XPost: alt.politics.usa

From WSJ, "Will the Last Investor to Leave America Please Turn Out the
Lights" by James Macintosh

"Trade, or rather President Trump’s attack on it, provided the basic
reason to sell. His delay of the bizarrely calculated additional tariffs
on countries other than China offered midweek relief, and Friday night’s exemption for iPhones and other electronics will offer further respite.
But investors quickly went back to working out the damage from the
tit-for-tat trade war across the Pacific. That is in addition to his
baseline tariff of 10%, even on countries with which the U.S. runs a
trade surplus.

Stocks naturally fell as Wall Street strategists upped their probability
of recession. ...

Debt reared its head early in the week as hedge funds began to liquidate
trades deep in the plumbing of the financial system. The unwinding of
leveraged positions drove big swings in a usually benign corner of
interest rates known as swap spreads. This led to heavy selling of
Treasurys that drove up yields and threatened to force more selling.

The prospect of a self-fulfilling spiral of selling put investors and regulators on edge as a 2020-style panic in the bond market suddenly
appeared possible. Trump reversed course in time to prevent the worst.
But investors are again aware of the danger of a near-trillion-dollar hedge-fund unwind. That in itself is a reason to reduce Treasury
exposure, at least until hedge-fund positions are cleaned out.

De-Americanization kicked in as investors watched the chaotic
policymaking from the White House, but it wasn’t only about the U.S.
losing its aura of economic competence. Far from strengthening as bond
yields rose, the dollar has fallen sharply. On Friday, it reached its
weakest level since 2022."

------------------
Trade war is easy to win if and only when competitive gap is small and
in the absence of financial system ecology depending on persistent
borrowing by trade surplus nations.

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ltlee1@hotmail.com (ltlee1) wrote:

From WSJ, "Will the Last Investor to Leave America Please Turn Out the Lights" by James Macintosh
[…]

Soc.culture.china version:
Will PRC fare _better than USA_ in consequences of Trump's "follies"?
IMHO it is quite likely (especially long term) but it is *FAR* from
being guaranteed.

"Excessive victory certainty of terrible disasters the reason is."
[ Google translated ]

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar

"Alea iacta est." [ The die is cast. ]
-- Gaius Julius Caesar (10 January, 49 BC)

--
A. Filip
| I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my
| body. Then I realized who was telling me this. (Emo Phillips)

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XPost: alt.politics.usa

A. Philip wrote

Will PRC fare _better than USA_ in consequences of Trump's "follies"?
IMHO it is quite likely (especially long term) but it is *FAR* from
being guaranteed.

Have little idea on what constitute Chinese "fare_better." And of course nothing is really "guaranteed."

The valid question left is to look from the opposite side: To what
degree would Trump succeed?

In that regard, I would say "Not much."

1. US trade deficit is structural with China as well as all other
nations he has targeted. Very unlikely to disappear simply by Trump's
say so without American people's full support on both mean and end.

2. Trump is track record does not look good. He started many thing
during his first term. The record is clear.

"When Mr. Trump left Washington in January 2021, many key goals remained
unmet. There was no “big, beautiful wall” on the U.S. southern border,
and the check from the Mexicans that was supposed to pay for everything
was still lost in the mail. North Korea kept its nukes, Iran remained
unbowed, Russia stayed surly, and American forces were still in
Afghanistan." (Trump Throws Another Hail Mary by Walter Russell Mead)

3. 孙子曰："多算胜，少算不胜，而况于无算乎。" In short, more thorough planning would bring
more success, less thorough planning would bring less success. Given his changing courses, and his team pointing to different objectives, it is
clear his planning, a Hail Mary per Walter Mead, is hardly sufficient
for such an great undertaking.

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