Jeff Childers<\/p>\n
Trump is holding massive leverage. Global markets are getting beaten worse than a micro wrestler in a bar fight. Mainland China’s CSI 300 index dropped sharply into a plunge of around -6% to -7%. Hong Kong’s main stock measure, the Hang Seng Index, crashed -13%\u2014 its worst day since a 1997 landslide during the Asian financial crisis. Indexes in Shanghai, Taipei and Tokyo fell between -7% and -10%. European markets have free-fallen between -5% and -7% since their openings early this morning.<\/p>\n
In an interview on NBC\u2019s Meet the Depressed<\/strong> (LOL ), Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, \u201cI can tell you that, as only he can do at this moment, President Trump has created maximum leverage for himself. And more than 50 countries have approached the administration about lowering their non-tariff trade barriers, lowering their tariffs, and stopping currency manipulation.<\/p>\n Europe is on particularly shaky ground. EU Ministers will hold yet another emergency meeting today in Luxembourg to discuss how to collectively respond to U.S. tariffs. Meanwhile, Trump is dickering separately with many individual EU leaders.<\/p>\n Some commenters already speculate that Trump\u2019s tariffs could shatter the European Union.<\/p>\n The European Union is a patchwork of competing national interests duct-taped together by bureaucracy and inertia. Trump is exploiting a structural weakness: the EU speaks with one voice\u2014 unless a member state sees a better deal. And the President can offer them better individual deals. You might call it a \u201ctariff scalpel\u201d strategy\u2014 slicing not just into trade surpluses, but also slicing apart alliances.<\/p>\n Only a couple weeks ago, the Europeans held frantic emergency meetings to discuss how to undermine America\u2019s peace negotiations with Ukraine and Russia. Now they\u2019re hanging on for dear life. They\u2019re scrambling to keep their economies afloat and to stop them from unraveling under the weight of U.S. tariffs and retaliatory market chaos.<\/p>\n Thus we begin to see even more outlines emerging of the bigger play. It\u2019s not just economic leverage. It\u2019s strategic sequencing: destabilize, divide, deal. In his AF1 comments last night, Trump had harsh words for the meddlesome Europeans.<\/p>\n \u201cEurope\u2019s treated us very badly,\u201d the President explained. So \u201cwe put a big tariff on Europe. They\u2019re coming to the table; they want to talk.\u201d But, he said, \u201cthere\u2019s no talk unless they pay us a lot of money on a yearly basis, number one for present but also for past. Because they\u2019ve taken a lot of our wealth away. And we\u2019re not gonna allow that to happen.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n For Europe, therefore, it\u2019s not just equalization\u2014 it\u2019s retaliation. It\u2019s reparations. I bet now they wish they hadn\u2019t so enthusiastically leapt into the elections interference game back in 2020. They tried to sabotage his presidency. Now he\u2019s dismantling their union\u2014 one tariff at a time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jeff Childers Trump is holding massive leverage. Global markets are getting beaten worse than a micro wrestler in a bar fight. Mainland China’s CSI 300 index dropped sharply into a plunge of around -6% to -7%. Hong Kong’s main stock … Continue reading