Reagan was a bit before my time, although he easily won both of his elections (for better or worse). I posted it because I thought the quote was sadly relevant today, roughly 40 years later.

Sadly relevant indeed. Sorry to call you out on that one, BUT many presidential and political historians, and countless Americans, point directly to Reagan's terms as the birthdate of current day MAGAts. Given all that, a brief preface to your original post would have seemed appropriate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_America_Great_Again#:~:text=Originally used by Ronald Reagan,whistle politics and coded language.

Reagan was a bit before my time, although he easily won both of his elections (for better or worse). I posted it because I thought the quote was sadly relevant today, roughly 40 years later.

And here's more on what was thought to be priced in from The Barron's Daily (BOLD added)
Trump Tariffs Cause Stock Market Chaos. Why Wall Street Didn’t Act on Warnings and 5 Other Things to Know Today.

President Donald Trump looks set to deliver on his promise and impose hefty tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China, with Europe next in his sights. Amid all the turbulence that’s causing in financial markets, one question is obvious—why is this such a surprise?
After all, this is what Trump promised to do since he started his campaign to retake the White House. He reiterated it after he was elected in November. He even gave specific numbers and dates for a start last week.
But traders were still skeptical that anything material would come of it. Stocks rose markedly in January, extending impressive gains since Trump’s victory in November on optimism that deregulation and tax cuts would bolster corporate earnings.
The reason investors dismissed the rather obvious signs was because the tariffs don’t seem to make sense. Maybe they would work as a negotiating technique to extract concessions on other things, but from an economic perspective it’s hard to see what tariffs accomplish—other than rapidly increasing prices for fuel and other goods that will hamper economic growth.
Furthermore, the actual announcement was on the extreme end of the spectrum of what was possible. George Saravelos, a strategist at Deutsche Bank, noted that the tariffs are three times larger than had been priced into the market—and five times as big as the cumulative action Trump took in his first term.
To be sure, Trump may yet de-escalate and walk back the levies—or be forced to do so by the courts or Congress. Given the market’s early losses Monday, it would still be a huge surprise if the tariffs lasted a long time—it certainly seems unlikely they will be in place for four years.
One thing is clear. Chaos and confusion will remain a feature of Trump’s policies.

Imports into the US -
EU imports went from $200b in year 2000 to 600b now; whereas Canada imports went from $200b to 400b. I am sure EU membership has expanded during that period but still that much more imports from a region that presumably is a nursing home makes me think what the hell have we been. China and HK went from 100b to 440b, after hitting nearly 600b a few years ago. Mexico is the biggest beneficiary going from 100b to 500b. Japan stayed steady more or less around 150b, which means as a percentage of our GDP, imports from Japan fell drastically. My earlier comments about China diversifying their exports to the US can be seen in the data.
In any case, given so much illegal immigration is from (and through) Mexico, I think providing serious disincentive to Mexico was warranted 20-30 years ago. This is not a new problem. The biggest beneficiary US industries of illegal immigration must have now decided they received too many than they want. Mexico has had governance problems for as long as I can remember. Why were not illegal immigration and drugs tied into trade agreements for all these years? So, all the public reasoning provided for current Tariffs does not add up for me. Show me what is behind the curtain. Makes me think neither the illegal immigration nor drugs from Mexico will be solved in my lifetime.

The damage is happening now. Next senate election is 2 years away. It may be too late to get these GOP out of their seat. There are few moderates as they get squeezed out in recent years. It is sad to see the cabinet confirmation failed to get the most qualified person for the job.

rosenberg takeaway :
- his past models were wrong, in that they did not predict sentiment would move the equity risk premium to zero or negative. (currently 3X historic annual growth, for next 5 years, is priced into valuations)
- many canadian stocks are better bargains than u.s., given valuations and exchange rates. exposed to many identical themes.
- models expects recession (2026?) and unemployment spike, suppressing inflation.
- midterm safe bonds are in a good risk:reward position compared to u.s. equities.
my inferior intuition is screaming that inflation is not so easily killed as long as nearshoring is supported, and it will move violently through different sectors as always.

