Futures recovered from an overnight dip on news Trump Seeks to Ease Tensions With China, G-7.
Mr. Trump on Monday said the U.S. negotiations with China were “much more meaningful than at any time.” Asked if he would consider delaying or canceling planned tariffs on China, he replied: “Anything’s possible.”
In softening his rhetoric, Mr. Trump also sowed some confusion. Mr. Trump said China had called U.S. officials on the previous evening and said “let’s get back to the table.” The spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Geng Shuang, said he was “not aware of” such a phone call by China to the U.S.
A spokesman for the U.S. Trade Representative didn’t respond to questions about when the call took place and between whom.
Asked later in the day to clarify whom the calls were with, Mr. Trump said: “I don’t want to talk about calls. We’ve had calls. We’ve had calls at the highest levels.”
4-D Chess Not
Does anybody remotely believe the above synopsis as describe by Trump?
It’s not 4-D chess, nor 3-D chess, nor any kind of chess as I have commented numerous times.
Tom Luongo has an excellent writeup on the subject.
Please consider Trump’s Not A 4-D Chess-Player, He’s A Very Simple Creature
If you listen to Trump carefully, seeing him for what he is not what you think he is, what you want him to be or, most importantly, what he wants you to see, you hear a man who fully believes the Fed controls the economy.
You hear a man that firmly believes in the power of the government to remake the world in whatever image it wants, whenever it wants. You hear a man so solipsistic he can only see the world in terms he defined more than thirty years ago.
You hear a man who fundamentally doesn’t believe trade results in both sides winning but that everyone either wins a deal or loses. If he didn’t extract maximum pain from the other side he ‘lost.’ It’s the source of Trump’s inherent mercantilism.
And that fault in Donald Trump’s character is leading him to ever more extreme behavior as he refuses to reconcile the world we have versus the world he wants. So he keeps pressuring, embarrassing and humiliating people he wants to make deals with. And when they refuse to do so, he explodes and, like a child who didn’t get his cookie, uses the power of the Presidency to still try to get what he wants.
Trump’s not a multi-dimensional analyst. He isn’t a 4-d chess player. He’s actually a very simple creature. He believes the crap spewed by CNBC. He’s hired advisers who worked there for pity’s sake.
Liar’s Poker
Trump has changed his tone on China at least three times in the last three days. He’s been promising a deal with China for a year or so.
There’s nothing “meaningful” about any of this.
It’s a liar’s poker game Trump is playing to get reelected.
Anyone with a bit of commons sense can see Trump is a very poor liar.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Trump negotiated a 5% discount off his Chinese take-away delivery by taking to the head waiter at Long Fat Won Hunan Kitchen. Very meaningful, very high level.
Interesting commentary from Geopolitical Futures on the US-China trade war…
link to mailchi.mp
Both parties stink. But, I think the Democratic Socialists are worse. So, in 2020 MAGA will become HYNAVFT (Hold Your Nose And Vote For Trump).
I’m very perplex about Trump. How can a man who is the US real estate tycoon perform such poor in the politics arena?.
I’ve read a lot of books by Trump about real estate, and I read too books written together with Robert Kiyosaki and to be honest he doesen’t seems to me a dumb guy, let alone a psycopath.
So why all this posturing. It seems to me he knows well that the solution to trade imbalance between usa and china cannot be a trade war (it’s actually a recipe for disaster).
When he talked in Kiyosaki books about gold and what happened in 1971 he seemed to me a guy almost in the camp of austrians (and I think he invests his money following that line of taught).
So, what I don’t understand? Am I too naive? It’s all about posturing and impending elections? What he want to obtain from Powell? And about China? Why not trying to change only the delta in the current trade imbalance situation?
If you
Kudos to Mish for the Luongo reference. He really wanted to support Trump, even recently, but reached a breaking point over tariffs, jawboning the Fed into cutting rates, and most of all aggressive foreign policy.
I don’t get why some are still ardent Trump fans. If you loved 2016 Trump, it’s tough to see how you can love 2019 Trump. They’re very different creatures. The logic seems to be circular, that Trump is great because the MSM doesn’t like him, and the MSM doesn’t like Trump because he’s great. The whole 4D chess/Q motif is perhaps the dumbest psyop I’ve ever seen (trust Sessions!), yet somehow still effective. People just desperately want to believe because the alternative is apparently too frightening.
I had lunch with God yesterday.
He said everything’s going extremely well with the U.S. / China trade talks.
Someone please explain why stock traders continue to fall for this. Ok he is President – who simply loves to see the world jump to his daily tweets that we learn over and over again have no basis in fact . What is Wall Street thinking?
It’s not so much human traders as the algos. They need to be reconfigured to filter out the noise of early morning Twitter bombast.
I think the traders think that other traders will react, so react to get ahead of them.
Basically it is the same situation where you try to bet on who will win a beauty competition – you don’t pick the contestant you think is the most beautiful, you pick the one you think most other people will think is beautiful.
When the Main Stream Media tells a lie it is Fake News….When Trump tells a lie its the “art of the deal”…China knows that Trump will blink and they will play this game of chicken with Trump until next summer…when the election creeps in….then they will take Trump down….picture Howie Mandell on the set of Deal or No Deal….and President Xi of China….slamming the Lid Down and shouting NO DEAL!!!
