Trump Era 2025-2029 : Stock and Economic Comment

[IFocus]

Treasury secretary now being branded as a "silver voice of reason".

Yeah. Markets hadn't heard ANYTHING from this guy until now and now that they have they LOVE him.

Jolly good show.

Until the next tweet

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

The Chinese now hold more cards than the Americans in negotiations.

gg

 

[eskys]

They know he's a loose canon firing indiscriminately

 

[DannyB0000]

China says no ongoing trade talks with the U.S., calls for canceling 'unilateral' tariffs
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/24/chi...are|com.apple.UIKit.activity.CopyToPasteboard

 

[IFocus]

Its sort of becoming The Art of the Deal verse The Art of War one is made up by a ghost writer the other by Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu.

 

[finicky]

One of the big reasons for taking on China.

 

[basilio]

Apparently just 2 weeks away from empty shelves

That would really start a fire ...

 

[TimeISmoney]

One of the big reasons for taking on China.

A repeat of the 1970s, just what we need.

 

[basilio]

China says no ongoing trade talks with the U.S., calls for canceling 'unilateral' tariffs
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/24/china-says-no-talks-with-the-us-on-trade-calls-for-canceling-unilateral-tariffs.html?__source=iosappshare|com.apple.UIKit.activity.CopyToPasteboard

An excellent read. I think the Trump and the US would face more problems with the empty shelves situation that China.
Both would suffer of course. But a more controlled economy/political system like China should stay afloat longer.

It's interesting to consider what would happen in a real emergency. If there was a war or some major catastrophe a government could cobble together a response of national fortitude and tightening the belts. But this is a totally Trump led charge into the Tariff Valley of Death..

 

[Knobby22]

One of the big reasons for taking on China.

She's talking rubbish. The reason the working class and middle class is destroyed is not about manufacturing.

We know this is not true because Australia also has lost most of its manufacturing base but not our middle class. In the USA, there has been a redistribution of wealth by lowering wages and redirecting more profits to the wealthy.

That said China has to be told to back down and limited.

Unfortunately due to stupidity they now have advantage which they didn't have 6 months ago.

 

[Dona Ferentes]

love and peaches

Elon Musk and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Got Into Heated Argument Under Trump — Axios

According to witnesses cited by Axios, Elon Musk accused Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent of being a “Soros agent”, referring to Bessent’s past work at Soros Fund Management, the investment firm linked to billionaire George Soros. At one point during the confrontation, Bessent shouted “f*ck you”, to which Musk replied, “Say it louder.”

The clash escalated so quickly that a staffer had to physically step between them to prevent a full-blown altercation. The shouting was reportedly overheard by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who was visiting the White House that day.

 

[DannyB0000]

A repeat of the 1970s, just what we need.

View attachment 198120View attachment 198121

Let’s hope not. Double digit inflation through most of the decade if you read into it. Anything can happen under Trump.

 

[Smurf1976]

She's talking rubbish. The reason the working class and middle class is destroyed is not about manufacturing.

We know this is not true because Australia also has lost most of its manufacturing base but not our middle class.

Australia's middle class isn't dead, but it's taking a beating in recent times. Falling real wages meanwhile there are now fewer pathways for someone starting with nothing to get themselves into the middle class.

We are after all intentionally inflating in order to fill the gap left by manufacturing and other forms of real wealth creation.

When the overall wealth of a society is faltering, when we've shifted a large portion of the workforce from medium value added to low, no or even negative value added, the only way to keep prosperity rising for the majority is to one by one throw those at the bottom under the bus and that's exactly what we're doing. Concentrating wealth into a smaller portion of society in order to maintain prosperity for the majority.

All comes down to long term versus short term. Spend the inheritance and run up debt versus building up wealth. If the focus is short term well yes, manufacturing's pointless as is tertiary education, environmental protection, defence and even basic planning. But if the focus is long term.....

 

[over9k]

We know this is not true because Australia also has lost most of its manufacturing base but not our middle class.

Incorrect. Look at australia's lorenz curve over time.

The same hollowing out of the middle is occurring (has occurred) everywhere, it's just a question of how much.

 

[over9k]

When the overall wealth of a society is faltering, when we've shifted a large portion of the workforce from medium value added to low, no or even negative value added, the only way to keep prosperity rising for the majority is to one by one throw those at the bottom under the bus and that's exactly what we've been doing. Concentrating wealth into a smaller portion of society in order to maintain prosperity for the majority.

The difference in Australia is it's progressed more slowly than the US due to mining having been the initial primary replacement for manufacturing. That worked well at first but in recent times is struggling. Australia's LNG exports have flatlined in volume and coal's actually declining, hence we're now firmly going down the inflationary track to fill the gap. There goes the middle class.....

