I guess he is determined to dig his own grave for his new administration as soon as Day 1. Unhappily, he will bury the rest of us in it if he digs deep enough.
There's no surety that he can pull it off. Sheinbaum has already said that if he does it, Mexico will immediately retaliate. Plus, he can be sued by any American company who has contracts that were valid under USMCA that suddenly are impacted by the tariffs.
Remember - the quicker his minions turn on him, the better off we all are.
I’ve got a different take on this. Back in the day, Trump used to talk to the press about his plans to acquire this or that company and the stock price would go up -then he might express concerns and price would go down. Eventually his track record for not doing what he telegraphed led to him being ignored on Wzll Street but it was certainly a strategy he (or anyone he told in advance) could trade on. Musk was also famous for this and it’s the reason he is no longer CEO of Tesla. Guess what Canadian and Mexican currencies did today? He has thrown out so many numbers around China, he might as well be plucking them out of a bingo barrel.
I know about the currencies - also that Trudeau called the Mennace a couple hours later. Limited readout from that call. There are those who believe this is an opening gambit for negotiations. But it's hard to understand his end game relative to trade.
Bessent is no idiot, and he's pro-tariff, but likely not insane.
So what do they want? Fewer migrants. Less drug trade (and sadly for them, nitazene is appearing on the market, and is even harder to track the base ingredients than fentanyl) -- they don't really have a plan other than leveraging tariffs (and potentially just turning everyone back at the borders)
I think he is just tough talking to make it look like he’s “doing something about immigration” while making money (or allowing his inner circle to make money) on advance knowledge of the currency trade. Particularly the billionaires because the SEC doesn’t have the budget to even think about investigating this.
I have mixed feelings about you being right. On the one hand, it certainly makes sense - on the other hand, the ideas that his minions could be adversely impacted so quickly means that they'll turn on him.
Not sure I understand your second point. His minions stand to gain from being loyal -advance knowledge of market movement is pure profit. He doesn’t have to do the thing -he just has to talk about it and get media, social and otherwise, to broadcast it. It’s like (in a different context) his request to Zelensky to announce an investigation of Hunter Biden. He didn’t care about there actually being an investigation-just the announcement of it. And as for his minions, their continuing loyalty is easily coerced: the money is the carrot and being cut off -or having their business hurt-is the stick.
I think you and I have a semantic difference on who the "minions" are -- in my mind, they are NOT the millionaires and billionaires who gave him tons of money and will certainly benefit from any currency manipulation.
In my mind, the "minions" are the lower and middle class, non-college educated, predominantly MAGA-hatted voters who voted for him BECAUSE their issue was the economy.
Oh THOSE minions! Well they could be eating marshmallows and spam for dinner and if Fox told them that prosperity was around the corner and that liberals had an even worse dinner, they’d still applaud their orange idol.
I guess he is determined to dig his own grave for his new administration as soon as Day 1. Unhappily, he will bury the rest of us in it if he digs deep enough.
There's no surety that he can pull it off. Sheinbaum has already said that if he does it, Mexico will immediately retaliate. Plus, he can be sued by any American company who has contracts that were valid under USMCA that suddenly are impacted by the tariffs.
Remember - the quicker his minions turn on him, the better off we all are.
I’ve got a different take on this. Back in the day, Trump used to talk to the press about his plans to acquire this or that company and the stock price would go up -then he might express concerns and price would go down. Eventually his track record for not doing what he telegraphed led to him being ignored on Wzll Street but it was certainly a strategy he (or anyone he told in advance) could trade on. Musk was also famous for this and it’s the reason he is no longer CEO of Tesla. Guess what Canadian and Mexican currencies did today? He has thrown out so many numbers around China, he might as well be plucking them out of a bingo barrel.
I know about the currencies - also that Trudeau called the Mennace a couple hours later. Limited readout from that call. There are those who believe this is an opening gambit for negotiations. But it's hard to understand his end game relative to trade.
Bessent is no idiot, and he's pro-tariff, but likely not insane.
So what do they want? Fewer migrants. Less drug trade (and sadly for them, nitazene is appearing on the market, and is even harder to track the base ingredients than fentanyl) -- they don't really have a plan other than leveraging tariffs (and potentially just turning everyone back at the borders)
I think he is just tough talking to make it look like he’s “doing something about immigration” while making money (or allowing his inner circle to make money) on advance knowledge of the currency trade. Particularly the billionaires because the SEC doesn’t have the budget to even think about investigating this.
I have mixed feelings about you being right. On the one hand, it certainly makes sense - on the other hand, the ideas that his minions could be adversely impacted so quickly means that they'll turn on him.
Not sure I understand your second point. His minions stand to gain from being loyal -advance knowledge of market movement is pure profit. He doesn’t have to do the thing -he just has to talk about it and get media, social and otherwise, to broadcast it. It’s like (in a different context) his request to Zelensky to announce an investigation of Hunter Biden. He didn’t care about there actually being an investigation-just the announcement of it. And as for his minions, their continuing loyalty is easily coerced: the money is the carrot and being cut off -or having their business hurt-is the stick.
I think you and I have a semantic difference on who the "minions" are -- in my mind, they are NOT the millionaires and billionaires who gave him tons of money and will certainly benefit from any currency manipulation.
In my mind, the "minions" are the lower and middle class, non-college educated, predominantly MAGA-hatted voters who voted for him BECAUSE their issue was the economy.
Oh THOSE minions! Well they could be eating marshmallows and spam for dinner and if Fox told them that prosperity was around the corner and that liberals had an even worse dinner, they’d still applaud their orange idol.