The quoted tweet is pretty eye opening:<p>> Import Chinese battery: 145% tariff<p>> Import Chinese battery inside Chinese laptop: 20% tariff<p>> Import Chinese battery inside Vietnamese laptop: 0% tariff<p>If their goal was to encourage manufacturing in the US, it's not looking good.
Trump is no economic genius --- and "Liberation Day" is the proof.<p>How long did our "liberation" from sanity last? About a week. This is how long it took our former friends and trading partners to school Trump in the fact that trade isn't always "bad".<p>So why exactly did "Tariff Man's" big day turn into a big fail? Two reasons:<p>1) The real world is a complicated and interconnected place.<p>Simple minded solutions may sell to simple minded folk watching Fox Noise but this doesn't mean these simple ideas are credible and will actually work in the real world.<p>2) The USA's biggest export is debt. We sell a lot of debt to our former friends and trading partners. And if they suddenly stop buying, we are sunk.<p>In other words, isolation is a prescription for economic disaster. The next simple but equally bad idea --- a debt default.<p>This is all Economics 101 stuff --- and Trump is failing the test.<p><a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/why-the-bond-market-is-at-the-centre-of-trumps-tariff-turnaround-the-front-page/E6WODINFTVCWXLXMM3BAQ22LFU/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/why-the-bond-market-is-a...</a>
guide to participating from home, watch:<p>- vix futures, front month has only hit 40 3x in 20 years, tho for sustained period starting late 2007 when the contracts were a lot lower volume<p>- /zb /zn futures contracts, BBB OAS spread on St. Louis fed website,<p>- credit default swaps, i can't find free public website<p>- some people say you can get insight from polymarket, other betting sites<p>- GDP now on Atlanta Fed website, note gold haircut<p>- other sites monitor options' large buys, skews and dex/gex (gamma exposure) on indexes, futures and single stocks but those sites are $ subscription