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.
Tl;dr: Trump is all talk (mostly lies) and no backbone.
Anyone else impressed with how little effort that Trump’s opposition puts into letting others know about this stuff. I don’t think the left goes beyond reading the headline and saying hmmm. Like between the right and the left, the difference is the right participates, they read the textbook and complete the assignment. The left read the textbook and don’t even realize there are assignments for them to participate. Passive viewers.
I can sure as fuck tell you that my local bridge in Canada still has people on it that make new banners daily to remind people that bill gates is evil or that the NGO is trying to steal their kids. Just insane shit they work everyday to keep in people’s view.
One of the funniest and scariest thing about Canada right now is how the left here just won a victory. Lots of cheering but no self awareness how that happened. The liberals won because the actions of Trump. It had nothing to do with anything anyone on the left did. That’s messed up and we’re going to lose next election guaranteed if nothing changes.
The left are handed so many golden eggs daily and nobody is harvesting them. Trump’s accepting a plane FFS. I think it’s like Sam Seder and I bet the Republicans already know how to get us to chew him up for next election.
Also don’t give me this shit about how there’s no point to do anything. That’s just an excuse for incompetence. The better discussion is why we’re incompetent
No trade deal has been made. Really no point in claiming victory, loss, or capitulation until details of an actual deal are known.
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.🙄
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.
Another failure to add to Trump’s extensive list.
