Donald Trump thinks trade is a zero-sum game. Xi Jinping appears happy to wait for the trade war to backfire on the US president.
Donald Trump’s second time in the White House has produced the worst 100 days for financial markets in half a century.
The US president said “drill,baby,drill” but his tariffs tanked the commodity’s price and they could reduce,not increase,production.
Donald Trump’s backflips on his astronomical China tariffs and firing Fed chair Jerome Powell show that markets can protect the world from his worst instincts – to some extent.
Tuesday wasn’t a great day for Donald Trump and his MAGA mates. But it was a great day for financial markets.
Meetings of two of the world’s key multilateral organisations this week will be overshadowed by the prospect that the US will withdraw from the institutions it helped create.
The world’s traditional havens in times of stress have themselves become sources of stress.
The US Federal Reserve Board’s usually cautious chairman says Trump’s tariffs will lead to higher inflation and lower US economic growth. That won’t go down well in the White House.
China has told its domestic airlines not to order Boeing planes or US parts. That will hurt America’s biggest exporter of manufactured goods and could damage China’s own aviation ambitions.
The volatility so far this month might be just a reaction to Trump’s tariffs. It might also reflect a structural threat.