Donald Trump delivered an update on Hurricane Dorian from the safe confines of the Oval Office on Wednesday.
Naturally, he veered off course, launching into a diatribe about China, trade and the stock market, which has been tossed around more than the Bahamas during a Category 5 storm lately thanks to the president’s tariff escalations.
“Let me tell you, if I wanted to do nothing with China, my stock market – our stock market – would be 10,000 points higher than it is right now, but somebody had to do this”, Trump said, suggesting the Dow would be sitting around 37,000 were it not for the trade war. Here’s the president to Trump-‘splain:
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“To me, this is much more important than the economy”, Trump continued.
It’s not clear whether the majority of voters would agree with that assessment, but we’ll see in 2020, because if things keep going like they’re going – with consumer sentiment falling and manufacturing slipping – the longest expansion in US history will be… well, history by the time the election rolls around.
“Somebody had to do this, we had to do it with China, had to be done, and I’m not even talking about purely economically, I’m talking about in other ways also”, Trump went on to ramble, an apparent allusion to national security.
“It was out of control and they were out of control”, he remarked, summing up.
And you can trust Trump on that. Because if there’s anybody who knows what it means to be “out of control”, it’s the president.
Stock market is way overvalued another great day to add to your shorts. Most everything points to a slowdown…. The Fed can’t save this market from correction nor can negative rates. The debt must be paid in full or else the markets will continue this crazy see saw crap
the debt must be serviced….not paid off. worlds of difference
“To me, this (the stock market) is much more important than the economy”, Trump continued.
And there is the whole problem and the Republican mantra neatly summed up. Of course we love a strong stock market, but we’d like it based on sound fundamentals
I guess….thanks for falling on the sword djt! cant think of a better person for it to happen to.
Trump’s recent rants have been very interesting.
He seems to have abandoned the pretense that his tariffs aren’t hiring the economy, and is not just admitting but leaning into the theme that his tariffs are the main thing hurting the economy. He’s still calling for the Fed to cut, but increasingly that is going to be pitched as the tariffman being for a bailout.
He is going full on with the message that taking on China is more important than the economy, the market, and the pain to come. This may not play as well as he thinks – most Americans haven’t neither lost a job to China nor know anyone who has, they have some general disapproval of “made in China” but they don’t care enough to stop buying Chinese goods so they certainly won’t care enough to welcome stock and job losses.
Trump is backing himself into a corner, since he’s raising the rhetoric and stakes to a level that he can’t possibly deliver. The more of an existential threat he makes China out to be, the less he’ll be wave around some soybean orders and pretend that he’s “won”.
This increases the chance of Trump ending up in a siege mentality, isolated after firing his hardliner advisors (does anyone really think Navarro will last much longer), but too committed by pride and his shrinking base to accept counsel from any capable advisor who is willing to join the last several months of a sinking ship.
Peak irrationality is clearly yet to come.
Enough about Trump. Think how this developing picture affects China’s strategy. The initiative, options, and power are all shifting from Trump to Xi.
Ugh, typo city there.
What I wouldn’t give for a Blackberry keyboard instead of this terrible onscreen keycrap.
Would my old Blackberry even work anymore?
Points this, points that. Can someone please explain to these boomers what a percent is. Or at least show them an index that is statistically relevant for gauging equity performance.