This ends with a long great depression.
You are going to lose a lot of money.
Believe! Believe!
Don’t think.
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Go with your conviction of gloom and doom.
You guys can make so much money if you short the market.
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Your verb tenses are in disagreement, reflecting a profound flaw in your arguments….and thought processes?
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You must be projecting.
The “full and comprehensive” trade deal between the US and the UK announced in a rush today by President Donald Trump and PM Keir Starmer is no such thing. As Trump admitted in his press conference, the “final details” still need to be “written up in the coming weeks”. Along with the push to get trade talks with China underway too this weekend, this rush to demonstrate progress on “deals” reveals a rising desperation within the administration to rollback tariffs before they hit GDP growth and inflation.
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Maybe we’re all led astray and he wants the JCs eat his tariffs 
Trump responded on Saturday, posting to Truth Social that “Between Walmart and China they should, as is said ‘EAT THE TARIFFS,’ and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!”
Trump’s comments echoed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s comments Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that “businesses and the countries primarily eat the tariff.”
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I don’t see them.
2020
Just sat down and saw this headline. Doesn’t mention trade and tariffs but just like inflation… start talking about it in advance, then spring it on people. To wit: These 12 foods could save you in an emergency, keep them stocked
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If that was true he would have allowed Amazon to display what the Tariffs were. Instead he beat up on Bezos and Bezos backed down. What we have here isn’t full transparency. They are hiding how much real American’s will pay in Tariffs.
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buyandholdisdead
I am not so sure about that because if it was the market would have picked up on it. Looking at Bitcoin it is hardly down right now. I would think it would be cratering because of the credit rating call by Moody’s. Maybe we get another leg down after all but for right now it has been all clear.
I was thinking that a few days ago. The credit rating of the whole USA gets downgraded and … Boom! I mean… Poof! I mean "So what? As much as I “feel” what Leap1 keeps saying the reality I’m seeing is: The Gov is all talk-No Do except for chain yanking. Everything has been accounted for, press on. Just can’t see a real crash and a real depression or prolonged period of tribulation. Volatility and malicious mayhem like the “emergency” article I posted but we’ve already done that and even I with half my heart working managed to live through it.
syke6
Market hasn’t picked up on it…yet.
I’ve been saying that too but if the market is a forecasting mechanism they need to change the name to The Magoo Index. What is there that it is not seeing after all this time? It doesn’t seem to have a very far horizon
PS: I speak with none of the apparent certitude of anyone else posting here.
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I want to second that but I will say that Bitcoin is up today. 
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Who is You? It is trump who is desperate for trade deals. If there is no need then why is he talking with other nations?
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This is from Molson Hart on Twitter:
14 Misconceptions about the Tariffs
- “They’re paid for by China”
The company which imports is who actually pays. Some suppliers are paying for a part of the tariffs, but most are not. We have 3 active suppliers in China and they all refused to shoulder any of the burden.
- “They’re inflationary”
Yes, the tariffs increase the costs of products that you buy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll cause inflation across the board. All things equal, money is being taken out of the economy, which is deflationary, which means prices will fall. A lot of importers and warehousing/logistics companies will go bankrupt resulting in job losses. This again is deflationary.
- “Tariffs affect costs only”
The tariffs are affecting not only costs, but also shipping times. Many boat companies cancelled their boats, like airlines cancelled their flights. Product quality is also affected. When you move production from one factory to another, if that’s even possible, quality falls. You may see that with “made in India” (assembled is probably a better word) iPhones, for example
- “I don’t see a problem so there is no problem”
Just because you haven’t yet seen empty shelves doesn’t mean they’re not coming (for some products). There are really long lag times in physical products from 90 to 180 days. This is not software or law. Physical products move slowly.
- “Companies can just move their production”
It takes 6 months minimum, and sometimes years to do this, and that’s before considering the reduction in quality and price that comes from moving. It’s not easy to replace 1.4 billion Chinese people and all their infrastructure and knowhow. How long would it take for a random 22 year old to replace you at your job? Moving production is like that.
- “Make it in America”
It’s prohibitively expensive. Read my pinned post if you’d like to learn more. It’s just not a realistic option for 99% of products, especially in the short term and amidst this uncertainty.
- “Trump did a deal. It’s done.”
We haven’t even begun to feel the effects of the actions leading up to that deal. We’re on two dueling 90 day clocks (one for Liberation Day pause, one for the China pause), after which tariffs will jump back up. There is no written clear plan for anything. We are very far from being done with tariffs.
- “The China deal solved the problem”
30% tariffs are a massive cash crunch for importers. Sure, compared to 145% they’re a dream, but compared to the 0% that our economy was based on, they are a major problem for the physical good industry.
- “Trade is just about physical products”
China ships to the USA a lot more stuff than we ship them, but they, or at least used to, buy lots of services from college education to tourism to the ads Temu and SHEIN pay for. We can argue about whether this is good or bad or if Google deserves to be China’s #1 search engine, but the reality is trade is more than just products; it’s services too.
- “The stock market is back, so the economy is too.”
Economic stressors like these tariffs, while faster than physical products, take time to work their way through the economy. I’m not equating the two events, but the great financial crisis of 2007 had long gaps of time where everyone thought the problem was contained only for another large event to occur. All-in it took over 2 years for housing prices’ collapse to work its way through the system. Stock prices went up and down throughout and actually peaked after Bear Sterns’ funds collapsed.
- “All these costs are static”
Making products in America is already prohibitively expensive. If everyone tried to do it at the same time, it would become even more so, because increasing demand is meeting fixed supply which results in price increases. Container prices just jumped 136% on news of the China deal. Prices are going up and down continuously in response to big political changes.
- “People in the business know what’s happening”
Generally, we don’t. The rule and tariff announcements are not clear and every day we must spend a lot of time to figure out what the announcements mean and how they’ll be enforced. Further, this stuff is complex and we tend to only have insight into our particular vertical eg toys or electronics (which have an exception) or apparel.
- “It’s hurting China more than the US”
This is a complicated discussion that is best had in a 6 months to a year when we know what actually happened, but people need to understand that Chinese companies import to the United States too and because they’re in China where US laws are not easily enforced and because they have lower costs, they actually pay lower tariffs than their US competition. Also Chinese importers are more diversified; they sell to more countries than just the US. US companies tend to focus on the US market so can be more hurt.
- “It’s temporary not permanent”
These tariffs and the ongoing “trade war” will forever change the global economy and its accompanying supply chains. This is an extinction event for US importers. Anyone who makes it out of it will not forget what happened and it will affect the US and global economy for decades to come as supply chains move around and shift, with much collateral damage in the process.
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With higher corporate taxes and the ensuing economies of scale that would not be true.
But higher corporate taxes are not in the cards.
We are wasting four years. We have a limited multi-decade period of demand-side economics.
BTW, Orwellian dictators are all knowing, ours seems to be totally incompetent, knows next to nothing.
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I suspect (published data hard to come by still) that recent radical uncertainty and sense of betrayals of promises has debited the long term economy of the USA, most obviously by sabotaging investment in “nearshoring” of manufacturing and associated economic growth from Europe and Asia to a long envisioned freeish trade zone of North American continent with Mexico and Canada.
Before Trump was elected I was seeing enormous shifts in Mexican governmental and corporate policymaking so as to “grab” future economic growth via building what would have been needed infrastructure as well as factory foundations, rewiring tax policies, and greatly increasing higher levels of education. I see clear signs that all of that is not just on hold, but is dying on the vine.
The main railroad line near where I live in Mexico (one of the crux north south connectors, now owned by Canadian Pacific Kansas City) had been swarming with surveyors to radically increase its reliability and capacity, but that is now all gone. Zip.
But a lot of that potential was never measurably visible, and it will take time for the lost momentum in multiple projects to go to the bottom line. And good luck getting this or the next Mexican government strongly aligned without the passage of a lot of time and an insistence that the USA show “good faith” by footing much more of the bill.
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There is no amount of corporate tax that’s going to make replacing a $5/hr Mexican workers with a $30/hr American worker pencil out. Not with automation, not with incentives, not with nuthin’.
Foxconn workers making iPhones start at $3.15 an hour. If they accumulate enough overtime and last long enough that can double or triple, but there is no corporate tax or anything else that’s going to make it worthwhile assembling iPhones in Texas unless the entire process is somehow automated - every step - in which case, why bother?
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Unless there was a really big depression, but then, who wants that?
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US government is raking in the cash. Imports are disincentivized. Trade deficits are reducing. Homegrown supply chains forming. No inflation. Lower energy cost. Lower fed spending (DOGE).
Win-Win-Win.
The economists who are saying that $1Trillion in trade deficits are good for the nation, are wrong. Don’t listen to them.
Not when I stopped buying things. They are not going to get my cash by raising my taxes. Only two types of people do that. People with kids that have to buy to support their family and fools. You can keep hurting families and being happy about it I just feel sorry for them.
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I just bought Chinese takeout.
Pretty sure labor is imported, probably some of the goods.
I run a trade deficit with them, but a belly surplus.
I funded the transaction with short-term debt.
Doing my part.
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I don’t believe anyone here or anywhere has much certainty about the future: way too many variables.
I know my speculations are coin tosses.
I just try to see what data is available, but the data are always lagging, like last month’s retail sales.
But folks have fun when they share info/news and speculate.
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