I’m really worried that Trump will be so desperate for a deal by the time the Chinese have spent another 12 months teasing him that he’ll cut something monumentally stupid just to claim to his base he has cut the most amazing deal of all time – and that anybody who points out flaws is just another TDS-type.
I mean, the guy is so simple to play it is a joke.
When you don’t have to be held accountable for telling any truths, then what’s another lie ? Trump has been lying so long that even he has no idea of what a lie or truth is. If it comes out of his mouth, its a truth according to Trump.
Signed,
A Trump Voter
“You hear a man so solipsistic he can only see the world in terms he defined more than thirty years ago.”
This defines just about every conservative and Republican I have ever met. They tend to be science deniers and all tech scares them
“The widely reported Greenland surface melt event around 1 August 2019 (green oval) was then followed by a recovery to normal in the following weeks (purple oval), which was not reported by the media.”
The media is liberal. The media is biased. Biased media is not science. Global warming alarmism isn’t science, it is political propaganda.
1) Never said anything about global warming
2) My professional training is in sciences and engineering and I just don’t take whatever the media says (right, left or middle).
3) And see you just proved my point.
I wonder if you would share with me the title of the last peer reviewed scientific publication (not popular press) you have read on the issue of global warming?
Can’t he just nuke China and stop all the hurricanes?
The chinese foreign ministry spokesperson formally denied having the calls
Trump has been reduced to begging Xi & Zarif to come out and play!
Winning is so easy.
This was the point I made in my comment on “Trump regrets not imposing…” I said that Trump is not trying to bully China. He simply believes trade is only good if you run a surplus, and since we don’t run a surplus with China, having less trade with China is a good thing. I would add that I agree that while the stock market behavior sometimes persuades him to temper his comments, he clearly continues to believe that free trade is a bad thing.
Why does China buy Treasury bonds? Because we run a trade deficit and they need a place to park the dollars. Every country in the world needs dollars to settle their trades, because the dollar is the world’s primary reserve currency.
People are always worried about China selling their Treasury bonds. What would they get in return? Dollars. What would they do with the dollars….. buy Russian Rubles? Maybe Euro’s?
It is all a zero sum game. You cannot have a trade surplus with every country if you want cheap goods in dollars when the dollar is the defacto global reserve currency. China has to quell their population with work. They need the US consumer more than the US consumer needs them. China could easily turn into Venezuela because it is essentially the same type of government. China doesn’t value domestic consumption to this day b/c of the fear of what it will do to the next generation. Countries like China, Russia, North Korea and Venezuela need to come into the 21st century and free their people of government control of everything. Even a quasi-free market with liberty as the founding principle would do wonders for the whole world. Instead we have to deal Communism all over again which we know is a failed ideology. No country is perfect but these countries that don’t allow their citizens to live freely in an open society are doomed to civil war and killing their own citizens.
I think things are going wonderfully.
We have more people working, less people on food stamps, lowest minority unemployment rates, incomes are up, the stock market is up, no new shooting wars, taxes are lower and low inflation. Just about anyone that puts out any effort, has been able to earn money in the last 2 years.
I guess some people just don’t want to enjoy life. Better to look for problems – real or imaginary.
Who knew jacking up the budget deficit to a $1 trillion/per year would boost the economy! Imagine how great it would be if it were $2 trillion!
“I think things are going wonderfully.”
…
Sure, sure. Just ignore the massive increase in leverage in all sectors. Economic gains the past 10 years of poor quality. Debt anywhere, everywhere has pushed gain, not broad based income increase or new technology driven.
When the tide goes out – and it will – there will be a tsunami of defaults.
Try looking at positives and enjoy life. It’s the only one you get!
…..spoken like a true ostrich….
Matt3 is good Russian name.
Tomorrow is gold and silver options expiration and gold was slammed down pretty hard last night from $1550-ish to $1530.
I wonder if some people in the gold & silver futures markets are becoming VERY nervous at that $1550 level, and if there is a LOT of pressure on Trump to keep his big mouth shut for the next 24 hours until CME options are settled?
Don’t read too much into. Gold is overbought and due a correction at some point. Nothing goes up in a straight line. Just buy some, forget about it and go enjoy your life
The half life on THIS market intervention?
Weeks?
Days?
Hours?
The closer to “it” we get, the shorter the prop.
Golly gosh, you think the President is LYING to us? Troubling indeed….
Trump has to go. Problem is all the dem candidates are worse. Best case scenario is Trump loses and the dem reneges on all their promises.
No, best case is that we continue to have a Congress controlled by one party, and a President of the other party. It doesn’t matter which is which. It only matters that no one party controls everything.
Nah – the Democrats aren’t worse. They are merely just as bad.
Yeah you keep saying that but last time I checked the biggest economic drops cae fro Republicans
I’m talking about the current crop. Some of the previous were ok. Even if it seems that Clinton reaped the economic spoils of the tax and regulation cuts started by Reagan and Bush.
