Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
'Concepts of a plan' I think is the more accurate description.
In other words, a nothingburger. But he'll bleat that more nothingburgers are coming "in a few weeks" just like his infrastructure and health care plans during his first term.
I'm sure the UAW pro-Trumpee's (who were about to have a love-fest in public with the Donald) while at a recent rally in Warren, MI are still self assured all will be well, given enough time. I suspect that where we live in Michigan, we may be able to hear the large head slaps when their day arrives. I 'only' visit two Facebook pages of far right folks who I worked with 20 years ago. Neither of these folks are writers in their own right. They only copy and paste 'whatever' from other FB pages into their sites. The point being.....these folks only find and throw the garbage and lies to their pages. There isn't any backup links or data about a given statement. This remains the problem that the reasonable folks having common sense can't grasp. These folks are lost and part of a cult. Scary stuff. They don't realize that they will likely become part of the damage taking shape.
"The recent elevation of Mr. Bessent, who is viewed as a pragmatist on trade, to lead the talks with China has also helped to calm markets."
Is this the same guy who couldn't tell congressman Pocan who pays tariffs? We're doomed. Maybe he could use some of his millions to buy a textbook on the topic and study up.
That is the same person, but he is serving too many bosses.
Still try to figure out why he took this job when he made many folds more as a hedge fund manager. If that is not money, he must be aiming to get to a position that he could not get otherwise. My guess is the next Fed chairman when Powell’s term is up in 2026. There are other candidates in the wing as well.
Now the tariffs is reduced from 145% to 80%. These must be the alternative math. Just serving a mob boss.
In other words the UK will now admit US beef and chicken except when they still wont.
Yep, you got it. I bet the EU would love a deal like the UK's.
I still don't get what these "we're gonna buy xx billion of your xxxx" trade "deals" accomplish. A trade rep can't make people buy stuff they don't want or that are illegal. Dump's first term "deal" with China was partly in that form of commitment, and the Chinese didn't buy anywhere near what they agreed to.
"There are also 3,450 temporary levies, covered in the 690-page 'Chapter 99' of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, which includes tariffs from the Trump and Biden administrations going back to 2018."
"Chapter 99 has already been revised 11 times this year, compared with once for all of 2017. Customs brokers must keep up with the changes and know which codes to add for each product and country of origin. Sometimes these rates get stacked on each other, and sometimes only one rate prevails."
"These rapid shifts in policy are compounded by White House communications that aren’t specific enough for their work. 'First it’s a tweet, then it’s an executive order,' a Los Angeles area customs broker told Barron’s. 'But that wording, it’s close. But it’s not technical enough for us in the industry to be able to move on it.'”
every 1-on-1 negotiation meeting exists to serve corruption and publicity, so there is only the highly predictable left to say after some ~100 new EOs on trade :
[trump] told reporters he would look at specific industry requests for exemptions. But preferred to keep the duties broader and less complicated. "I want to make it nice and simple. I'm not looking to have so many exemptions that nobody knows what we're doing. We have to make it very simple."
FYI, there is a very informative article by David Pierson about our contentious trade dispute with China that appeared in yesterday's NY Times. Here are some excerpts:
"Xi Jinping has been preparing for this moment for years.
In April 2020, long before President Trump launched a trade war that would shake the global economy, China’s top leader held a meeting with senior Communist Party officials and laid out his vision for turning the tables on the United States in a confrontation.
Tensions between his government and the first Trump administration had been simmering over an earlier round of tariffs and technology restrictions. Things got worse after the emergence of Covid, which ground global trade to a halt and exposed how much the United States, and the rest of the world, needed China for everything from surgical masks to pain medicines.
Faced with Washington’s concerns about the trade imbalance, China could have opened its economy to more foreign companies, as it had pledged to do decades ago. It could have bought more American airplanes, crude oil and soybeans, as its officials had promised Mr. Trump during trade talks. It could have stopped subsidizing factories and state-owned companies that made steel and solar panels so cheaply that many American manufacturers went out of business.
Instead, Mr. Xi chose an aggressive course of action.
Chinese leaders must “tighten international production chains’ dependence on our country, forming a powerful capacity to counter and deter foreign parties from artificially disrupting supplies” to China, Mr. Xi said in his speech to the Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission in 2020.
Put simply: China should dominate supplies of things the world needs, to make its adversaries think twice about using tariffs or trying to cut China off.
Mr. Xi has ramped up exports and deepened China’s position as the world’s leading base for manufacturing, in part by directing the state-controlled commercial banking system to lend an extra $2 trillion to industrial borrowers over the past four years, according to data from China’s central bank. He has also introduced new weapons of economic warfare to the country’s arsenal: export controls, antimonopoly laws and blacklists for hitting back at American companies.
So when the current Trump administration slapped huge tariffs on Chinese goods, China was able to go on the offensive. Besides retaliating with its own taxes, it imposed export restrictions on a wide range of critical minerals and magnets, the global supply of which China had cornered. Such minerals are essential for assembling everything from cars and drones to robots and missiles.