This. Australia nuked a lot of its industries and replaced them with the raw materials trade and piggybacked off the asian/chinese "miracle".

Should that trade, for whatever reason, start to diminish (and it has) then your one-trick-pony becomes awfully vulnerable:



Just look at how bad the baby bust actually is, and that's assuming you believe their numbers (which nobody with the slightest shred of common sense does).

Then you have economic precariousness, overcredit, a housing bubble, geography, being surrounded by neighbours that absolutely hate them...

I really cannot overstate how wrong this idea that china's going to be the juggernaut of the next century and take over everything actually is.

 

[Knobby22]

Incorrect. Look at australia's lorenz curve over time.

The same hollowing out of the middle is occurring (has occurred) everywhere, it's just a question of how much.

We have a more balanced system.

E.g.

Unequal? Our analysis suggests Australia is a more equal society than has been thought

Australia has been thought to be a less equal society than many European ones. But Australian incomes turn out to be as evenly distributed as those in France when everything is taken into account.

theconversation.com

 

[frugal.rock]

I really cannot overstate how wrong this idea that china's going to be the juggernaut of the next century and take over everything actually is.

I hope you're correct, for my children's sake.

Sun Tzu

"To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."

 

[over9k]

I hope you're correct, for my children's sake.

Baby bust, housing bubble, overcredited, and incredibly vulnerable geography.

Think about this for a second - china gets on anyone's **** list, it has south korea, japan, mongolia, vietnam, taiwan, the philippines, burma, and russia along its land or sea borders.

The japs have been sailing across the east china sea and slaughtering them for centuries. And that's from a sea invasion, far harder than just driving your tanks across the border and blowing everything to pieces. Hell, the japs could just fly a bunch of bombers over and bomb the daylights out of them right now if they wanted. So could the koreans.

Meanwhile, to land a single boot or bullet on american soil you have to cross half the pacific ocean, take what will be an incredibly heavily defended hawaii that is also serving as a land base/support for the american navy (which could take you on long before you got anywhere near hawaii) and then the air force as it's effectively an unsinkable aircraft carrier, and then cross the other half of the pacific ocean.

The only thing china can even think about doing is taking taiwan and the fact is that the taiwanese would burn every chip facility to the ground long before the chinese actually took it (and that's assuming that the yanks didn't just cover it with about a million missile batteries shooting down or sinking anything that came anywhere near it) so they wouldn't actually be capturing anything so much as just preventing the rest of the world from having it, thereby accomplishing nothing.

 

[farmerge]

Baby bust, housing bubble, overcredited, and incredibly vulnerable geography.

Think about this for a second - china gets on anyone's **** list, it has south korea, japan, mongolia, vietnam, taiwan, the philippines, burma, and russia along its land or sea borders.

The japs have been sailing across the east china sea and slaughtering them for centuries. And that's from a sea invasion, far harder than just driving your tanks across the border and blowing everything to pieces. Hell, the japs could just fly a bunch of bombers over and bomb the daylights out of them right now if they wanted. So could the koreans.

Meanwhile, to land a single boot or bullet on american soil you have to cross half the pacific ocean, take what will be an incredibly heavily defended hawaii that is also serving as a land base/support for the american navy (which could take you on long before you got anywhere near hawaii) and then the air force as it's effectively an unsinkable aircraft carrier, and then cross the other half of the pacific ocean.

The only thing china can even think about doing is taking taiwan and the fact is that the taiwanese would burn every chip facility to the ground long before the chinese actually took it (and that's assuming that the yanks didn't just cover it with about a million missile batteries shooting down or sinking anything that came anywhere near it) so they wouldn't actually be capturing anything so much as just preventing the rest of the world from having it, thereby accomplishing nothing.

@over9k This is an interesting piece of journalism A lot of it also makes sense.

 

[over9k]

@over9k This is an interesting piece of journalism A lot of it also makes sense.

Yeah, people have all of this back to front. They're afraid of the yanks being reliant on taiwanese chips when reality is that they should actually be afraid of the opposite because if they aren't, then they have no reason to help with its defence from a self-interest perspective, only a humanitarian one.

Fact is they'd cover it in about a billion missile batteries and turn it into the geographic equivalent of an echidna if china even looked like actually invading, and that's without even thinking about anyone else's submarines that are very likely to be lurking in the area ready to torpedo any surface vessel they find, or whatever air power/force anyone else has out there looking for ships to sink.

So a chinese naval invasion would have to deal with literally hundreds of missile batteries with missiles, and hundreds of attack aircraft (from any one of a whole heap of other countries operating either out of their own airfields or taiwanese ones) trying to bomb them, and who knows how many submarines trying to torpedo them.

A chip facility also isn't like an oil field where you might blow the infrastructure to pieces but the oil is still there, once you burn the factory to the ground then that's it, game over.