King of Flip-Flops Strikes Again
The Clown King now says he will reverse supposedly tough Chinese tariffs for the fourth (?-I'm losing count) time and now even claims he has NO INTEREST in firing Powell.
He’s figuring everything out as he goes, I guess, “playing by instinct,” as he put it; but his instinct for how he held all the trump cards and could force China to deal has obviously blown up in his face now that Xi is placing a stranglehold on Chinese and Korean rare-earth minerals. Even more than witness how China is arm-wrestling him back down to the table, we may be seeing the affect of rapid destruction of the US economy—stocks and bonds, especially, but also the overall economy—on Trump’s tough-sounding stance.
The White House said today it may cut Chinese tariffs in half. They’re 10%; no, 25%; no 100%; no, 125%; no, 145%; now … 70%?
Either China is playing the stronger hand, getting $Trump to back down again and again, or he got scared when he saw his beloved stock market crashing and is just trying to jawbone the market back up today with empty words (meaning the talk of backing down might fade in less than twenty-four hours, as each talk of higher tariffs faded).
President Trump hasn’t made a final determination, the people said, adding that the discussions remain fluid and several options are on the table. One administration official said Trump wouldn’t act unilaterally and would need to see some action from Beijing to lower tariffs.
China appears to have him right where they need him, as Trump is still, by way of that comment, begging China to call him to get a deal. Their first “action” would obviously have to be picking up the phone and placing that call to the White House.
One senior White House official said the China tariffs were likely to come down to between roughly 50% and 65%.
Oh, by more than half then!
The administration is also considering a tiered approach similar to the one proposed by the House committee on China late last year: 35% levies for items the U.S. deems not a threat to national security
Oh, so by WAY more than half … at least on all the stuff America wants or needs that was about to disappear from shelves all over America and from Amazon.
and at least 100% for items deemed as strategic to America’s interest, some of the people said.
Ooookay. Well, let us know when you figure it out, I guess, guys. I would have thought you would have run all the math on this a couple of months ago before you even started down this path of flinching every time you set a tariff on China. It’s starting to look like you have no idea what you're doing. You’re starting to look like you are the people who are “getting yippy.”
The bill proposed phasing in those levies over five years.
Oh, five years from now when no one cares because you won’t even been in charge then to carry them out! That’s when you’re going to schedule tariffs to begin. Sounds like “the plan” is working. Only yesterday, Bessent jawboned markets back up by saying China was ready to make a deal. (Markets up!) Then added … that would happen in about two, maybe five, years. That, he said, would be a “big win.”
Sounds like getting any win would be big in order to end the misery you’ve created for yourselves and all of America … and all of the world. So we have tariffs now or maybe in five years, if we don’t have a deal from China in five years, or we’re lowering tariffs now to less than half of what we just raised them, too. How much acid do these guys mainline before breakfast?
“President Trump has been clear….”
He has? When did that happen?
“China needs to make a deal with the United States of America….”
Yeah, we got that part all along. How’s that working for you? Are they still dying to call … as you hatch the phone waiting?
When decisions on tariffs are made, they will come directly from the president. Anything else is just pure speculation,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said.
Indeed, sounds like it’s all pure speculation, which is why we now expect new decisions to keep coming directly from the president on a daily basis, as they have been doing, as China continues to call your blustering bluffs by waiting to call until you back down … again.
Trump said Tuesday that he was willing to cut tariffs on Chinese goods and that the 145% tariffs he imposed on China during his second term would come down. “But it won’t be zero,” he said.
No, because that would be totally losing face. So, maybe back to 10% … right where they already were when you started your second term? One thing for sure, it won’t be ZERO.
In China’s policymaking circles, Trump’s comments Tuesday were viewed as a sign of him folding, people who consult with Chinese officials said.
No doubt! Folding like someone kicked behind the knee caps.
So, the market can go crazy with glee, but a big de-escalation or tariff rates that Trump escalated isn’t going to help a lot when we are coming down from a rate that both sides say effectively equals a ban on trade because, if we only come down by half from the 145% we climbed up to, we’ll still be at a level that effectively bans trade:
Even if Trump decides to lower some tariffs on Chinese imports by half, that level would still mean the U.S. markets would be all but closed to many Chinese makers of electrical machinery and equipment and other products. Some analysts have estimated that trade between the two countries could dry up within months at such a high level….
“It would be kind of a pressure valve release without actually doing anything,” one of the people said….
As trade tensions have spiraled in recent weeks, Trump himself has indicated that he would like Xi to call him. Trump officials have also suggested to Chinese diplomats that Foreign Minister Wang Yi reach out to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to people familiar with the matter. So far, Beijing has refused to engage on either front.
Sounds like they’re waiting for you to call, President Trump.
We also just got a big oops on those idiotically unanimous claims by Team Trump, including Bessent, that I pointed out as false each time they stated these tariffs would not cause inflation!
