If a fool says he’ll do something, believe him.

@gallerdude who's more foolish the fool or the fool who believes him?

@gallerdude He will probably try, but I’d imagine anything that most likely violates the USMCA Implementation Act would be enjoined pending the outcome of litigation (and there will be litigation).

@TheNorthStar the fool who doesn’t believe him?

@ChadCotty I thought he could still implement tariffs for up to 150 days under emergency economic powers act

To those buying YES, why stonk market up so bigly? Either tariffs don't matter, or market doesn't beleive in them.

@AlQuinn If we have high inflation, don't stocks keep going up in dollar terms even if they fall in real value?

@AlQuinn they had already priced the tariffs in?

@ShakedKoplewitz much more complicated than that (and my declaration itself is of course oversimplified, since currency appreciation can also shift the impacts around). High inflation usually entails higher interest rates which would be usually bad for stock performance. Not to mention, the disruption sudden, high tariffs on our biggest trading partners would be massively disruptive to company planning and pricing, and likely bad for profits.

I still think market is acting like Trump is using this threat as a negotiating tactic and that US/Mexico will fold.

@NicoDelon Trump didn't say anything about 25% on US/Mex until last night, so would be impressive if it was already priced in

@AlQuinn what? Large tariffs are a surprise to exactly no one.

@NicoDelon it was 10-20% broad based tariffs excluding FTA countries and 60-100% on China based on previous indications. The Can/Mex stuff is totally new since it is on FTA countries and the volume of trade is so high.

@AlQuinn

From the NYT:

Mexican officials did not immediately react, but the announcement most likely did not come as a surprise to them after repeated threats from Mr. Trump to impose such tariffs. In the closing days of his campaign, Mr. Trump threatened to place tariffs as high as 100 percent on all goods from Mexico.

@AlQuinn A negotiating tactic for what? He already negotiated the USMCA trade act during his first term

@NicoDelon Ah I didn't know about that. However, a claim made in a stump speech (or wherever he said that) without any specifics on timing is a bit different than specifically stating 25% on day 1 of his dictatorship. The conventional wisdom as of last week based on his post-election rhetoric was of the form I described above.

@TiredCliche

Ostensibly, border security:

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113546215051155542

(it's very hard to find Truths since even news stories that quote them will not link to Truth Social, and google seems to try to ignore it exists as well--I really hope Trump busts up google while he's at it)

@AlQuinn so afaict there's factors pushing both ways, but in this case I don't think it'd push nominal stock prices down. The biggest bear factor for stocks in an inflation environment would be that the fed might raise interest rates, but Trump's made it clear he would push the fed to keep interest rates low, which probably counters this effect.

@ShakedKoplewitz I guess separately, despite his rhetoric, do we beleive Trump can limit the independence of the Fed to an appreciable extent? I see one sparsely traded market on this here:

https://manifold.markets/DanW/will-the-federal-reserve-exist-and

(The big problem with manifold is how much of an utter mess it is to search for markets, and how there are sometimes dozens of duplicates of the same question)

@AlQuinn that's 30% for it to lose independence, which probably implies odds of over 60% that Trump has the ability to at all influence it.

@ShakedKoplewitz (actually probably higher than that - Powell's term ends next year so even without any change in independence Trump can appoint a new chair)

@ShakedKoplewitz that market has virtually no volume, so I wouldn't take the % that seriously. Powell's term ends in May 2026, not next year.

@AlQuinn putting that market aside (it's low liquidity but I think high enough that we should consider the option plausible), though, there's a bunch of ways Trump could reasonably influence the fed:

1) directly ending fed independence or firing Powell, as in the market (least likely option imo)

2) doesn't directly fire Powell but makes enough noise, threats, or backroom deals that the fed preemptively avoids raising interest rates as a compromise to avoid interference

3) Powell himself never takes politics into account but the guy after him is specifically chosen to be anti-high interest rates so long term interest rates are still not that high (and, since the market anticipates this now, it's trading on this basis).

4) none of those three things happen but the current market thinks there's a high probability that the could.

@ShakedKoplewitz i dunno, it's 4 people on that market, and one of them is an idiot (me). I can move it to 95% with just M300, and since Manifold is an utter mess, that market might sit at that point for a long time before anyone sees it to (possibly) correct it.

I think judging what Trump is likely to do on Jan 20th is hard enough such that making high confidence predictions 18 months out is foolish. And even if you are right, while asset prices would rise with inflation in the long run, in the short run a normal expectation would be that disruptively high inflation would not be good for the market.

I have a market for Canada related news specifically:

Donald Trump promises 25 per cent tariff on products from Canada, Mexico

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-tariff-25-1.7393160

@makeworld wow, can't believe that he was serious the last 100,000 times that he said he would do this

@makeworld if they get 25% then China should at least get 60%, not 10%, right?

@LukasTilmann The 10% is on top of other tariffs currently in place