Thrilling Thursday – Markets Blast Higher on Trade Progress (Again?)
I feel like we're playing Peek-a-Boo!
You know, the game in which you are able to surprise a baby over and over again with the same simple trick? Yeah, "peek-a-boo" – whose got a trade deal? You have a trade deal! Good boy. Where's the trade deal? Peek-a-boo! There it is? Look, it's a trade deal. Where's the trade deal? Where is it? Peek-a-Boo! There it is! Who's a good boy? Where's the trade deal? Do you see a trade deal? Peek-a-Boo! There it is!
Isn't that fun? I could play that game for months and, apparently, every time I play the market goes higher – no matter how many times I show some small amount of progress towards a trade deal WE FRIGGING HAD TWO YEARS AGO! There is no imagined scenario in which the US is actually getting a "better" deal than the free trade deal we had BEFORE Trump began messing around. Trump has forced China to make other trading alliances – and China is not going to throw that away just to please the unreliable US.
Today's big reveal, that's good for a 150-point (0.5%) gain on the Dow is because Beijing, WITHOUT saying there will be a deal, laid our a framework for phasing out tariffs over time. Officially, according to the WSJ:
BEIJING—China’s Commerce Ministry said China and the U.S. have agreed to lift some tariffs on one another in stages if the two countries reach a partial trade deal, a goal both have been building toward since October.
“If the phase-one deal is signed, China and the U.S. should remove the same proportion of tariffs simultaneously based on the content of the deal,” spokesman Gao Feng said at a regular press