Tariffs

REPRINT: 'The Protectionist Road To Depression.' Déjà Vu All Over Again?

Mar 28, 2025 20 min read

💡This is a timely reprint of a September 9, 1985 Topical Study by Edward Yardeni titled "The Protectionist Road To Depression." The original with charts can be found here. It is very relevant to today's debate over the trade policies of the Trump administration, which is scheduled to announce reciprocal tariffs on most of America's major trading partners on April 2. Will they retaliate

Ed Yardeni

Trump Slams On The Auto Tariff Brakes

Mar 27, 2025 2 min read

President Trump's Wednesday night announcement of a 25% tariff on imports of foreign motor vehicles caused a selloff in auto stocks today. Components such as engines and transmissions are also impacted, while previously trade-compliant parts from Canada and Mexico will be slapped with tariffs at a later date. At the moment, the 25% tariff is expected to be on top of those coming on April 2. That would

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Helter-Skelter

Mar 24, 2025 3 min read

"Helter-skelter" is a term used to describe disorderly haste, confusion, or chaos. That seems to be descriptive of the modus operandi of President Donald Trump's trade policy. Then again, perhaps there is method to the madness. Perhaps it is Trump's approach to the art of the deal. So the chaos is a feature and not a bug of his style of dealmaking. The technique

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

'Liberation Day' Coming One Day After April Fools' Day

Mar 18, 2025 3 min read paid

The stock market rally of the past two days faded today. The S&P 500 fell -1.1%, just shy of correction territory. Even Nvidia fell 4.3%, even though the company announced new chips and a strategic collaboration with GM today. The 10-year US Treasury bond yield has been hovering around 4.30% since late February. The price of gold rose to another record high (chart). We suspect

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Will Trump Tariff Turmoil Dim The Economy's Lights?

Mar 11, 2025 3 min read paid

The stock market was whipsawed today by geopolitical developments. Stocks fell this morning when President Donald Trump announced a 50% tariff on Canadian steel and aluminum. They then recovered after Ukraine agreed to a US-proposed ceasefire deal (pending Russia's acceptance). Incremental progress on a tariff-avoiding deal between the US and Canada late in the day provided an additional boost. But stock prices still closed down a bit for

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Are Tariffs Inflationary Or Deflationary? Are They Really ‘A Beautiful Thing?’

Mar 5, 2025 3 min read paid

Until recently, the message from the bond market has been that tariffs are deflationary because they depress global economic activity. As Warren Buffett recently observed, they are a tax that consumers, importers, and/or exporters pay. It is widely presumed that tariff increases have a transitory, one-shot, price-rising impact. Indeed, on Sunday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent predicted that the Chinese "will eat any tariffs that go on."

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Bond Yields Do A Backflip On CPI & PPI, Stocks Rally On Tariff News

Feb 13, 2025 3 min read paid

The 10-year Treasury bond yield jumped by 10bps on Wednesday's hotter-than-expected January CPI report (chart). In his congressional testimony on Wednesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged that the Fed has more work to do to get inflation down. Today, the bond yield fell 10bps on a hotter-than expected January PPI report and an upward revision in December's PPI. Huh? You read that right. Some of the

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

MARKET CALL: Choppy Waters

Feb 8, 2025 4 min read

The major stock market indexes are still up since Election Day despite recent turbulence caused by DeepSeek and Trump Tariffs 2.0 (chart). The former is weighing on the shares of AI companies. However, cloud giants Amazon, Microsoft, and Google remain committed to spending record sums this year to build out their AI capacity. Asked last week about the AI cost efficiencies represented by DeepSeek’s widely followed advances, Amazon

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

Make Manufacturing Great Again!

Feb 3, 2025 3 min read paid

Markets were abuzz with headlines from Washington today. The S&P 500 opened 1.7% lower on the weekend's news that President Donald Trump announced that he would slap 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada on Tuesday. But losses were pared significantly after Trump's call with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum resulted in a one-month delay of tariffs as well as bilateral cooperation on fentanyl, immigration,

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

MARKET CALL: Beware The Front Cover Curse & Trump Tariffs 2.0

Feb 2, 2025 3 min read

We are sure that Forbes magazine has had plenty of cover stories about successful entrepreneurs who survived the front-cover curse and remained successful. However, the magazine has also featured a few rising stars who subsequently crashed and burned. The latest Forbes front cover features Michael Saylor of Microstrategy and is titled "The Bitcoin Alchemist." It's not a ringing endorsement. In any event: We have been warned.

Ed Yardeni
Eric Wallerstein

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