Markets started off today as if they were determined to take a breather from a week of worry that the emerging markets crisis was about to spread to developed markets. In morning trading the Standard & Poor’s 500, the NASDAQ Composite, and the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) Â were all ahead slightly. The VIX “fear” index had even taken a slight step backward from the march that had taken the index from below 12 on August 24 to within spitting distance of 15 on September 7. The market gains stood to reason as, after a losing week, you’d expect investors and traders to square positions (which in this case meant buying what they had been selling) ahead of the weekend.
But then, the White House reminded everyone that the tariff wars hadn’t peaked. They might even be about to get much worse.
President Donald Trump had spent the week saying that his administration would impose higher tariffs on another $200 billion in Chinese exports “quickly” after the public comment period on those proposed tariffs closed on September 6.
Today President Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he’s ready to impose tariffs on an additional–that’s “additional” as in beyond the “additional” $200 to be imposed “quickly”–$267 billion in Chinese goods “very soon.” He said  “I hate to do this, but behind that there is another $267 billion ready to go on short notice if I want.” That would bring the total goods exposed to new tariffs to more than the total $505 billion that the United States imported from China in 2017.
Big exporters with exposure to trends in global trade moved lower after the announcement. Vale (VALE), the big Brazilian iron ore exporter, had been up as much as 0.59% earlier in the day but slid to finish up only 0.15%. Caterpillar (CAT), which had been as high as $142.10 at 11:40 a.m. closed at $141.32, down 0.18%. Boeing (BA), which lives or dies on exports, was off 0.57%, helping the Dow Jones Industrial Average turn negative (down 0.58%) for the day. The Standard & Poor’s 500 finished off 0.33%. The VIX reversed course to close higher by 1.64%.
Its been said before, it will be said a thousand times again, tariff wars don’t work. We get hit, gee a tough one to figure out huh, whenever we sell to the country we raise tariffs to since they will do the same to us. How does that fix the problem?
The answer: STOP BUYING products that hurt us. Yes that’s everyone of us that buy Chinese products which undercut or rebrand our products.
Just stop it. Just say no.