Gold hits record high as investors flock to safe-haven amid tariff war

 Spot gold gained 1.1% to $2,843.06 per ounce after hitting a record high of $2,845.14 earlier in the session. ... Spot silver rose 1.9% to $32.15 per ounce.

-- CNBC

Just a reminder that theatre is exactly what this is, starring Mexico, Canada, and Donald Trump

 Sound familiar?

More tariff theatre: Trump announces 25% tariffs on Canada on Saturday, reverses himself before dinner on Monday lol

 

Trump pauses tariffs on Canada imports for 30 days after doing the same for Mexico

... Trudeau said Canada had made new commitments “to appoint a Fentanyl Czar.” 😉😉

“Canada is implementing our $1.3 billion border plan — reinforcing the border with new choppers, technology and personnel, enhanced coordination with our American partners, and increased resources to stop the flow of fentanyl,” the prime minister wrote. “Nearly 10,000 frontline personnel are and will be working on protecting the border.” ...

In 2024, more than 21,100 pounds of fentanyl was seized by U.S. authorities on the border with Mexico, compared to only about 43 pounds seized at the Canadian border. ...

Gold hits record high as Trump tariffs spur safe-haven buying

  Spot gold rose 0.6% to $2,816.53 per ounce by 09:38 a.m. ET, after hitting a record of $2,818.58 earlier in the session.     

More.

Later in the day gold hit $2,830.49.

Trump announces 25% tariffs on Mexico on Saturday, reverses himself before lunch on Monday lol

 

 Stocks that got hit the most from Trump’s tariffs before the Mexico reprieve

... Shares of companies spanning the auto, industrial, retail and beverage industries with international supply chains were hit particularly hard. ... The president said Monday that he’s pausing the Mexico tariffs for one month after Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum agreed to immediately send 10,000 soldiers to her country’s border to prevent drug trafficking.

The country which can't stop the drug cartels from operating unchecked within its own borders is going to stop drug traffic to the USA because it puts its troops closer to our border?

Phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rolla.

Trump's tariff gambit has little to do with fentanyl but everything to do with increasing revenues on the backs of consumers so that he can pass his temporary tax cut package and not increase deficits

 It's complete madness. It's Donald Trump: "Everything will cost more but I'm cutting your taxes!"

 Wolfgang Munchau, here:

Economically, his tariff war will act like a tax on US consumers. The increased costs are inevitably borne by the consumers. But, as a form of rebalancing, it will raise a lot of revenue for the US treasury and together with the shrinking of the federal government, may well end up lowering the budget deficit and strengthening the US current account balance. Of course, there will be repercussions that could push in the other direction: the dollar might rise; the world might plunge into recession. But the truth is we have no experience of what happens when the largest economy on earth, with the dominating global reserve currency, imposes massive tariffs on its trading partners.

Munchau thinks Trump will win his tariff war. I do not. Munchau overestimates Trump's political support at home, and underestimates the fickleness of the US electorate. Continued inflation will throw sand into the gears of this gambit and sow discontent.

Control of the US House is everything, and Trump barely has it. He has two years and is already blowing it.

Some Americans abuse drugs so everyone must pay 25% more for avocado toast

 

Trump tariffs will increase costs of fruits, vegetables, potatoes, and grains, among a hellish host of things

 

... The sweeping tariff could make more expensive a host of items that the U.S. imports from its neighbors. Among the common Mexican imports that will now get pricier to bring into the country: fruits, vegetables, beer, liquor and electronics. And from Canada: potatoes, grains, lumber and steel. ...

Trump is enacting the tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows the president to respond to “extraordinary threat,” which Trump has identified as a fentanyl and drug crisis that he alleges China, Mexico, and Canada facilitate. ...

More.

Because some Americans use illegal drugs, Trump is punishing all Americans.

Makes sense, right?

I mean George Floyd's blood fentanyl level was fatal and we lit the nation's cities on fire because of it, so yeah, we deserve it.

You would think a president who needs the votes of a senator from Maine to confirm his nominees would give it a minute before imposing tariffs on Canada, its primary trading partner

But you would be wrong.

