By Ricardo Lezama 
For a moment in time today, the overall equities market wiped out 2 trillion dollars.
While some outlets noted that at market close, equities recovered value to close in the green, the real story is the lack of stability in equities markets. In the case of Mexico and Canada, the USMCA, a trade agreement reboot of the controversial NAFTA, spared both countries from severe tariffs. To Bloomberg, this appears to signal both were less in the crosshairs due to established protocols and advantages built-in to that agreement, which is nonetheless on borrowed time.
Trump Reveals Tariffs
The tariffs Trump announced are simple: for every Tariff imposed on the United States, the will be a mirror tariff imposed on the country. One of the issues with that thinking is that the sheer size and purchasing power of the U.S. economy makes for those tariffs to be unrealistic and even disproportionate. Companies that have complex sourcing in Asia, like Nike and Adidas, will now need to find cheaper USMCA complaint, perhaps, factories and move production towards North America. Unsurprisingly, these companies closed a loss today. In other words, the lack of tariffs in exports for multinational firms is what permits for cheap goods to enter the United States in the first place.
Nonetheless, the idea is that the complexities of government can be reduced to a few simple inputs, like tariffs, to replace outputs, like government services. However, the issue is that if the overall United States and global economy is slammed in this way, there is likely to be very little economic activity to generate badly needed revenue for the insolvent United States.
Trump Rambles
The worst part of the tariff unveiling was the rambling diatribe we have all been subjected to under past and current Trump administrations. The man’s constant self-aggrandizement would be unfit for a drink party, but is even more woefully intolerable because he occupies the U.S. presidency. The lack of cohesion in his words, invoking of punishment at ports of entry seemed to loosely resemble discussion on products physically crossing into the US and being subjected to harassment by CBP.
Elon Musk To Leave Earlier
Today Politico also revealed that Trump has confided in his inner circle that Elon Musk will be leaving his mostly symbolic, but highly invasive role in government soon enough.
Every day, the think tanks, inside track Wall Street gang members, like US Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, and zealots appear more in control of the man and by extension the presidency. As an aside, this dishonor amongst thieves is likely to get Elon Musk, the subject of multiple federal court injunctions, booted earlier than expected so that he can return to private industry.
For instance, Lutnick just today is pressing the leadership of all major chip makers, like Nvidia, Intel and AMD, to produce even bigger factories that are untenable in the United States. In the case of Intel, the feeling cannot be stronger over characterizing the exchanges as extortion – Lutnick is threatening to withhold CHIPS act grants for research and development.
In all likelihood, any producer of goods with a complex supply chain was a loser as well as their investors. The irony is that their well thought out plans for economic domination were spoiled by the unhinged appetite for power and chaos from Trump.