No MAGA For The Donald: The Problem Is Bad Money, Not Bad Trade Deals, Part 5

Alas, the Donald and President Xi are just hours from their historic confab, but however it turns out it will be a case of no cigar. And that’s especially true if their gaggle of advisors come up with some kind of face-saving, can-kicking shuffle of the showdown to another day.

Indeed, we fully expect there will emerge from Saturday’s meeting some kind of “pause button” gimmick that will keep the current $250 billion of US tariffs and $110 billion of Chinese tariffs in place, but put the Donald’s full monte (25% tariffs on all $526 billion of Chinese imports) on a time-limited fuse designed to enable another futile round of negotiations.

And let us put the emphasis on the “futile” part. While the speculators and rob0-machines in the casino are sure to get excited about the pause button—- that’s only because honest price discovery is now deader than a doornail. At any given moment, the only thing getting discounted on Wall Street is a few hours of thrashing around by the chart monkeys looking for the next, fleeting “support” level.

If there were an honest stock market, by contrast, it would be selling off like mad because Mr.Xi and the Donald are on a course akin to that of the Titanic and the llulissat Iceberg of 1911.