 

Average US Treasury yields aggregated monthly started to normalize in November as yields fell for bills but rose for bonds

Interpreted politically one could say yields for notes and bonds reversed their slide starting in October as Harris' lead evaporated at the end of September and bond markets started to bet on a Trump win, bringing with it higher deficits because of his proposed tariffs and tax cuts.

 

The whole point of stories like this is to make you think "crony capitalism" isn't a description of what's been going on and continues to go on right now

 

 Ken Griffin just hates tariffs, which funded the (necessarily very small) federal government until the 20th century.

Meanwhile he's afraid the 12,000 lobbyists which already populate Washington procuring handouts like the Chips Act's billions of dollars for businesses will be replaced with 12,000 other ones lobbying for something else, ROFLMAO.

 

 Citadel’s Ken Griffin says Trump’s tariffs could lead to crony capitalism

“I am gravely concerned that the rise of tariffs puts us on a slippery slope towards crony capitalism,” the billionaire investor said Thursday at the Economic Club of New York. ...

“Those same companies that enjoy that momentary sugar rush of having their competitors removed from the battlefield, soon become complacent, soon take for granted their newfound economic superiority, and frankly, they become less competitive on both the world stage and less competitive at meeting the needs of the American consumer,” Griffin said at the event. ...

“Now you’re going to find the halls of Washington really filled with the special interest groups and the lobbyists as people look for continued higher and higher tariffs to keep away foreign competition, and to protect inefficient American businesses have failed to meet the needs of the American consumer,” Griffin said.

 

Trump has learned nothing, floats wacko bird pie-in-the-sky elimination of income tax

The federal government now needs about $6 trillion in revenue annually for the budget, social security, and medicare.

Imports of goods and services last year were valued at $3.83 trillion. You'd have to tariff all that at 160% or so to come up with $6 trillion. When pigs fly.

Trump promised big cuts to spending and to the size of the government workforce in 2016. Never happened.

This won't either.

 

Remember when Joe Biden pledged to reverse Trump's senseless tariffs lol?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Biden Levies Sweeping Tariffs on China, Intensifying Trade Fight With Trump

Bloomberg economic model forecasts 25% tariffs between democratic and autocratic countries would roll back globalization to 1990s levels and leave the world 3.5% poorer

Arguably that would be a good thing for American workers, but Bloomberg doesn't care about that.

 

For three decades, a defining feature of the world economy has been its ability to churn out ever more goods at ever lower prices. The entry of more than a billion workers from China and the former Soviet bloc into the global labor market, coupled with falling trade barriers and hyper-efficient logistics, produced an age of abundance for many.But the last four years have brought an escalating series of disruptions. Tariffs multiplied during the US-China trade war. The pandemic brought lockdowns. And now, sanctions and export controls are upending the supply of commodities and goods.All of this risks leaving advanced economies facing a problem they thought they’d vanquished long ago: that of scarcity. Emerging nations could see more acute threats to energy and food security, like the ones already causing turmoil in countries from Sri Lanka to Peru. And everyone will have to grapple with higher prices.

More.

The story never mentions how those newly introduced extra billion plus workers reduced economic outcomes for the already established middle classes around the world, especially in America where the full time job of the 1990s became a thing of the past.

If I'm repeating myself, I don't care.

 

 

 

Joe Biden is loudly for tariff punishment of China for burning coal

He's a Democrat Trump.

This bad Greer take is like George W. Bush saying you're either with us or against us in his war on terror

Tariffs are especially called for against communists qua communists, but Trump would be just fine with free trade with the Chicoms as long as it were truly free. Trump has no there there.

Jeffrey Snider: The whole global economy is in trouble, and it isn't because of a few billion in US tariffs on Chinese goods

Rather it is because hundreds of billions of dollars worth of liquidity keep disappearing since the Great Financial Crisis.

Snowflake presidency: China threatens Hong Kong, Trump delays threatened tariffs until December minutes later

Tariff Man spooks markets, President Shapiro comes up short on the vision thing

Year of the paper tiger: One term president blinks on tariffs

US will hold off on raising China tariffs to 25% as Trump and Xi agree to a 90-day trade truce