President Donald Trump radically softened some of his most severe rhetoric after CEOs of the nation’s biggest retail chains warned him of looming price rises and empty shelves….
The CEOs of Walmart, Target, and Home Depot met privately with Trump on Monday and told him that although prices were steady at that moment, his trade policies could have devastating effects within just two weeks with supply chains disrupted
Really BIG oops! All along the way, whenever people pointed out “no inflation so far,” as if Team Trump was right, I kept saying, “There hasn’t been time for the products that will be affected to even start to hit the shelves yet.” And that, the CEOs just told Trump, is exactly right. We are now within about two weeks of when they think supply chains will be disrupted by all the recent shipping cancellations I wrote about last week, and when that happens the level of inflation could be “devastating.”
He was told that shelves will be empty.
I am sure some people thought I was grossly exaggerating when I wrote that you could expect by summer to find the shelves in your stores about 70% empty if Trump stayed with his tariffs. With 70% of most stores’ products coming from China or containing vital parts from China, and with the rest of the world under high tariffs at the same time, the potential for a 70% shortage was not a hyperbolic concern.
To what degree the 70% of Amazon products that come from China could be replaced from other nations that are probably already producing at close to their capacity, there is no way of quantifying until we run that gambit and find out the hard way; but, any that did get replaced would be entering under high tariffs applied against other nations, which assures large price spikes there, too. On top of that, manufacturers in other nations would likely even up their prices (faced with much less competition) if they had to try to ramp up production enough to fill that gaping maw of a hole.
Of course, the president tried to put a good face on his face plant by claiming he was trying not to be too hard on China, rather than letting it like it was all turning out to be too hard on the US (because “winning trade wars is easy,” remember?):
He told reporters on Tuesday he didn’t plan to play hardball with China, and that he was confident the two countries could strike a deal that would bring the tariffs well below their current levels.
So, we all get to wade through endless chaos as the president takes a ride on his learning-curve roller coaster to understand how devastating his enormous tariffs will be. The fact that he flipped and flopped yet another time today, but is still debating how hard he will have to flop (lest he wind up having to do it a fifth time) shows he’s starting to get schooled.
Powell pops back
King Flipper even did a big flop on Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Having pounced all over him and having had his White House goons announce they were working on one way or ways to hammer Powell out of existence, as I wrote about in last weekend’s Deeper Dive about the dollar-collapse conspiracy, Trump announced today that he definitely will not be firing Powell and tried to put a good face on it all by sounding like he never intended to fire Powell, even though we saw quotes issued by several cabinet members in that Deeper Dive stating they were working hard on finding a way to do it.
Apparently, those cabinet member who thought it could be done also got schooled and learned what the rest of us already knew, which is that the president does not have the legal authority to fire the Fed chair. It is not as if Powell had not stated that several times. The lawyers either tried to find workarounds that failed -or- even more likely, Trump, himself, got hammered so hard by the pounding the markets gave to Treasuries and the dollar (and stocks), that he, again, quickly backed away from the destruction his own chaos was bringing:
The president was also reportedly spooked by investors’ reaction to his threats to Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Stocks, bonds, and the dollar all slumped this week—until Trump abruptly toned down his rhetoric….
He also said he had “no intention” of firing Powell, even though his top economist, Kevin Hassett, said last week that Trump and his team were studying how to do so.
“Nope, never did.” Of course, he’s not just hurting the US as he gets schooled on the realities of tariffs that his whole team lied to him and us about:
This week, the International Monetary Fund warned that Trump’s economic policies had caused a “major negative shock” to growth in the global financial system.
While the entire world is paying for the US president’s education to be brought up to date, our big concern in the US is that we will be paying for it bigly in just another month or two as those shelves start running low to where price bidding starts running high. Other prices have already been paid by the working class, if things don’t change in time to reverse market action: Retirement funds have been considerably drained—even those owned by people who thought they were taking safe haven by moving their fund allotments from stocks into bonds.
Trump was reportedly unfazed by the prospect of a recession but privately expressed concern that his tariffs could lead to a more severe depression before he agreed to halt levies on dozens of countries for 90 days.
That’s been my exact warning here: If he keeps going down this path, the recession that has already opened up will become an all-out depression, the likes of which we haven’t experienced in almost a hundred years, going back to around the time the Fed was created.
So far, however, his present Chinese backflip is still in the talk stages. Let’s hope that doesn’t flop and not happen. Otherwise, keep stocking up because those empty shelves are not far off according to all the biggest CEOs whose business it literally is to fill them. Even if Trump cuts his tariffs by 70%, you’re still going to see some empty shelves and higher prices because that would still leave us with 65% tariffs on Chinese goods. The US is not as almighty and invulnerable as Trump and his cabinet members believed.
Dollar collapse and then what?
