Triple-digit tariffs for goods from China. This threat has come from the President repeatedly, but it is losing its efficacy. Why? Because he never means what he says. He just………..says stuff.
Of course, in simpler times, people actually believed him. Early this year, when he was rattling his sword about tariffs, the markets absolutely freaked. The /NQ, as an example, lost thousands and thousands of points, culminating in a tailspin that didn’t stop until April 7th.
It wound up being meaningless. Months later, just a couple of weeks ago, Trump once again, in the middle of an otherwise quiet trading day, tweeted about slapping China with triple-digit tariffs. This time, the market fell hard – – about a thousand points – – but only for a few hours, and only for the aforementioned thousand points.
Today, once again, he pulled the same stunt. He said maybe he wouldn’t even bother meeting with Xi, and, yeah, maybe 100% tariffs would be a good thing, since it would like pay off the debt and stuff. Did the market react? Sure. By about a hundred points.
Notice a trend here? Six thousand points. then one thousand points. Then one hundred stinking points. Next week, he could announce 1,000% tariffs, and the /NQ would probably fall a fraction of a single point, and the reason is obvious: fewer and fewer people are taking him seriously. It’s all just trade negotiation tactics or something.
The thing is, if he actually ever does commit to this, and he wants to move ahead for real on these monster tariffs – – no one is going to believe him anymore until it’s actually too late.
