Donald Trump will inevitably claim Monday’s temporary truce in the US-China trade war as a victory, but financial markets seem to have read it for what it is – a capitulation.
Stocks were up and bond yields were higher after the US treasury secretary Scott Bessent’s early morning press conference in Geneva, where he has been holding talks with China.
As with the UK “trade deal” last week, the US is not reverting to the status quo before Trump arrived in the White House.
Instead, tariffs on Chinese goods will be cut from 145% to 30% – initially for a 90-day period. In return, China has cut its own tariffs on US imports to 10%, from the 125% it had imposed in retaliation against the White House.
That still marks a big shift in the terms of trade between the two countries since before Trump came to power, but falls far short of what was in effect a trade embargo.
Instead, the statement hailed “the importance of a sustainable, long-term and mutually beneficial economic and trade relationship”. The language was rather different to Trump’s Liberation Day speech, about the US being “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far”.
In other words, the president has caved. He may have been swayed by market wobbles but it seems more plausible that dire warnings from retailers about empty shelves – backed up by data showing shipments into US ports collapsing – may have strengthened the hands of trade moderates in the administration.
No trade deal has been made. Really no point in claiming victory, loss, or capitulation until details of an actual deal are known.
Tl;dr: Trump is all talk (mostly lies) and no backbone.
Another failure to add to Trump’s extensive list.
So basically, he shot himself directly in the foot, puts a bandage on the foot, and declares the bandage as a victory. And for some reason the stock market cheers for this.🙄
This sure has exposed the relevancy (or lack thereof) of the stock market and how it can be easily manipulated by those without honour. What exactly is value?
And for some reason the stock market cheers for this.🙄
Bandage is better than no bandage. But I agree 30% is still pretty bad, and will still undermine US competitiveness in export markets.
But the real harm to US economy is that EU has decided to look at taxing services from USA. Which is completely new for EU.
As it were before Trump started this, the average tariff paid in EU on all imports from USA were a measly 1%!! How Trump got that to be unfair IDK?
USA has a deficit in goods to EU, but a huge surplus in services. And the services are way more profitable. So good going there Donnie.You mean a product that has no shipping costs can be replicated infinitely for free and maintains high paying jobs is worth more than sweat shop factories? Say it ain’t so. Obviously we want to give up on YouTube and MS office etc… So we can put tiny screws into iPhones.
Trump is so stupid, he has basically made it a necessity to abandon MS office in public services in EU. And of course also American cloud services.
So these will definitely lose sales in EU even without tariffs, because USA is no longer a trusted partner.
Programs are also started with the purpose to make it easier to switch away from these American services. Which can help private organisations too.
The stock market is celebrating Trump finally forgot the gun in the toilet and won’t be shooting it anymore (with any luck)
This is 100% capitulation day for the USA
Stable genius. Ahahahahahahahahaha
it’s 90 days. Nothing is permanent, guaranteed or stable.
Everything he does is 90 days, 4 years or some other thing that can easily be reversed by an individual later.
Considering he’s barely been in 100 days, 90 days is forever.
And each year has 365 days and a quarter. So its possible that tomorrow he goes totally bat shit nuts. Regardless, order now do you get your shit before the next predicted date of crazy.
He can reverse it after the next round of golf. This is Trump.
China said they wouldn’t negotiate until tariffs came down. They didn’t, now tariffs are paused, and negotiations are starting. China is clearly in the driver’s seat and they just shoved trump’s binky in his mouth.
China’s not negotiating. This is the best result for China. As long as USA is going to continually be belligerent with tariffs to all nations, China actually would not benefit with preferential treatment.
China wants to let the tariffs slowly but persistently eat away at USA’s economy. 30% is just about right as Mexico and Canada are at 25%. China doesn’t need to be the cheapest, just affordable enough that Americans will still buy. So while trade will decrease it won’t stop. This gives China the breathing room they need to build up supply chains everywhere else. All the while Americans will afford less and less as tariffs eat away at their income. This will lead to less business creation activity and destroy manufacturing as the manufacturing inputs being tariffed makes USA products unaffordable.
If this looks like China is capitulating, all the better. Though most people realize it’s Trump that blinked. Since their counter actions aren’t really tariffs to begin with. China can order their companies who they buy from and more importantly who they don’t.
I think there’s also the impact that the US Treasury is going to be pulling in a hell of a lot of money for these Tariffs, which will bankroll the mass deportation that he seems to want to really get going on.
So that’s the dumbest thing Trump is doing. Deporting low income workers when he’s trying to bring low income work back to America. It’s literally the opposite of what you would want to do. Yet here we are. The stupidity I feel is the most stunning thing about all this. I knew Trump was insane, but completely idiotic was not something I thought was part of the deal.
The problem is he somehow found even dumber assholes to surround himself with than his first term and that was a high bar.
Meanwhile all his disgusting buddies made millions from stock market manipulation and Fox news will spin this as the biggest deal of the history. Lol americans have truly embraced 1984 style brainwashing.
Still, the shelves will be empty during the summer and who knows also prior to the holidays.
So I saw the empty ports, but what makes you so sure we’ll have empty shelves sometime this season?
It takes at least a month to ship things from China to the US. I’ve got a post in my history going over the math.
If the ports are empty now, that means ships stopped sailing a month ago. If they sail today, they’ll be here mid to late June. If none have sailed in-between, it’s going to be a while before any do. And I’m not sure any ships will be sailing soon because no deals have been reached.
Lots of companies bought extra supply in the months leading up to Lie-beration Day, so they can hold for a bit. The only question is how long will they, compared to how long Chinese shipping will resume?
.ml users not idolizing Communism. Challenge level: Impossible
Can China even really be considered Communism anymore? I mean I’m pretty sure Marx would have something to say about a country which produces so many billionaires.
Eh, in this specific case I don’t think china’s economic system has anything to do with it, I think it’s more just making fun of Trump’s ineptness at dealing with a rival power.
China hasn’t been communist for decades. At least since Hong Kong was handed over (1997) if not for longer.
This was supposed to be the work of a master negotiator, not a “will they or won’t they” from a shitty sitcom.
We don’t even get the laugh track!
Pretty sure the rest of the world is laughing.
He FA’d and now he’s FO-ing. Lol.
