8/2/19 Friday (Update)
Within a minute of posting the below, stock futures turned positive on this news:
“Trump is “open to delaying or halting the 10% tariff on 9/1″ if China were to take action between now and then – CNBC”
Now turning red again.
Like I’ve been saying since this all began, it’ll be the market that ultimately puts an end to it. But, given my comments earlier regarding the EU, and the latest (highlighted in previous blogs) regarding Vietnam, India, etc., there’s much more market-moving stuff to play out before this ends…
8/2/19 Friday
As I type, the S&P future contract is pointing to a 0.4% decline at the open. That’s far too sanguine given the potential downside related to Trump’s decision to apply 10% (albeit that’s not the previously-threatened 25%) tariffs on remaining (till now un-tariffed) Chinese imports. We’ll see…
According to a tweet (not from Trump or the White House) I saw yesterday, the President is going to make a statement regarding trade with the EU later this morning; that’s the only place I’ve seen this, so at this point it’s unconfirmed. If indeed there is an announcement coming and it lays out a tariff scheme on EU imports, like, say, autos, the market is absolutely going to tank. If it’s on French wine, as threatened last week, the market reaction should be less negative; but still negative.
Trump has taken a liking to the UK’s Johnson, and is egging him on to go the hard-Brexit route come October. That would absolutely rout global markets.
If Trump’s plan is to somehow support Johnson by firing the first shot (something other than French wine) in a U.S./EU trade war today (although he’s been itching to do that with or without Johnson leading the UK) — or whenever such a move is made — along with roiling global markets, it’ll cement (if it’s not already the case) Trump’s reputation as a populist/protectionist ideologue in the minds of our trading partners/allies! Which would be resounding negative for global equities, not to mention the global economy (U.S. included!) going forward.
The July jobs report was just released; 164k jobs added with earnings rising 3.2%, the unemployment rate held at 3.7%. I’d characterize the report as essentially okay.
Futures are selling off a bit on the news. I suspect that’ll initially be couched as stocks reacting to a number that was too-decent to demand a more aggressive Fed. My take is that it simply gets the report out of the way and allows the market to focus entirely on the tariff news, which is unambiguously negative…