@BaluBalu -- I agree. Farro is great (as are his co-hosts) and Kelly Evans has evolved quite nicely since starting off at WSJ digital many years ago, when her quick daily recaps would air just before Cramer.

The 10% on China announced yesterday are on top of the Tariffs already in place. For an apples to apples comparison, are the Tariffs lower on Chinese products than on border countries' products? Another way to look at it is, total $ Tariffs imposed as a percentage of total imports.
US trade rep / Commerce Dept website probably will have accurate and updated information.
I expect Tariffs on China to be higher if not equal to that on border countries but someone can post the info when available.
Over the past six-seven years a lot of Chinese manufacturers have moved their operations to other Asian countries and continue to be under (direct or indirect) China / CCP control.
It would be good to know how have forum members changed or plan to change their portfolio because of the Tariffs. Your reaction can be very targeted to specific tickers, sectors, or market as a whole. For example, you decreased or plan to decrease your equity allocation because you think Tariffs will dampen (slow down) the economic activity in the US and / or cut into gross margins of US companies.

I too am wondering. Why 25% on Canadian and Mexican products and "only" 10% on Chinese products?

Morningstar Portfolios have had this issue for at least ten years and they will never fix it. It seems a lot to ask for people to pay a subscription fee or (especially) to trust the opinions of their writers who may very well themselves be working with incorrect data.

The 10% on China announced yesterday are on top of the Tariffs already in place. For an apples to apples comparison, are the Tariffs lower on Chinese products than on border countries' products? Another way to look at it is, total $ Tariffs imposed as a percentage of total imports.
US trade rep / Commerce Dept website probably will have accurate and updated information.
I expect Tariffs on China to be higher if not equal to that on border countries but someone can post the info when available.
Over the past six-seven years a lot of Chinese manufacturers have moved their operations to other Asian countries and continue to be under (direct or indirect) China / CCP control.
It would be good to know how have forum members changed or plan to change their portfolio because of the Tariffs. Your reaction can be very targeted to specific tickers, sectors, or market as a whole. For example, you decreased or plan to decrease your equity allocation because you think Tariffs will dampen (slow down) the economic activity in the US and / or cut into gross margins of US companies.

Feb 1st Episode:

Outspoken and influential market economist David Rosenberg reflects on the extraordinary bull market of the last two years and why he isn’t changing his bearish outlook.

We all know the answer to that. Maybe I should be angrier than I am with all the illegals: my wife had to wait two years to be admitted to the US legally. But you have how many people desperate to escape shit-hole countries to the south (and in Africa?) where the governments are all either totally inept or corrupt or owned by cartels? Wait.... That pretty much describes the current US Administration.... But seriously: there are parents threatened in those places with a desperate choice: let us recruit your 10-year old kid into our violent street gang with drugs and guns, or we will give you the privilege of watching us shoot your husband before your eyes. Years ago, I knew such a family, who fled to the USA and took sanctuary in Spokane. And then we'll just TAKE your son, anyhow.
There are putrid, scumbag people out there, all over the world, who will do ANYTHING to enrich themselves. I don't blame a great many illegals who risk everything to come here. Then, when they pay into SS, they are not even eligible to ever collect.
Now, when it comes to illegals who turn to criminal activity once they get HERE? Fuck 'em.

