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‘What To Talk About’
High-stakes negotiations between the world's two superpowers in Switzerland. Big league drama. Serio
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A deal will come quickly! Just look at Japan, for instance.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2025/05/07/economy/tariff-negotiations-impasse/
Sure, especially since Trump saying today he’s not going to pull back tariffs to enable talks – path to rapid resolution clear as mud.
Word. Though things may develop rapidly just because everyone wants to put an end of the madness. The question is, will Drumpf sit still or conjure up more drama to inflict upon a hapless world?
Given the SNAP and Medicaid cuts about to pass effectively unopposed by the nullified 2nd branch, I foresee somehow a replaying of the tragic economy my grandparents grew up in. Those that don’t learn from history are sure as hell repeating it. We’re entering this reliant on a generation that literally can’t even read a book.
Lift to S&P 500 on first high-level US-China trade talks is distinctly minor. Perhaps investors are finally getting to the “fool me ten times, shame on me” realization.
What’s the big announcement?
That’s what I’m wondering. It got a brief mention during coverage of Mark Carney’s visit, but I haven’t seen anything elsewhere. Trump told the press there was going to be a huge announcement–possibly the biggest thing ever–coming soon on “a certain subject” (unspecified). He said it would be either Thursday, Friday, or Monday. Obviously not this weekend. He didn’t become president so he could work weekends.
Now of course you have to ignore the hyperbole. With Trump, everything’s the biggest thing ever, so it could be just an updated version of the gold sneakers going on sale. It could be pretty much anything. But Trump certainly seems to think it will be big and important and people will be excited, so for now we’re just left to speculate.
It’s fun to speculate.
Next, it’s time to find out how Trump reacts when the Fed holds rates steady instead of cutting. Here too, I’m speculating. Perhaps Trump really doesn’t plan to fire Powell, wanting him in place as a convenient scapegoat for the recession he knows is coming. Perhaps that’s the big announcement: his lawyers and advisers having cobbled together something resembling a “cause” for which to fire Powell. Who f>cking knows?
The big announcement was leaked this morning, he’s going to call the Persian Gulf the ‘Arabian Gulf’ in another shameless nod to his Saudi benefactors (and a typical Trumpian insult to Iran while in the midst of negotiating with them) while he’s on his Mideast glory trip next weekend.
That’s it? Surely that can’t be all there is to it.
When I moved out to the Gulf (the Persian/Arabian one, not the Mexican/American one) in 1980, I was summoned to the Dubai office of the Ministry of Information to discuss items in my shipment of household goods. A book entitled, “The Persian Gulf” was deemed offensive. I humbly apologized for the common American usage and offered to turn it over to them if it would help me clear the rest of the container. They decided that honor had been satisfied, gave me the book and everything else, and sent me on my way.
He’s teasing a trade deal now.
This is all a cruel joke. Pin the tail on the bad guy.
I can take a page out of my Commemorative Trump Coloring book and resolve this trade war in 24 hours. I call it the FoxConn and am guessing (hoping) we are about to see a lot of it, as opposed to hundreds of billions of dollars of tariff riches. I mean what kind of trade deals are we even negotiating? What is our concession? The removal of batshit tariff rates pulled out of a busy executive’s diaper and the “promise” not to reinstate them for “a time” — say, about two weeks for starters?
China, among many others, are underscoring once again that there is no negotiating with a compromised, uninformed and petulant bullshitter who holds himself above everyone else (with the possible exception of Putin). So what do you do? Don’t negotiate. Just bullshit! Just like FoxConn did in Wisconsin (and many others have done since) – promise him the moon and the stars and a gloating press conference, then give him one of his arm wrestle handshakes and move on. Buy a couple planes, some LNG or an open parcel to make it look good, then let the deal drift off into the ether with all of Mar-A-Lardo’s other imaginings. By the time he realizes you’ve reneged, he’ll have his hands full with election fraud, transgender sports, and renaming geographic features. Trade war over.
Ukraine has definitely triangulated their way to this strategy. “You want half of our mineral rights in perpetuity? Suuuuure, just show us where to sign, we’ll definitely be honoring that. Just as soon as we start mining operations back up in Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia.”
Chris Tucker classic – as you read the words you hear the voice ??