Trump announces tariffs

Now he should stick to them unless other countries lower their own tariffs.

Enough of the nonsense. I don't want to hear another word about tariffs from Trump unless it is to talk about lowering tariffs due to another country lowering theirs. He made his play, now leave it at that. No more back and forth and gamesmanship. Everyone is tired of it.

The markets (oddly) have had a serious apocalyptic reaction post-market as if this all was some sort of surprise. Of course, there is nothing unusual about tariffs other than we are generally on the being tariffed portion of it all. We are supposed to bend over and take it, apparently. I have no issue with the idea of tariffs. I take issue with how we are going about it.

I give this whole deal about three or four weeks and everything will settle back into normalcy. The markets will recover and I doubt seriously that we have dropped over 7% in our first quarter GDP because of tariffs.

I suggest that 7% number because GDPNow from Atlanta Fed Reserve shows our GDP going from 4% down to negative 3.7%. The biggest drop coming from him announcing the first round of tariffs. Meanwhile blue chip "consensus" has barely moved from around the same 2% as they have shown all quarter.