Donald Trump’s Tariff Typhoon Hits Wall Street.  Mayhem Ensues

That Donald Trump, he’s got folks more stirred up than a hornet’s nest.  I read that the Dow was off by 8% on the week.  Now that’s a lot.  I think back on Black Monday in the ‘80s it ended down about that amount.  And that riled up folks too.  Of course, I’m guessing most of these angry investors aren’t going to sell off their holdings.  For them equity is the only game in town.  Shorting the market could get some of them hurt.

I’ve got to say, Trump isn’t doing things by halves.  And I think he’s going in the right direction.  Things won’t change until all of the globalist policies are upended.  And upending those policies will produce havoc in the short term.  And that’s what we’re seeing.  One thing’s for sure I wouldn’t be thinking about buying any high end imported cars or other luxury items.  They’re gonna get expensive.  And there’s gonna be a lot of angry folks who sell those things who will be making a lot less money until things re-sort themselves around changes in the tariff situation.

Well, it should be interesting to see if Trump can get this done.  There’s nothing certain about his hold on power.  The Republicans in Congress are as disloyal a bunch as any imaginable and if they think Trump is in trouble they’ll turn on him in a heartbeat.  And I’m sure he knows that.  For myself personally, I’m enjoying all the drama unfolding on the social platforms.  The folks on X have been spinning around like lunatics declaring the end of the world.  And that can be very entertaining.  I got into a number of spirited discussions with folks who told me we’re living in the best of all possible worlds and wanting Americans to have manufacturing jobs was stupid, nostalgic, racist (of course) and just plain evil.  And that really was fun.  One guy told me that the present world is so much better than the old bad world of the 1950s because now people live twelve years longer.  I was trying to understand how putting tariffs on foreign goods would reduce my life expectancy by twelve years.  When I questioned whether quality of life was as important as quantity he said, “You answer my question first and then we will deal with your non sequitur.”  Well, I noted his use of the royal plural and he stomped off.  So, there is definitely an entertainment component to Donald Trump’s trade policy.

I’ve read that a number of countries are now negotiating for a deal and I assume that’s what Trump intends.  He wants these advanced countries to reduce their tariffs against American products.  But countries with very low labor costs like China and Vietnam I suspect they’ll get stuck with tariffs levied against their goods.  And what that will do is force American manufacturers to on-shore some of their operations to prevent the loss of American business.  That’s what supposedly Apple intends to do.  What I don’t know is how quickly something like that can be done.  Factories don’t spring up like vegetables.  It takes years to build infrastructure so I don’t know how much on-shoring can be done in 2025.

We will see how it plays out.  Anyway, I’m rooting for him.