31 Jan, 2025:

Uncertainty. Hedging bets, loathe to make predictions.
Lowest level of bond volatility in years.
Collin (sic) Martin, Schwab Fixed Income. Amaury D'Orsay, Amundi Fixed Income.
No cuts expected anytime soon. Stand pat at least for the first half of the year. Perhaps more volatility from the long end of the curve, and in the Credit Markets.
D'Orsay lately could see the 10-year maybe at 5%. Still realistic? No, maybe 4.8%. And more likely, a bit below that.
Martin: we could get to 5% without even factoring in the Trump policies. Even with just two cuts later in the year, 5% is realistic, given the state of the labor market and everything else. The Big Picture dynamics are present.
(On-screen: 10 year T is at 4.52%.)
Sonali to D'Orsay: how do tariffs fit into your estimation? Muddy. Focus on the data. That's the thing to do, these days. Martin: "We expect the 10-Year to trade in a wide range."
To D'Orsay: "What is your bigeest conviction trade right now?" Inflation Bonds.
*******************
I.G. new monthly credit bond issuance = only $3B short of the record. (And this is the final day of January.) ...RECORD set in Leveraged Loan issuance. $202B. Beats the previous record from just last month.
Maurenn O'Connor, Wells Fargo. We will forgive her for being connected to the sewer called Wells Fargo. And Meghan Graper, Barclays.
...O'Connor: rolling over stuff that is maturing is a big chunk of what's responsible for new issuance, currently.
Market is priced for perfection. Ultra-tight yield spreads. Longer-term risk is inflation. ...Sudden conclusion, this time.

paul Krugman’s substack blog predicts “ The end of North America”.
I’ve been saying for a while that markets were far too complacent about Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico, believing that he wouldn’t follow through because it’s such a stupid, self-destructive idea. As I wrote on Jan. 22,
[S]o far markets have shrugged Trump’s tariff threat off, apparently in the belief that he won’t follow through. But why not? Economists would, if he asked, tell him that high tariffs on neighboring nations closely integrated with the United States will do major damage; businesspeople would say the same thing. But if Trump wants your opinion, he’ll tell you what he wants it to be.
I believe that the only thing that might dissuade him from destructive policies would be a severely adverse market reaction — which means that the lack of such a reaction, based on the belief that he won’t really do it, greatly increases the probability that he really will.
And he really did. The New York Times reports,
President Trump plans to move forward with imposing stiff tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China on Saturday, in an attempt to further pressure America’s largest trading partners to accept deportees and stop the flow of migrants and drugs into the country.
In a news briefing on Friday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the president would put in place a 25 percent tariff on goods from Mexico, a 25 percent tariff on goods from Canada and a 10 percent tariff on goods from China.
Ms. Leavitt said the president had chosen to impose tariffs because the three countries “have all enabled illegal drugs to pour into America.”
“The amount of fentanyl that has been seized at the southern border in the last few years alone has the potential to kill tens of millions of Americans,” she said. “And so the president is intent on doing this.”
The tariffs are likely to initiate the kind of disruptive trade wars seen in Mr. Trump’s first term, but at a much larger scale.
I think you have to see “fentanyl” in this context as the equivalent of “weapons of mass destruction in the runup to the invasion of Iraq. It’s not the real reason; Canada isn’t even a major source of fentanyl. It’s just a plausible-sounding reason for a president to do what he wanted to do for other reasons — George W. Bush wanted a splendid little war, Donald Trump just wants to impose tariffs and assert dominance.
Also, although I’m not sure such things matter anymore, what’s the legal basis for these tariffs? U.S. trade law gives the president huge discretion to impose tariffs, but only for a specific set of reasons: economic injury from import surges (Section 201), national security (Section 232), unfair foreign competition (Section 301), dumping — sales below costs. Drug smuggling, especially imaginary drug smuggling, isn’t on the list.
The president can impose tariffs much more broadly if he declares a national economic emergency. But has he done that? Does 2.6 percent inflation and 4.1 percent unemployment sound like an economic emergency to you? And even if Trump gets around to declaring an economic emergency, what does fentanyl have to do with it?
As far as I can tell, there’s a real possibility that Trump’s new tariffs will face a court challenge, and that he will lose. I’m not an expert on trade law, but I do know a bit, and this looks flatly illegal to me.
But even if these tariffs are blocked, or Trump finds some way to declare victory and call them off, the damage will be immense.
As I wrote the other day, in the three decades since NAFTA went into effect, North American manufacturing has evolved into a highly integrated system whose products — autos in particular, but manufactured goods more broadly — typically contain components from all three members of the pact, which may be shipped across the borders multiple times. Manufacturers developed this system not just because tariffs were low or zero, but because they thought they had a guarantee that tariffs would stay low.
One way of saying this is that until just the other day there was really no such thing as U.S. manufacturing, Canadian manufacturing or Mexican manufacturing, just North American manufacturing — a highly efficient, mutually beneficial system that sprawled across the three nations’ borders.
But now we have a U.S. president saying that a duly negotiated and signed trade pact isn’t worth the paper it was printed on — that he can impose high tariffs on the other signatories whenever he feels like it. And even if the tariffs go away, the private sector will know that they can always come back; the credibility of this trade agreement, or any future trade agreement, will be lost. So North American manufacturing will disintegrate — that is, dis-integrate — reverting to inefficient, fragmented national industries.
Hence my title, “The end of North America.”
And to think that many people imagined that Trump would be good for business. “
any bets on what Markets will do?