“It’s about flipping the leverage so that the world is reliant on China, and China is reliant on no one. It is a reversal of what Xi has been so irritated about, which is that China was so dependent on the West,” said Kirsten Asdal, a former intelligence adviser at the U.S. Department of Defense who now heads a China-focused consultancy firm, Asdal Advisory.
China still relies on the West for many advanced technologies like high-end semiconductors and aircraft engines. But its willingness to weaponize the supply chain may be one of the starkest examples of how Mr. Xi is redefining China’s relationship with the world and challenging the supremacy of the United States like no Chinese leader before him.
“China will use any and all tools at its disposal to cause pain and impose costs on the U.S. and any country that aligns with America,” said Evan Medeiros, a professor of Asian studies at Georgetown University who was an Asia adviser to President Barack Obama.
“The entire world,” Mr. Medeiros continued, “is about to learn the answer to a very important question: how reliant are we on trade with China and how much is it worth to us?”
Mr. Xi has said for years that the United States is bent on thwarting China’s rise, and the trade war appears to have validated his warnings."
US Officials Say Deal Struck To Cut China Trade Deficit
I can't wait to hear about the "substantial progress" from the "productive talks" with Chinese officials!
"U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Sunday they reached a deal with China to cut the U.S. trade deficit, describing 'substantial progress' in high-stakes talks with Chinese officials but offering no details as two days of negotiations concluded in Geneva."
"Bessent told reporters that details would be announced on Monday and that U.S. President Donald Trump was fully aware of the results of the 'productive talks' with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and two Chinese vice ministers."
once again, only insiders seem notified on any actual 'progress' before market open. pls send my invite to signal whitehouse tariff chat group at MeMeMe@liberate_grift.org
"I would caution against too much reading of the tea leaves," according to Dmitry Grozoubinski, a former Australian trade negotiator based in Geneva. "It's probably more likely that they agreed on what their conversation should cover — on what are the kind of things they are both prepared to discuss."
Futures are up based on the usual knee-jerk hopium.
"I would caution against too much reading of the tea leaves," according to Dmitry Grozoubinski, a former Australian trade negotiator based in Geneva. "It's probably more likely that they agreed on what their conversation should cover — on what are the kind of things they are both prepared to discuss." [snip]
Can't admit an error, or defeat. He could end up eating his own hair because he's run everything into the ground and has no money, but he'll talk like that was the plan, all along. The Chinese own so much in Treasuries, they already own the winning hand at the poker table.
"In the thick of the evening when the dealin' got rough, She was too pat to open and too cool to bluff...
It seldom turns out like it does in the song..." LOUD START: GRATEFUL DEAD, Scarlet Begonias.
Comments
In other words, a nothingburger. But he'll bleat that more nothingburgers are coming "in a few weeks" just like his infrastructure and health care plans during his first term.
Equity Markets - "Give us more of these nothingburgers. We enjoy the lack of substance - we just want a show!"
Then, after the China negotiations go nowhere, Bessent will get the shaft. Teflon Don will do his little shuffle, play the blame game. Cha-cha-cha.
i.e., trump is telling big3 its time to cough up again...and offer that F150 special edition in mascara orange by trumpcoin only.
https://fr8technologies.com/press-release/freight-technologies-secures-up-to-usd-20-million-to-create-an-official-trump-token-trump-treasury/
I'm sure the UAW pro-Trumpee's (who were about to have a love-fest in public with the Donald) while at a recent rally in Warren, MI are still self assured all will be well, given enough time. I suspect that where we live in Michigan, we may be able to hear the large head slaps when their day arrives. I 'only' visit two Facebook pages of far right folks who I worked with 20 years ago. Neither of these folks are writers in their own right. They only copy and paste 'whatever' from other FB pages into their sites. The point being.....these folks only find and throw the garbage and lies to their pages. There isn't any backup links or data about a given statement. This remains the problem that the reasonable folks having common sense can't grasp. These folks are lost and part of a cult. Scary stuff.
They don't realize that they will likely become part of the damage taking shape.
Is this the same guy who couldn't tell congressman Pocan who pays tariffs? We're doomed. Maybe he could use some of his millions to buy a textbook on the topic and study up.
Still try to figure out why he took this job when he made many folds more as a hedge fund manager. If that is not money, he must be aiming to get to a position that he could not get otherwise. My guess is the next Fed chairman when Powell’s term is up in 2026. There are other candidates in the wing as well.
Now the tariffs is reduced from 145% to 80%. These must be the alternative math. Just serving a mob boss.
I still don't get what these "we're gonna buy xx billion of your xxxx" trade "deals" accomplish. A trade rep can't make people buy stuff they don't want or that are illegal. Dump's first term "deal" with China was partly in that form of commitment, and the Chinese didn't buy anywhere near what they agreed to.
"There are also 3,450 temporary levies, covered in the 690-page 'Chapter 99' of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule,
which includes tariffs from the Trump and Biden administrations going back to 2018."
"Chapter 99 has already been revised 11 times this year, compared with once for all of 2017.
