An Up Day in Market

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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Hm.
So I poke around the internet.

Wall Street eyed signs of progress on key trade fronts Tuesday, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hinted at deescalation with China and the US and India hailed headway on talks.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told investors in a closed-door summit Tuesday that he sees a deescalation in the US-China tariff situation

Bessent called the tt-for-tat tariffs with China unsustainable*

I think this statement is just to receive a bump in the market.
The US military considers China the #1 threat to the USA. And claims is getting stronger everyday and growing capability.
We began the economic war upon China in the current president’s first term and have continued it through the next president and now the current president.
Is the US backtracking?

I question whether " t*t-for-tat tariffs with China unsustainable".
China’s economy is in contracting and shrinking. Deflation appears to have hit China also. Now is the time to press that advantage. Easing off letting your opponent rise from the floor is poor strategy. That’s assuming our objective is to kill Russia & China economies and remain as the sole super power.

  • The oil market could see a surplus of one million barrels of crude a day in 2025, the IEA forecast.
  • The excess will be driven by low demand in China and booming output from non-OPEC countries.
  • Non-OPEC producers are on track to expand production by 1.5 million barrels a day, the IEA estimated.

The excess is largely being driven by a weakening economy in China.

Economy-wide, prices fell in 2023 and 2024, the longest bout of deflation since the 1960s. The gross domestic product deflator –- the broadest measure of price changes in an economy -– dipped to -0.8% in the last three months of 2024, compared to -0.5% the quarter before, meaning that deflation has intensified.

Deflation can be harder for governments to tackle than inflation, experts say, because that requires fixing the underlying issues behind it.

In China’s case, it’s a combination of excess capacity — manufactured goods produced in such quantities the market cannot absorb them all -– and the reluctance of consumers to spend and businesses to invest, due to concerns about the sluggish economy. Also, the housing crisis has wiped out an estimated $18 trillion of household wealth, according to a Barclays report, on top of job losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even though the NYTimes predicts a China victory. I believe prediction is driven more by hatred of the person sitting in the Oval office than facts
.https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/opinion/us-china-asia-tariffs.html

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It is times like this that I am reminded that Pearl Harbor happened specifically because we cut off oil to Japan and they felt they had no choice but to preemptively attack us.

Hawkwin
Who assumes there exists a future where we did not have to kill the economy of a nuclear-armed country to remain a super power in the world - even if it is not the sole super power (and honestly, I am beginning to think we all would be better off if we were not).

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The US did so supposedly to limit Japan’s aggressive expansionist actions in Manchuria & China. Just the Lend-Lease Act that helped the UK Soviet Union was a prod upon Germany. I believe FDR already believed we were headed for war both with Japan & Germany and decided to goad either into an attack forcing the isolationist US into the war.

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They did have a couple of other choices than the “Southern Strategy” to obtain the oil they needed.

  1. There was the “Northern Strategy” which was backed by the Imperial Japanese Army and involved taking the oil, coal and iron-rich areas in China, Mongolia and Siberia. As we know the Navy won that strategy argument.
  2. They could have withdrawn their forces from southern French Indochina which they had started to occupy in July 1941 and precipitated the embargo.

DB2

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Nice if you are behind those closed doors so you can make a quick buck or two before the market proles catch up.

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I believe their plan was to expand everywhere there were resources. Then wait until allied forces were repelled by Imperial Japanese military forces infused with the Bushido code. They believe the West was weak & inferior in their reverence of the individual. That an armistice would be signed giving Japan most of what it conquered.

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I am sure they did. Just like we did and do now. We can’t control their reactions (or necessarily even predict them) which is why we should be cautious about starting another economic war.

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