Alternet reports that even Gasparino at Fox noted that his sources told him that.
Gasparino said that the administration ultimately pulled back because of threats that Japan — which he said runs " major money management firms that are involved in the bond market" — was contemplating dumping some of its estimated $1.26 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities. Gasparino said Japan “forced [the administration’s] hands” with the move, and said that he was told Japan now believed the United States bond market “was not a great place to do business.”
“He had no choice,” Gasparino added. “The gun was at his head. It was very bad.”
Also worth repeating that stock and bond markets tend to move in opposite directions. When both are crashing, something very bad is happening in terms of loss of investor confidence across the board, and when major bondholders like Japan threaten to start dumping, well, that’s a financial disaster in the making.
The simpler explanation in fewer words is that the Orange Dumbass has absolutely no idea what he’s doing. When a monkey suddenly has control of a bulldozer, the monkey is going to be getting a lot of surprises – one after another.
\He is the Tariff Queen
Old and slow, with that orange sheen
Tariff queen
Getting owned by President Xi, oh yeah
His weird dancing aside,
He’s the dumbest man of our time
Manipulating stock indices
The fucking Tariff Queen
I only heard about Japan starting to sell their US treasuries after hearing about the climbdown. As the largest holder of US bonds, that’s a really big deal, and basically means the front two wheels of the bus were hanging over the cliff when someone finally pulled trump from the steering wheel.
If you watch the video there until the end, the guy still tried to spin it as a “win” for Trump, because now he has other countries looking to make a “deal” with Trump.
Sure, destroy trillions of dollars of value in a week, as part of a plan to make “Deals”, and inadvertently destroy the bond market as well. Then, try to negotiate with 75 different countries who all just watched you blink when Japan demonstrated that Trump simply never understood the possible consequences of his tariff policies.
I see MAGA cultists proclaiming how amazing it was that the market was up X% yesterday, like it wasn’t just springing back after Trump’s policies were reduced. Like bragging about how much you’ve climbed when you get back on your knees after someone removed their boot from your neck.
In fact, in general it’s been demonstrated that Trump really doesn’t understanding anything except stoking his own self-gratification. His lack of self-awareness is beyond belief. He’s literally mentally ill. This is exactly the kind of psychopath the Founders sought to prevent ever coming anywhere near the presidency, so they put in all the safeguards they could think of, and all of them failed.
No, the story below isn’t satire:
I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair,” Trump said as he signed the executive order
The alternative is close to a conspiracy theory – that he was always planning to send tariff rates up and down to give opportunities for friends and family to profit from stock market gyrations. Financial journalists are no doubt looking into the claim in my last link; the truth will come out in coming months.
Of course, it could be both. The Japanese angle set the details and timing, but Trump was always planning to overshoot and then back down to show he has power over the stock market.
I don’t believe for a second that Trump planned this from the beginning. His “Bestest president EVAR!” ego trip is based almost entirely on how the stock market is doing. He tanked the COVID response largely because he knew admitting there was a problem would tank the economy, and he desperately wanted to avoid that. No way does he deliberately trash the economy so soon after taking office.
What I do believe, though, is that after he decided to flip-flop on the tariffs, he gave his cronies a heads-up so they could profit off the swing. He’d already screwed up, so might as well make a little money off it.
It’s possible, but I think the simplest explanation is true here. Trump is an idiot; he genuinely thinks that a trade deficit means we are being cheated; he’s been talking about this since the 80s. It’s not a new idea.
I don’t think he was planning this ahead of time because that would require more forethought than he has really demonstrated.
That said, he absolutely seems to have given quite a few people a heads up about this ahead of time, allowing them to buy the dip right before he announced the pause and the market bounced like a dead cat.
I don’t know if the “good time to buy” tweet was part of that or not - to me it almost reads like at that time he was still desperately trying to preserve the market without removing the tariffs. But I think there’s evidence he gave insiders a more explicit heads up.
I wonder if they switch between “the stock market doesn’t really matter, who cares if you lose money” “omg look how Trump made the stockmarket skyrocket!!!” “the stock market doesn’t really matter” on a daily basis
The market had it’s greatest day ever and the anti USA liberals are mad about it. That says a lot about them.
To which I responded:
Yep, the market yesterday ALMOST recovered its losses from the previous 3 days. Certainly something to celebrate, yes? And it’s down over 1000 points today. But you go ahead and bitch about the liberals being mad about the market.