kscarbel2

President Trump today threatened China with additional 50% tariffs if they do not withdraw their 34% retaliatory tariffs on the US. He says all negotiations will be terminated and the additional 50% levy will take effect on Wednesday. “If China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50 percent effective April 9th. Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated!” There is a "way" to successfully discuss matters with Peking. This is not that way.

We'll never learn the whole truth. I believe many were shorting. I myself do not short......it's gambling for an individual investor to do so. But for the big Wall Street houses, this is how they profit at a moment when we are losing. I did go 50% to cash 3 months ago, as my gut told me something was coming. I did not though imagine this. I'm skeptical of Lutnick and Navarro, the "way" they're guiding the President. I am thus far impressed with Bessent. It seems the President is trying to force the Fed to cut rates now rather than later......recall the President wanted a rate cut on April 3 but Powell refused.

Ackman is bluntly criticizing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who is investing in long-bonds. Lutnick profits when our economy implodes. It's a bad idea to pick a Secretary of Commerce whose firm is levered long fixed income. It's an irreconcilable conflict of interest. Bill Ackman The President needs to replace Lutnick with the likes of Ackman, someone that understands a balanced approach to achieving reciprocal tariffs.

The country is 100 percent behind the president on fixing a global system of tariffs that has disadvantaged the country. But business is a confidence game and confidence depends on trust. By placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business and as a market to invest capital. President Trump has an opportunity to call a 90-day timeout, negotiate and resolve unfair asymmetric tariff deals and induce trillions of dollars of new investment in our country. If, on the other hand, on April 9th, we launch economic nuclear war on every country in the world, business investment will grind to a halt, consumers will close their wallets and pocket books and we will severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate. When markets crash, new investment stops, consumers stop spending money and businesses have no choice but to curtail investment and fire workers. And it's not just the big companies that will suffer. Small and medium-size businesses and entrepreneurs will experience much greater pain. Almost no businesses can pass through an overnight massive increase in cost to their customers. And that's true even if they have no debt and unfortunately, there is a massive amount of leverage in the system. Business is a confidence game, and President Trump is losing the confidence of business leaders around the globe. The consequences for our country and the millions of our citizens who have supported the president - in particular low-income consumers who are already under a huge amount of economic stress - are going to be severely negative. This is not what we voted for. The president has an opportunity on Monday to call a timeout and have the time to execute on fixing an unfair tariff system. Alternatively, we are headed for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter and we should start hunkering down. May cooler heads prevail. I have a lot of respect for our president and what he has accomplished so far, but I don't think he is infallible, which is why I am stating loud and clear that I strongly believe launching tariffs on April 9 against the entire world - massively in excess of what we are being charged - is a mistake. The right answer in my view is a 90-day pause to give the president time to carefully and strategically resolve our historically unfair global trading position. Bill Ackman – Billionaire Trump supporter & Pershing Square Capital Management's CEO Ackman is a huge Wall Street name.

Not at all impressed with this gentleman. She's asking good solid questions.......he won't answer them. He just keeps repeating the rhetoric that we all know now by heart. JD Vance and Scott Bessent are rungs above this gentleman. .

. "At the end of the day, I hope it's agreed that both Europe and the United States should move ideally to a zero tariff situation, effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America." Elon Musk

“I struggle for why, for what the president’s game plan is. Because if you wanted to make the market crash, I think you would go with this game plan. I don’t like that game. I do not favor that. That’s a they know nothing game plan. It should not be in our country’s interest to have the market crash.” Jim Cramer .

As a result of the tariff action, major banks have issued the largest margin calls to their clients since COVID (March/April 2020). The scale of the calls suggests the steep sell-off will continue next week. Hedge funds are facing Lehman-style margin calls as a market crash triggered by President Trump's tariffs raises fears of a "Black Monday." The market's sharp downturn has forced hedge funds to sell off assets, with major Wall Street banks demanding collateral after the value of holdings sharply declined. There is fear of a repeat of the devastating 'Black Monday' (October 19, 1987) when the Dow fell 22.6%, the largest one-day percentage drop in history.

There is a plausible theory..................that President Trump is deliberately tanking the stock market with his tariffs so as to force Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to cut interest rates. Continuing to crash the stock market could weaken the dollar, thus making U.S. exports more price competitive. And it could lower mortgage rates stimulating domestic housing construction. Of course, this would be very risky........everything would have to fall into place just right. Failure would be disastrous.

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87 octane averages $2.99 around me. Gasoline can't fall much lower than that. Both Biden and President Trump harped on lowering gasoline pump prices. But it can't get much lower or the oil companies aren't making any money.

The Democrats couldn't possibly believe what they're saying. These are intelligent people. Rather, it's as though they are reading from a script. They are controlled.

The stock market selloff deepened, bonds pared gains and oil hit a four-year low, with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell today reiterating the central bank’s wait-and-see approach. Powell said the economic damage of a trade war will be bigger than anticipated.

In short, he in one sense went too far. In another sense, he has not spoken clearly. The idea is right, but the execution is wrong. Apparently, he's listening to the wrong advisors (Lutnick, Navarro) rather than the right ones (JD Vance, Suzie Wiles and Scott Bessent).

Why don't we ever see the names of great American leaders like John Kennedy on presidential ballots? Apparently, they are not permitted to run.

Stagflation, the s-word rippling through Wall Street and Main Street, is a calamitous anomaly whereby the economy manifests low growth and high inflation at the same time. Anyone who remembers the 1970s will recall that it caused an economic crisis in the United States, ushering in a turbulent era of high prices, interest rates and unemployment — and considerable instability and pain. Stagflation unraveled two presidencies, Ford’s and Carter’s, and nearly destroyed Reagan’s. Today, experts are worried that the new tariff regime, which is all but certain to raise prices, coupled with a tight labor market could return us to that era. “The data is continuing to support the narrative of weaker growth and higher inflation, with market-based inflation expectations continuing to rise,” says Deutsche Bank.

She bluntly pegs it in that video.

China’s finance ministry on Friday announced it would impose an additional 34% levy on U.S. goods beginning April 10. This week the U.S. announced an import tariff of 34% on China, which comes on top of the 20% tariff on those imports that the second Trump administration had already put into effect. The net result is a 54% duty on goods from China.

Legendary investor and PIMCO co-founder Bill Gross says investors should not try to buy the dip after the worst stock-market drop since the pandemic. “This is an epic economic and market event similar to 1971 and the end of the gold standard except with immediate negative consequences,” says Gross.

As a result of President Trump’s tariff scheme, JPMorgan’s economics team has just raised their recession probability to 60 percent. In a note entitled, “there will be blood,” chief economist Bruce Kasman and his team said this year’s 22-percentage tariff increase amounts to the largest tax hike since 1968.

“Consider Europe’s VAT regime [Value-Added Tax money grab]. A German automaker exporting a car to the U.S. does so tax-free — thanks to a VAT rebate. An American automaker shipping a car to Europe pays embedded U.S. taxes and a European VAT upon entry. One enjoys a de facto export subsidy. The other faces a tax wall. The WTO, in its infinite wisdom, allows this disparity and has repeatedly blocked American attempts to address it through legal or tax-code innovations. The Foreign Sales Corporation regime? Illegal. Domestic International Sales Corporations? Illegal. Export tax incentives? Illegal.” President Trump

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/04/03/watch-nancy-pelosi-in-1996-assails-u-s-free-trade-with-china-is-this-reciprocal/