Donald Trump

Maybe he just wants to get concessions out of the Chinese and the Mexicans and he is willing to take heat on (temporarily) damaging relationships with the Canadians. I suspect this may be what he is after.

There are reasonable scenarios in which monetary policy continues to tighten, fiscal policy does not loosen and the economic trajectory slides down into stall speed, even before the full economic impact of tariffs are felt.

North Korea is sometimes (hyperbolically) referred to as a Chinese client state. And this seems to be the perception that Trump has developed as well.

With Europe, when the economy turns down, that’s when the acrimony will be greatest. And that’s when I would worry about really bad outcomes.

As Wednesday begins, the question has to be: is the slowdown temporary or is it going to be more pronounced? And if it is pronounced, what do central banks do?

I have a lot of links on the Trump investigation. The key factor: while the Cohen warrant is Stormy Daniels related, it opens the whole Trump Organization to discovery.

Links on 'The Art of the Deal', Flint, Michigan, subprime auto, Facebook and more

Links on trade, Trump, the UK economy, ECB trightening and much more

There are growing signs that a trade war is possible, and that the multilateral trading system may not be able to prevent it. This column asks what would happen with tariffs around the world if countries were to move from cooperative tariff…

China has retaliated to US duties with tariffs on $50 billion of US goods. An all-out trade war is a distinct possibility.