the trump economic war as of yesterday;

Well, isn’t this fun?  News that President Trump had decided to pause some of the tariffs that he recently unveiled for 90 days sent stock prices soaring.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up more than 2,900 points on Wednesday, and that is very good news.  But not that much has actually changed, and the global trade war is still officially on.  In fact, President Trump just hiked the tariff rate on Chinese imports to 125 percent…

President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he was authorizing a 90-day pause in reciprocal tariffs to all countries except China, on which he was raising the levy to 125% in the latest twist of a saga that has roiled financial markets for a week. The universal 10% tariffs remain in place.

So let’s summarize what just happened.

-The universal baseline 10 percent tariffs are still in effect.

-The additional reciprocal tariffs that were recently announced have only been delayed for 3 months to allow for negotiations to take place.

-The tariff rate on products that we import from China has now been raised to a whopping 125 percent.

-Other previously announced tariffs remain in place.

As you can see, the reality of what we are facing hasn’t really changed much at all.

But headlines that boldly proclaimed that “the tariffs have been paused” sent stock prices screaming higher.

The extraordinary rally that we just witnessed really didn’t make much sense at all, but we’ll take it.

These days, any victory that we can get is a reason to celebrate..........more........