder, smarter America-first policy that pushed for fair treatment, reciprocal agreements, and a real industrial strategy rooted in technological superiority, national security, and capital formation. That would’ve been leadership.
But that’s not what this is.
That you’ve rolled out isn’t detox -- it’s whiplash. This isn’t strategic decoupling. It’s scattershot retaliation dressed up as reform. There’s no roadmap. No operational playbook. No clear articulation of where this ends or what the metrics of success even are. It’s not an attempt to responsibly unwind America’s role as the global shock absorber -- it’s a brute-force attempt to disorder the existing system with no viable alternative in place.
You can’t replace a fragile supply chain with chaos and call it resilience. You can’t build American industry by torching the scaffolding that underpins capital flows, labor mobility, and global coordination -- especially when the U.S. itself no longer has the domestic capacity to meet its own industrial needs. You talk about bringing jobs home, but the U.S. doesn’t have the labor force, permitting structure, or wage flexibility to stand up full-scale manufacturing at speed. And now -- after years of deportation policies and underinvestment in vocational training -- you’ve made the labor gap even wider.
Capital isn’t going to rush to fill that void just because you raised tariffs. It’s going to wait. It’s going to sit on the sidelines and preserve optionality. Because right now, no CEO can confidently model a five-year capex plan. No board can greenlight supply chain onshoring when they don’t know whether a tariff rate will double next quarter based on your Twitter account or some arbitrary trade deficit formula.
That’s the issue. This wasn’t rolled out as part of a comprehensive American renewal strategy. It wasn’t coordinated with the Fed. It wasn’t communicated clearly to Treasury. It wasn’t backed by a labor reskilling program or any form of public-private manufacturing incentive beyond empty slogans. It was dropped like a bomb -- seemingly designed more to shock than to build.
And in the absence of credible structure, capital is retreating -- not realigning.
I was ready to endure the pain of a thoughtful, structured reset. Most long-term investors were. We’ve lived through tightening cycles. We understood that globalization, as it stood, had reached a breaking point. But this isn’t a correction of imbalances. This is a rupture without scaffolding.
What you’ve created isn’t reindustrialization. It’s an intentional sabotage of capital planning. No executive is going to build a factory with four-year political horizon risk, a floating tariff regime, and no labor certainty. No investor is going to fund expansion in a market where the basic cost of imports can change weekly based on what country has a current account surplus that week. The system you’ve launched isn’t designed for certainty. It’s designed for control.
And the irony is -- we’re not even punishing bad actors. We’re punishing everyone. Allies. Poor countries. Longstanding partners. Israel gets slapped with 17% tariffs while dismantling their own to support American imports. Vietnam gets hit with 46% because it’s become too productive. Lesotho, one of the poorest countries on Earth, faces a 50% tariff because it doesn’t buy enough U.S. goods -- as if that were a sign of unfairness rather than poverty. It’s incoherent. It’s cruel. And it undermines any claim to moral high ground.
You say this is about protecting American workers. But no worker is helped by policy so erratic that no employer wants to hire. No consumer is helped when import costs rise and domestic capacity doesn’t exist to replace them. No investor is helped when the cost of capital spikes in the face of weaponized uncertainty.
This is not a plan to make America stronger. It’s a gamble that markets and allies will blink first. It’s brinkmanship with no floor.
And the most maddening part? There was a path. A real one. A version of this policy that could’ve worked -- not in headlines or soundbites, but in practice. A path that applied pressure with purpose, that aligned economic force with long-term national interest, that sent a clear message to adversaries and partners alike without destabilizing global commerce or blindsiding capital allocators.
You could’ve gone after China -- hard -- and had the backing of nearly every serious investor and strategist on the Street. Not just because of trade deficits or currency suppression, but because China has been actively undermining our economy and our people. I would’ve supported a four-year plan to end all dependence on Chinese manufacturing unless they stopped stealing American IP (DeepSeek). No more games. Make it explicit: if they don’t comply, we’ll back Taiwanese independence and bring the entire global semiconductor economy with us. No ambiguity. No half-threats. As I see it, China is at war with us -- and our policy should reflect that.
With the EU, you could’ve played it clean. Match auto tariffs percent-for-percent. That’s fair. And then leave the rest alone -- especially goods and services. We run a huge surplus on services with the EU. It props up some of our biggest competitive advantages -- enterprise software, consulting, cloud, defense tech, streaming, media IP. Tariffing the EU outside of autos would be like shooting your own foot for balance. We’re not in a trade war with Europe. We're in a competition for global enterprise dominance -- and right now, the U.S. is winning.
That’s what real strength would’ve looked like. That’s what an America-first trade doctrine could’ve achieved. You’d be rebuilding the system from the inside out -- not just throwing bricks through the windows and calling it a redesign.
Investors would’ve backed it. CEOs would’ve planned around it. Global partners would’ve respected it -- even if they didn’t like it. And capital would’ve flowed toward American resilience instead of retreating from American unpredictability.
But instead of that, you went with chaos. And now, confidence is shattered. Not because the numbers are bad -- but because no one knows what the numbers mean anymore.
That’s the cost of burning down the rules without building new ones. So no, this is not the detox we needed. It’s not strategic decoupling. It’s not a path to renewal. It’s a slow, loud dismantling of the very foundation that has allowed American capital, innovation, and enterprise to dominate for decades. And it didn’t have to be this way.
But now we’re here. And the market is reacting accordingly -- not to the fundamentals, but to the sense that the future may no longer be modelable. That’s not a trade. That’s an exit.
I don’t want this post to be hyper-political. This isn’t about red or blue. It’s not about the 2024 election cycle. It’s not about ideology. It’s about strategy. It’s about execution.
It’s about understanding that when you're the United States -- when you sit at the helm of the global economic engine -- every policy you roll out reverberates through capital markets, supply chains, boardrooms, and governments. Words become signals. Signals become pricing. Pricing becomes pain -- or progress.
And I hope -- for the sake of the markets, for the sake of businesses trying to plan, and for the future we’re all investing into -- that it’s not too late to recalibrate. Because we don’t need more noise.
We need a plan.

