https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-3-2025
"Trump’s announcement last night that he was placing high tariffs on countries
around the world came after the stock market closed, but it drove stock futures
dramatically downward. Overseas, global markets also plunged. Today, before the
stock market opened, Trump posted on his social media site: “THE OPERATION IS
OVER! THE PATIENT LIVED, AND IS HEALING. THE PROGNOSIS IS THAT THE PATIENT WILL
BE FAR STRONGER, BIGGER, BETTER, AND MORE RESILIENT THAN EVER BEFORE. MAKE
AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
Fittingly, it was former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani who rang the bell opening
the stock market today. Giuliani represented
Newsmax, the right-wing media
channel with ties to Trump. As soon as the market opened, stocks fell straight
down. By the end of the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had dropped 1,679
points, falling about 4%, its biggest fall since the coronavirus pandemic took
hold in 2020. The S&P 500 fell 274 points, or 4.8%. The Nasdaq Composite fell
more than 1,050 points, or almost 6%. The losses wiped out about $2 trillion.
Trump justified the tariffs by declaring that the U.S. is in the midst of a
national emergency, but this afternoon he left the White House for a long
weekend in Florida, where his private Doral resort outside of Miami is holding
the first domestic golf tournament of the season of LIV Golf, which is financed
by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.
Trump’s tariffs are not an economic policy. Tariffs are generally imposed on
products, not on nations. By placing them on countries, the White House was
able to arrive at its numbers with a nonsensical formula that appears to have
been reached by asking AI how to impose tariffs—a suggestion so outlandish that
I dismissed when I saw it last night, but economist Paul Krugman today
identified it as being a likely possibility.
CNBC’s Steve Liesman said:
“Nobody ever heard of this formula. Nobody has ever used this formula. So I’m
sorry, but the conclusion seems to be the president kind of made this up as he
went along....”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
