In case you were busy living your life Wednesday, early in the afternoon President Donald Trump announced a 90-day pause for most tariffs, except those on China, and stock markets went wild to the upside.
You’d think this would make most adults in the populace happy. And you would be wrong, which explains a lot about the hatred for Trump among Democrats, LameStream media, and, surprisingly, many financial types.
It already was a good day financially for me prior to Trump’s change of heart, with gold up about $90 an ounce at the time, and silver up more than $1 an ounce. Those rises in precious metals prices had to do with panic in the bond market in overnight trading.
One theory making the rounds is that hedge funds with overleveraged positions were playing arbitrage between bonds and futures on those bond instruments and got caught short in a liquidity crunch.
Once Trump paused tariffs, the bond market was freed up and stocks went crazy to the upside, retaking much of the losses from previous days of panic.
The Dow Jones Industrial average was up nearly 3,000 points, a tad under 8 percent just on the day. The tech-heavy NASDAQ was up 1,800 and change, slightly more than 12 percent.
Understand, the doom porn purveyors in business and regular news had spent the past few days predicting the end of financial life as we know it, sort of like Democrats kept trying to portray the last election as the end of democracy should Trump win,
They were wrong then, and all the people calling for financial armageddon were wrong, too.
Oh, to see these half-wits try to scramble to cover for their tariff misread, sort of like how all those LameStream media types who denied Clueless Joe Biden was, indeed, clueless, now are trying to get on the right side of that history.
We wrote here, several times, advising all to remain calm and ignore the panic being spread by people who are supposed to know better. Trump coined a new term for them, calling them “panicans” (those who panic).
I would call them tariffied, as in terrified by tariffs.
All I know is if people succumbed to the panic spreaders and sold, they missed a huge rally, one that just might have legs in coming days.
Regardless, the race was on among media and Democrats on the national scene Wednesday to ignore the financial market gains and impugn Trump for blinking in the face of market turmoil. It didn’t matter that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he and Trump had discussed this very strategy Sunday. Once a flood of countries approached the U.S. government about trade deals to end reciprocal tarrifs – and reportedly more than 75 have done so – the plan was to pause tariffs for those nations to provide time to negotiate.
But, for countries such as China, which has been quick to counter with tariffs on the U.S., no deal.
It makes sense. One might go so far as to say Trump brilliantly has isolated China economically, not a bad thing considering that the Chinese Communists are dedicated to the demise of the United States.
Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, like Bessent a guy with an impressive resume of Wall Street success before joining the Trump team, went on CNBS’s Fast Money show to address the situation and found himself being grilled by panelists, who seemed to be aligning themselves with China.
Part of Trump’s plan with tariffs is to incentivize companies to return production to America, thereby avoiding any tariffs.
But the Wall Street money machine has been built on corporations headquartered here, but paying sweatshop wages to foreign workers to create their products abroad, which they then sell here for huge profits.
Manufacturing of all sorts has fled this country, leaving a gap in the availability of jobs for people who didn’t go to college to get a degree in philosophy.
These smug CNBS types chortled that there is no reason to have Americans making sneakers. Lutnick pointed out maybe there is need to have semiconductors, or pharmaceuticals, or steel, or aluminum made here.
After Lutnick’s segment was done, the studio types ridiculed him in absentia.
It was left for CNBS commentator Rick Santelli, brought on to talk about bond distress, to challenge his co-workers for opinions on whether Trump had struck a blow against globalism.
These arrogant twits even took shots at Santelli, wondering whether his question was significant. Santelli believes it is, as do Trump voters. They want control of this country in the hands of our citizens, not elites in Europe or Asia,
Trump’s tariff battle is an attempt to push the reset button on the world and guarantee the U.S. is in a position of strength to fend off the globalists.
But Santelli soon was cut off and then there was a segment with an academic, a China expert, who, surprise, called Trump names and panned his policies.
Meanwhile, the very same Democrats who were rushing to microphones to berate Trump when stock markets were declining, now are demanding investigations about why he paused the tariffs and helped fuel a huge stock market rally.
Talk about hypocrites.
The latest is that the spreaders of fear porn are speculating that miffed China might do something dramatic in coming days as retribution. Let them do so, say I.
And do yourself a favor, ignore these fools. Accept that what Trump is doing could produce future volatility, but the end result likely is going to be worth any short-term discomfort. Keep the faith.
Sam Ross Jr's site 