Market participants appear to be scratching their heads on Tuesday at the muted reaction across global equities to the latest escalation on the trade front from the Trump administration.
That perplexity is understandable to the extent folks were anticipating a marginally sour session in Asia and some pressure on EM, but nobody should be surprised that there wasn’t some kind of brutal selloff. After all, this was easily the most well-telegraphed escalation yet. On Friday and over the weekend, at least a half dozen media outlets confirmed that the administration was moving forward this week, which means markets had at least one day to price this in and in the case of U.S. equities, a day and a half (Bloomberg’s original story confirming the tariffs hit late Friday while the market was still open). And really, this has been known for weeks.
As far as the actual details go, it’s a mixed bag. Conceivably, you could view the decision to hold off on a 25% tariff rate until 2019 as “positive”, but that ignores the possibility that the delay on implementing the more punishing rate is just Trump giving U.S. companies a few months to search out alternate suppliers. If that’s the case, the “wait and see” approach to the 25% rate is actually negative as it suggests the administration is girding for a protracted war of attrition.
The real question mark is how China will retaliate. Beijing on Tuesday delivered the expected initial response: Differentiated tariffs on $60 billion in U.S. goods.
But going forward, the calculus might change. Earlier this month, Trump tipped his inclination to view any retaliation as an excuse to ratchet up the tensions further by slapping duties on another $267 billion worth of Chinese goods, a move that would entail taxing everything China ships to the U.S. That intention was reiterated last night and today.
If you’re wondering what Goldman thinks, their take is mixed. Here’s Jan Hatzius:
