Trump Tariffs, Trade & Trouble! Is Our Economy Stalling Out?
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All right, the trade talks with China are go. yes, the big focus is export controls. What does this mean? okay. Basically, we’re not going to ship you rare earth minerals because you’re not shipping us various different chips. We don’t want to ship you this again. We shall see for what I’m hearing.
President Trump has given full authorization to our trade negotiators to lift any of these export controls that are currently in place. Again, the rare earth minerals and magnets, which were part of the issue in Geneva last month. Again, it’s not just electric cars. They go into regular cars as well. Without a doubt, it’s a problem. Again,
From what I heard is, well, I guess Boeing airplane just landed in China. Then a new one, like shipping planes. That was part of the restrictions. Anyway, they need to, and they’re trying to basically strike out an optimistic tone. Why? Well, it’s going to be a cruel summer.
as Banana Rambo once sang a long time ago, unless they can get this in order. We talked last week about the jobs numbers, which most certainly were much, much weaker than anyone was alluding to. In fact, I I kept looking into the numbers. We’ve got more people unemployed now than we’ve had, I think since 2021. I mean, it’s
Numbers are not great by any stretch of imagination. The job market for recent college grads is tight. It’s very, very difficult right now. It can be a bit of a cruel summer. And whether you like it or not, kids, it has to do with businesses and how confident they feel. Oftentimes I’ve talked about animal spirits here on the program. that’s when businesses are
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excited, they’re more willing to take on risks, or a little bit more certain about the future. This topic, actually I wrote a lot about this, talked a lot about this during the Obama years. The Obama years we were laying with again, command and control economy, running everything out of Washington DC, various different subsidies for green industries, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Nobody knew where their taxes were coming from. Highest corporate tax rate in the world. What does everybody do? Nothing. I’m not doing it. You do
I don’t operate like that in my business without a doubt. When you have periods like this, you’re obviously looking to curtail costs and obviously looking to redeploy assets where you feel most confident. But whether you want to believe it or not, that’s where we’re at right now as an economy. And as I alluded to last week on the program talking about the jobs market, it is the small businesses out there that are really taking it on the chin and they are not hiring.
I’m hoping that they’re finally getting their arms around the fact that this whole tariff thing is a mess. was interesting. A gentleman by the name of Jeremy Siegel is a professor. He’s put together some great charts about the markets and overall performance over the years that we’ve used. Here he’s a regular contributor on lot of television programs.
He made the point that, listen, he’s been pretty accurate when it comes to the markets. And he’s normally a pretty bullish guy. And he says that right now, can be somewhat bullish. However, that can change in a heartbeat. And it’s his contention, because again, he was getting pressed by Joe Curden on SquawkBox this morning. Joe was like, oh, know, markets come up 20 % since the lows.
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Okay, it’s kind of the same thing. It’s come up 20%, but it dipped. It dipped, it came back. Okay, we’re still not at all time highs. And his point came right back. He said, listen, if these tariff things weren’t put in place, he thought that that would be 2000 points higher than it is right now. And if they didn’t put the reprieve at all of these tariffs, it would have been 6,000 points lower than it is right now. And there’s something to be said for that. We’ll see where it’s gonna land.
Again, both sides need to come up with something. As I said, whether you want to believe it or not, we’re not going to decouple from China anytime soon. That’s all rhetoric. Rather it not be a cruel summer, cooler heads prevail, get some sort of deal done, declare victory and smile. Watchdogonwallstreet.com.