Finally, in the background, for those paying subscribers who could access the second half of that Deeper Dive, which dug down into what may be Trump’s ultimate plans for bringing down the dollar, this will be particularly interesting:
“Trump Offers Private Dinner to Top 220 Investors of His Memecoin”
The flashy online announcement called it “the most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the World,” a chance to have “an intimate private dinner” with President Trump at his members-only golf club in Virginia, followed by a tour of the White House.
No signs of pimping the presidency there!
A seat would be reserved for each of the top 220 investors in $TRUMP, a cryptocurrency that President Trump launched on the eve of his inauguration.
Things that would be bizarre in normal times keep actually happening almost faster than I can predict they are coming. The pixels of the predictive posts haven’t settled firmly into place before the actual news starts to materialize.
In an astonishing escalation of the Trump family’s efforts to profit from cryptocurrencies, a website promoting Mr. Trump’s so-called memecoin announced on Wednesday that the coin’s largest buyers would be invited to meet with him. The effort was, in effect, an offer of access to the White House in exchange for an investment in one of Mr. Trump’s crypto ventures.
I’m sure some people thought my weekend predictions about how Trump would sell the presidency and about where he’d take the nation monetary system in his own interest were a bit hard on the president, but …
For months, Mr. Trump’s forays into the crypto industry have created ethical conflicts with little precedent in presidential history. As he markets digital currencies to the public, Mr. Trump has also appointed regulators who are scaling back crypto enforcement and called for legislation that would boost the industry’s prospects in the United States.
As news of the dinner invitation spread on social media, the memecoin’s price surged more than 60 percent, suggesting that investors were rushing to accumulate the coin to qualify for a seat at the dinner.
“This is really incredible,” said Corey Frayer, who oversaw crypto policy for the Securities and Exchange Commission during the Biden administration. “They are making the pay-to-play deal explicit.”
A business entity linked to Mr. Trump owns a large tranche of the coins, meaning that the president personally profits every time the price increases, at least on paper. Mr. Trump and his business partners also collect fees when the coins are traded, a windfall that amounted to nearly $100 million in the weeks after the coin debuted in January.
Victoria Haneman, a law professor at Creighton University, said the offering raised concerns about the ways Mr. Trump and his businesses “may maneuver to profit off the presidency.”
Early this year, the S.E.C. issued official guidance saying that memecoins, a type of cryptocurrency based on an online joke or celebrity mascot, would not be subject to oversight by the agency. Crypto skeptics criticized the policy as a risky move that could open the door to rampant abuse and fraud by memecoin promoters.
Based on what I could see and lay out in researching last weekend’s Deeper Dive, you know it is potentially even a lot worse than that if you got it.
Once a cryptocurrency skeptic, Mr. Trump embraced digital currencies on the campaign trail last year, as crypto companies poured tens of millions of dollars into the 2024 election.
To read where this appears to be going you may want to become a paying subscriber in order to access the second half of “THE DEEPER DOLLAR: Evidence of a White House Conspiracy to Collapse the Dollar” because what I laid out in that portion looks an awful lot like the topic of the presidents pay-to-play dinner at Mar-a-Lago with a followup personal tour of the White House:
the president would be discussing “the future of crypto.”
We’re not talking a discussion about where he thinks crypto is likely to go; we’re talking a discussion of where he intends, as president of the United States, to make it go.
The top twenty-five buyers of $Trump, the strumpet of cryptocurrencies, were also promised the best access to the president at his Mar-a-Lago dinner. So, if you thought I was making up a conspiracy theory over the weekend about where all of this is going, you might want to reconsider that judgment.
And then there was this announcement yesterday, as if everything above were not confirmation enough:
President Trump’s social media company has moved one step closer to transforming itself into a financial services firm that intends to market investment products, including crypto, to retail investors.
Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, which has become Mr. Trump’s main online megaphone, said on Tuesday that it had signed a binding agreement with a crypto trading platform and a newly created Florida investment firm to launch a series of exchange-traded funds, or E.T.F.s, by the end of the year….
“This agreement is a major step forward in diversifying TMTG into financial services and digital assets,” said Devin Nunes, Trump Media’s chief executive and a former California congressman.
Is creating “a crypto trading platform and … a series of exchange-traded funds … diversifying TMTG into financial services and digital assets” part of getting ready for the monetary future of the United States that I laid out over the weekend?
Of course, there are safeguards:
Any investment products sold by the companies are likely to require regulatory approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is led by Paul Atkins, a business-friendly lawyer who was nominated by Mr. Trump. Republicans now hold a 3-to-1 majority on the commission.
Well, so much for those.
Mr. Trump owns about 115 million shares of Trump Media, or 53 percent of the company’s stock.
He should profit well off the nation’s new monetary system.
All of the Trump chaos described in this video by Greg Mannarino was created by Trump’s endless flip-flopping. So much for tough guy. We have a clown in charge, the Flip-Flop King—King Flipper.