Sorry to hear that potential Lori. With any luck, maybe some of this gets negotiated down or at least maybe not as significant as it currently stands.
Well the news is out and the market has reacted. I figured with the advanced warning most of this would be priced in. Hopefully today's massive pullback will be our capitulation and we can move on from here. I am hoping we can get all this behind us in the first half of the year and hopefully have some sort of market recovery in the 2nd half. I guess this is an experiment to see if the 'rip off the band-aid' approach is effective or crippling.
Yeah, we definitely took out that prior "bottom" this morning. I think it was the size and broadness of it that may have caught the market a bit off guard.
Yeah, the only sector holding up today appears to be consumer staples sector. Which is not too surprising considering the messaging at the moment. Anybody pick up any shares today? I did snag a few shares in my broad index fund. I just couldn't resist today.
Oh boy...I feel my ass on fire ... Still...I grabed a few Amazon shares. My oldest girl did the same; she got some Google too, by my tip.
This is the political game Trump is playing. Vietnam already came to the table with a deal, he didn’t mention that yesterday because he wants to the credit for it when he announces it in the coming days/weeks. We will see this play out with all the different countries and I expect him and his advisors are expecting good news will flow from these announcements.
In case anyone wants to know: Those tariffs charged to the U.S. (the left column %) have been proven to be absolutely made up nonsense. Those are absolutely not the import tariffs in other countries. In addition, how did they came up with the right hand column? They just used the percentage of the trade deficit and cut it in half. Boom! 100% IDIOCY!!! Tariffs in small countries are to protect their small local economies and allow them to become competitive with the rest of the world, otherwise some multinational company will muscle its way in and dominate their entire economy. By the way, you know who used to have heavy import tariffs to protect its fledging economy when it first started out? The U.S. This is all political crap. Most of these jobs are not coming back. They will either be relocated or automated. And I am curious, where will all this tariff money go in what is essentially a large tax on consumers?
You know when those charts were released/posted, it just didn’t make sense when you looked at it. It just seemed too far out of balance from just a common sense perspective. Don”t get me wrong, I could certainly see any of our politicians stand idly by and not give a hoot about any of us. I mean they seem greatly concerned about important stuff like saving TikTok rather than economic success. Sure enough, I did a little digging myself, and learned a bit about the inaccuracy of these numbers. It is no wonder that we side eye just about any information anymore.
Supposedly, it goes to the Treasury Dept, and then into general fund of the government to spend on whatever.
I picked a few shares yesterday too. Looks like we may get some more opportunities going forward as well. I've got a bit to deploy as this goes along in addition to my regular contributions.
I am glad I am not the only person that saw the 'chart' and was thinking it was someone's 7th grade project. On the news last night they showed some formula with greek symbols on how they came about the tariff percent but like @roadtonowhere08 mentioned anyone with half a brain instantly sees they just divided by 2. This was quick and dirty with no intentions of actually implementing a long term tariff. This was solely a lever for negotiating and honestly from that standpoint it's a pretty good move because negotiating with irrational is nearly impossible. We all see the devastating short term impact, but will have to sit and wait to see if his perceived end goal is achieved. I'm trying to be a glass half full kind of guy.
As you mention, the tariffs are political and probably won't serve the most noble intentions but there is an up side. I've recently started two small businesses. We have a couple of products that are being made in North America. The plan was to stabilize the design and ramp production in Vietnam. Even for a small run of 5000 units, which is a lot for me, it make's sense to out source to an overseas vendor. Tariffs have changed that. We're looking to bring in someone to operate our injection molding machine. The electronics are still made in Asia. It would take a 100% tariff to make me reconsider and maybe not even then. Chinese suppliers of micros and boards are so dominating, I cringe to think about re-shoring them. I know someone who has a pick and place machine. He makes his own boards but I don't believe he does it economically. I believe the driver behind his cottage scale electronics manufacturing is process control. He has an interesting product that he wanted to iterate a lot before releasing so he bought a used pick and place machine, a bunch of reels of components, and a wave soldering bath. Now he's in production, making 300 pieces per year, and he spends considerable time making something he could undoubtedly source from Asia for less than he can make it himself. What's more, he spends quite a bit of time tending to his machine since his scale and level of automation is low. If making boards was remotely profitable, I would approach him to make our stuff and he would jump at the opportunity to scale his business and increase his automation. As it is, I can't imagine he would do it and I don't want him to. I don't wish to criticize local electronics production. Good for him but he is clearly doing it for non-financial reasons. I don't see small scale electronics ever returning to North America. The iPhone and smart thermostat will not make sense to build here. I don't see car parts being made here, either. It might make sense under the right conditions, like we have now, but we will pay a terrible price for our cars. At some point, we will need to realize we can't do it reasonably and stop trying to re-shore the small electronics industry. Parts of sufficient complexity could return, though. With enough automation, computer motherboards could be made here and maybe APU complex. These items would start to make sense with a small tariff. I would imagine the designs will remain Asian and only production would happen here. In the late 1970s, a tiny handful of people decided to put millions of North Americans out of work in order to lift a billion Chinese out of poverty. Outside of that group of a few dozen people, nobody here thought it was a good idea. Everyone was upset by the endless factory closures, unemployment, and drugs that seem to replace employment. We all thought it was a temporary departure from sanity and that we would soon come to our senses.
Not that these are too reliable at any point....notice the previous report has already been revised lower. Jobs Report. The March jobs report showed the US economy continues to add jobs at a strong pace last month while the unemployment rate ticked slightly higher. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Friday showed 228,000 new jobs were created in March, more than the 140,000 expected by economists, the 117,000 seen in February, and the 158,000 average monthly gain seen over the last year. The unemployment rate rose to 4.2% from the 4.1% seen in the prior month. February's monthly job gains were revised lower from a previous reading of 151,000. And as expected, China responds with a 34% tariff to US. U.S. markets dropped Friday morning after China announced retaliatory tariffs of 34% on all goods from America.
I saw this yesterday and thought it was funny......when I read your post it made me think of it. "Sometimes the best strategy in a negotiation is convincing the other side that you are crazy."