Following are excerpts from a current New York Times report:

Tariffs on goods from the United States’ three largest trading partners will go into effect on Saturday, a Trump spokeswoman confirmed Friday. Goods from Mexico and Canada will be subject to 25 percent tariffs and those from China will be hit by a 10 percent tariff. Those countries account for more than a third of the goods and services that are imported to or bought from the United States, supporting tens of millions of American jobs, and all three of their governments have promised to answer Mr. Trump’s levies with tariffs of their own on U.S. exports.
In a press briefing on Friday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the president would put in place a 25 percent tariff on goods from Mexico, a 25 percent tariff on goods from Canada and a 10 percent tariff on goods from China.
Ms. Leavitt said the president had chosen to impose tariffs because the three countries “have all enabled illegal drugs to pour into America.”
“The amount of fentanyl that has been seized at the southern border in the last few years alone has the potential to kill tens of millions of Americans,” she said. “And so the president is intent on doing this.”
The tariffs are likely to initiate the kind of disruptive trade wars seen in Mr. Trump’s first term, but at a much larger scale.
Mexico, China and Canada account for more than a third of the goods and services imported to or bought from the United States, supporting tens of millions of American jobs.
All three governments have promised to answer Mr. Trump’s levies with tariffs of their own on U.S. exports, including Florida orange juice, Tennessee whiskey and Kentucky peanut butter.
The tariffs will immediately raise costs for the importers who bring products across the border. In the nearer term, that could disrupt supply chains and lead to product shortages, if importers choose not to pay the cost of the tariff. And in the longer run, companies may choose to pass the cost on to American consumers, raising prices and slowing the economy.
Mr. Trump’s desire to hit allies and competitors alike with tariffs over issues that have little to do with trade demonstrates the president’s willingness to use a powerful economic tool to fulfill his domestic policy agenda, particularly his focus on illegal immigration.

This is gonna be fun watching y'all for 4 years. Hope you weren't looking forward to a huge tax increase.

Never Mind …

Best post in another TDS thread.
Let me guess the next 4 years...same old stuff.
And now the Dems scream about inflation...mmm...where were you when inflation hit the ceiling?

Former White House ethics lawyer: Trump actions ‘pushing the limits’ common in dictatorships
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5108520-donald-trump-norm-eisen-watchdog-firings-birthright-citizenship/

Tom Bowley's latest video from pre-market on Tuesday -
He is pretty dour on the market and says be prepared for a 10% correction in SPX, down to 5500. I do not recall Tom being this downbeat about the market in the past couple of years.

What a difference a day makes. Of course, it would mean nothing to the peanut gallery.

My point for years is that future predictions is a fool errand.
I have never invested based on the future, only based on current markets and they can be illogical and longer than anyone can predict.

Never Mind …

Best post in another TDS thread.
Let me guess the next 4 years...same old stuff.
And now the Dems scream about inflation...mmm...where were you when inflation hit the ceiling?