So I am curious. Who is your pick out of the gang of 20. I never start paying attention until someone is nominated because I live in a state that has zero influence on which few of the 20 will survive.
Gabbard is the only one I would even spend 5 minutes looking at and she is probably trading down from anyone the Libertarians run.
Curious-cat, Oregon? I live in Oregon and we have zero say in the nominating process, our primary is not till mid/late May, it would have to be so badly tied for us to have any influence that it would go to a floor fight anyway.
My picks for nomination, well, there is so little for me to pick from I changed my registration to GOP a couple months ago, I would go for a centrist democrat but not for the far left, I did like Beto till he went to South Carolina and came away saying slavery reparations were worth looking at, that ended my affair with his brand of policy. I now see him as an inexperienced skateboarder.
I like Pete B. but seriously doubt a gay man can be considered electable, and like it or not electability is high on the list of what it takes. Sentiment and liking someone for office might feel good, but it loses elections every damned time.
I would normally say on policy alone I am okay with (not enthusiastic) about Biden, but he is too freaking old for the job as far as I am concerned, and I always thought of him as a coattail rider anyway. We can’t afford that right now. One thing I just am not going to accept as an option is anyone that puts forward the idea of a UBI (at least one that is not actually Universal) anyone advocating slave reparations, or anyone who puts panicky climate change policy above the wealth of the nation.
I like Gillibrand, but as I said before LIKE is a losing sentiment upon which to base a decision. I will probably vote for Weld in the primary even if it is too late and too little, if he is even still running. I seriously think Trump is the end of the USA, but that Sanders is worse, if it comes to a choice between those two I am moving to Buenos Aires.
What? You don’t like 4d chess players lol? Ok, then Trump can change and start playing 5D underwater Hungry, hungry hippos. Would you vote for him then?
I had really hoped Mish would post something attacking the absurdity of Sanders’s New Green New Deal, and it’s 16 trillion giveaway to feminists and people of color as well as indigenous people at most risk of climate change, there was so much fodder there for us to poke fun at, we could have used a break to simply be lighthearted and enjoy the festival of ridiculousness in it. Of course the current situation is not at all lacking in reasons to poke fun at the financial system. By the way, I would like to know where he thinks he is going to raise 16 trillion to pay for it, that is almost $110,000 per US household. Zero carbon USA by 2050 with most of that prior to 2030? He claims it will create 20 million new jobs and that will pay for it, but the end of oil and the markets of scale they require would cost at least 35 to 40 million jobs and end the consumer as a factor in economics that would cost another 70 million jobs. His plan is nothing short of the USSR Part Deux.
The thing is for me, I am a democrat because right wing “conservative” issues like abortion and the control of females, as well as far right attitudes about such things as gay people, and taxes being theft, a subject I get really P.O.ed about, talk about wanting a free rider champagne brunch for nothing, they lost me when they decided in the 80’s to tilt the laws and economics to powerful white males in the name of reactionary politics. Their form of welfare is no better than the left. They weep and moan about “freedom” even as they make laws to discriminate against and burden anyone they don’t like. And then there is religion, I take seriously the need to keep religion out of government, no wonder the left has turned man made global warming into a new religion, to fill the void of the fairy tales distributed by the right.
So, I changed registration, now GOP. But, that does not mean I would vote for just any republican. If we are to have another Great Depression we will need someone that recognizes it and has at least a shred of compassion or people will die. We can’t have a Hoover, a Trump, or even a Walsh. I would vote for Weld. But, I also doubt who we want or vote for will do us any good. Or electoral system is no longer functional.
I just know that a far left backlash is coming unless we get very lucky, and whether that is Sanders or one of his bot clones like Harris matters not. It would be a disaster that would permanently end prosperity in the US. Right now prosperity is not obvious because it is so badly distributed and that does need to change, it is the cause of this far left sentiment, but we can change it reasonably within the current restraints of capitalism, provided the 1% finally gets the message that greed is NOT good when it impoverish’s the bottom 90%. “Democratic socialism,” which is a marketing tool and buzzword for SOCIALISM, it is not a thing, would destroy the USA, I seriously doubt we could ever come back from it.
I think it is a coin toss now if man makes it to 2030.
Oregon? No, Delaware. LOL. Late April and an amazingly small number of delegates. A few years ago I changed my registration to libertarian because I was tired of getting dunned by the Republicans, and since the effect of my vote in a primary is minuscule. Delaware has essentially become a one party state anyway, ruled and ruined by Democrats.
Joe Biden? Real nice guy. Everyone in Delaware has run into him somewhere at a store or event. He’s very popular here. His off the cuff comments are all understood by Delawareans and no one takes offense. I agree he is too old. And he will do nothing for the egregious debt levels. Joe never saw a dollar he didn’t want to tax and spend. And he never shuts up. I used to call him the bionic mouth.
Would he win against DT? Hard to say. It might come down to how much the country values personal style, ethics and civil behavior. It’s gonna be interesting…. a test to see what the country has really become.
Actually I like Pete B. too and actually donated to his campaign. But I agree the country may not be ready yet for a gay president. Of course, he is married, never divorced that I know of and I would bet has never grabbed a woman by the P—-. 🙂