Politico is out with a piece that presents the above….
The stock market has lost all it’s gains for the year as investors take hits waiting to see if China or Trump blinks on Trump’s tariff war….
Already Trump has called off the 25% additional import fees against the Chienese…The reworked NAFTA agreement still needs approval from Congress and the Europeans have gotten waivers from Trump’s admin…
The world’s economy IS dependent of world trade….
Trump’s effort to extract BILLIONS solely for America IS slowing the economic pump worldwide in addition to forcing others countries to cut reliance on American products…
I have repeated here over and OVER….
Things Donald Trump touches tend to turn to garbage….
Could he single handily screw up the American and World economy only a decade after President Obama and others had to put it back together?
“I think Trump the Dow Jones Man is ultimately going to eat Trump the Tariff Man,” said one former senior administration official intimately familiar with the president’s stock market obsession, citing Trump’s touting of a recent agreement to hold off on increased tariffs after a dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping. “What he agreed to after that dinner had basically been on the table for two years. He knew he had to give Wall Street something.”
Both markets and Trump are fixated on the Federal Reserve this week, with the central bank expected to raise rates by another quarter point on Wednesday. But no matter what the Fed does, investors early next year will pivot to the showdown between Trump and the Chinese. And pressure from Wall Street could push Trump to cut a deal.
“The question is, what is Trump’s pain threshold? And what is China’s pain threshold? It’s almost like two cars zooming toward each other. Which one is going to turn first?” asked Stephen Moore, visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an outside Trump adviser. “If the stock market fell another 1,000 points it would give him pause. He does love a bull market and hate a bear market. But he also feels this is the fight of our lifetime.”
The tensions between Trump’s commitment to tariffs and his love for a soaring stock market are at the highest of his presidency. After markets soared in 2017, Wall Street hit a wall, with stocks dropping in recent weeks in part on fears that China and the U.S. will not reach an agreement by a March 1 deadline and Trump will slap tariffs as high as 25 percent on everything China exports to the U.S., inviting significant retaliation.
The Dow Jones is now down around 1,000 points, or close to 5 percent, for 2018. The Standard & Poor’s 500 is also lower for the year, as is the Nasdaq, home to tech stocks like Apple that are highly sensitive to tensions with China and potential tariffs. All three indices are now in “correction” territory, meaning a drop of 10 percent from their recent highs. And investors blame trade tension for much of the declines.
“It’s really all about the global economy slowing down, and that’s directly linked to the trade dispute between the world’s largest economy and the world’s second-largest economy,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Cresset Capital Management. “What market participants thought was just tactics from Trump on China could turn into policy, and if that’s the case then investors are going to be held hostage.”…