Customs brokers must keep up with the changes and know which codes to add for each product
and country of origin. Sometimes these rates get stacked on each other, and sometimes only one rate prevails."
"These rapid shifts in policy are compounded by White House communications that aren’t specific enough
for their work. 'First it’s a tweet, then it’s an executive order,' a Los Angeles area customs broker told Barron’s.
'But that wording, it’s close. But it’s not technical enough for us in the industry to be able to move on it.'”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/trump-s-tariffs-turned-a-sleepy-industry-into-the-front-lines-of-the-trade-war/ar-AA1EiNCw
every 1-on-1 negotiation meeting exists to serve corruption and publicity, so there is only the highly predictable left to say after some ~100 new EOs on trade :
[trump] told reporters he would look at specific industry requests for exemptions.
But preferred to keep the duties broader and less complicated.
"I want to make it nice and simple. I'm not looking to have so many exemptions that nobody knows what we're doing. We have to make it very simple."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-not-willing-cut-u-054533015.html
"Xi Jinping has been preparing for this moment for years.
In April 2020, long before President Trump launched a trade war that would shake the global economy, China’s top leader held a meeting with senior Communist Party officials and laid out his vision for turning the tables on the United States in a confrontation.
Tensions between his government and the first Trump administration had been simmering over an earlier round of tariffs and technology restrictions. Things got worse after the emergence of Covid, which ground global trade to a halt and exposed how much the United States, and the rest of the world, needed China for everything from surgical masks to pain medicines.
Faced with Washington’s concerns about the trade imbalance, China could have opened its economy to more foreign companies, as it had pledged to do decades ago. It could have bought more American airplanes, crude oil and soybeans, as its officials had promised Mr. Trump during trade talks. It could have stopped subsidizing factories and state-owned companies that made steel and solar panels so cheaply that many American manufacturers went out of business.
Instead, Mr. Xi chose an aggressive course of action.
Chinese leaders must “tighten international production chains’ dependence on our country, forming a powerful capacity to counter and deter foreign parties from artificially disrupting supplies” to China, Mr. Xi said in his speech to the Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission in 2020.
Put simply: China should dominate supplies of things the world needs, to make its adversaries think twice about using tariffs or trying to cut China off.
Mr. Xi has ramped up exports and deepened China’s position as the world’s leading base for manufacturing, in part by directing the state-controlled commercial banking system to lend an extra $2 trillion to industrial borrowers over the past four years, according to data from China’s central bank. He has also introduced new weapons of economic warfare to the country’s arsenal: export controls, antimonopoly laws and blacklists for hitting back at American companies.
So when the current Trump administration slapped huge tariffs on Chinese goods, China was able to go on the offensive. Besides retaliating with its own taxes, it imposed export restrictions on a wide range of critical minerals and magnets, the global supply of which China had cornered. Such minerals are essential for assembling everything from cars and drones to robots and missiles.
“It’s about flipping the leverage so that the world is reliant on China, and China is reliant on no one. It is a reversal of what Xi has been so irritated about, which is that China was so dependent on the West,” said Kirsten Asdal, a former intelligence adviser at the U.S. Department of Defense who now heads a China-focused consultancy firm, Asdal Advisory.
China still relies on the West for many advanced technologies like high-end semiconductors and aircraft engines. But its willingness to weaponize the supply chain may be one of the starkest examples of how Mr. Xi is redefining China’s relationship with the world and challenging the supremacy of the United States like no Chinese leader before him.
“China will use any and all tools at its disposal to cause pain and impose costs on the U.S. and any country that aligns with America,” said Evan Medeiros, a professor of Asian studies at Georgetown University who was an Asia adviser to President Barack Obama.
“The entire world,” Mr. Medeiros continued, “is about to learn the answer to a very important question: how reliant are we on trade with China and how much is it worth to us?”
Mr. Xi has said for years that the United States is bent on thwarting China’s rise, and the trade war appears to have validated his warnings."
I can't wait to hear about the "substantial progress" from the "productive talks" with Chinese officials!
"U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Sunday
they reached a deal with China to cut the U.S. trade deficit, describing 'substantial progress'
in high-stakes talks with Chinese officials but offering no details as two days of negotiations
concluded in Geneva."
"Bessent told reporters that details would be announced on Monday and that U.S. President Donald Trump
was fully aware of the results of the 'productive talks' with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng
and two Chinese vice ministers."
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/us-china-talks-defuse-trade-row-resume-geneva-2025-05-11/
once again, only insiders seem notified on any actual 'progress' before market open.
pls send my invite to signal whitehouse tariff chat group at
MeMeMe@liberate_grift.org
Futures are up based on the usual knee-jerk hopium.
So ... another agreement to chat about a future agreement? Or maybe 'concepts of a plan'?
Yawn.
"In the thick of the evening when the dealin' got rough,
She was too pat to open and too cool to bluff...
It seldom turns out like it does in the song..."
LOUD START: GRATEFUL DEAD, Scarlet Begonias.