Following are excerpts from the latest newsletter from Heather Cox Richardson.

After President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements on April 2 wiped $5 trillion dollars from the stock market, the Republican Party is scrambling.
Farmers, who were a part of Trump’s base, are “struck and shocked” by the tariffs, the president of the South Dakota Farmers Union told Lauren Scott of CBC News, saying they will have a “devastating effect.” Rob Copeland, Lauren Hirsch, and Maureen Farrell of the New York Times report that Wall Street leaders who backed Trump are now criticizing him publicly, with one calling for someone to stop him. The size of yesterday’s peaceful protests around the country, less than 100 days into Trump’s term when he should be enjoying a honeymoon, demonstrated growing fury at the administration’s actions.
Yesterday, in the midst of the economic crisis and as millions of protesters gathered across the country, the White House announced that “[t]he President won his second round matchup of the Senior Club Championship today in Jupiter, FL, and advances to the Championship Round tomorrow.” This afternoon, President Donald J. Trump posted a video of himself hitting a golf ball off a tee, perhaps as a demonstration that he is unconcerned about the chaos in the markets.
When Trump administration officials Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett appeared on this morning’s Sunday shows, their attempts to reassure Americans and deflect concerns also sounded out of touch.
Bessent, a billionaire, told Kristen Welker of NBC’s Meet the Press that the administration is creating a new, more secure economic system and that Americans “who have put away for years in their savings accounts, I think don’t look at the day-to-day fluctuations of what’s happening.” He went on to suggest that the losses were likely not that significant and would turn out fine in the long term.
Lutnick insisted that the tariffs are about national security and bringing back manufacturing, although the administration has frozen the Inflation Reduction Act funding for the manufacturing President Joe Biden brought to the U.S., overwhelmingly in Republican-dominated districts. Lutnick kept hitting on the MAGA talking point that other countries are ripping the U.S. off, and insisted that the tariffs are here to stay.
On This Week by ABC News, Hassett took the opposite position: that countries are already calling the White House to begin tariff negotiations. Host George Stephanopoulos asked Hassett about the video Trump posted on his social media account claiming that he was crashing the market on purpose, forcing him to say that crashing the economy was not part of Trump’s strategy. Hassett claimed that the tariffs will not cost consumers more and that Trump is “trying to deliver for American workers.”
The tariffs not only have forced administration officials into contradictory positions, but also have brought into the open the rift between old MAGA and billionaire Elon Musk.
Trump’s tariff policy reflects the ideas of his senior counselor on manufacturing and trade, Peter Navarro, a China hawk who invented an “expert” to support his statements in his own books. Musk, who opposes the tariffs, has taken shots at Navarro on his social media platform X. On Saturday, Musk directly contradicted Trump and MAGA when he told a gathering of right-wing Italians that he wants the U.S. and Europe to create a tariff-free zone as well as "more freedom of people to move between Europe and North America." On the Fox News Channel this morning, Navarro retorted that Musk “sells cars” and is just trying to protect his own interests.

Comment: The nest has been kicked and the ants are scurrying hither and yon...

Treasury Secretary Bessent is full of insights.
"During an interview with NBC News’ 'Meet the Press,' Bessent called it a 'false narrative' that Americans
who are close to retiring may be reticent to do so after their retirement savings may have dropped this week
due to the stock market downturn."
“'I think that’s a false narrative,' he told moderator Kristen Welker.
'Americans who want to retire right now, the Americans who put away for years in their savings accounts,
I think they don’t look at the day-to-day fluctuations.'”
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/06/treasury-secretary-scott-bessent-markets-tariffs-recession.html