Unprecedented - Hurricane Trump sweeps the world

[Wiz]

Unprecedented - Hurricane Trump sweeps the world.
- Wants 90 trade deals in 90 days after tsunami of tariffs.



President Donald Trump's administration aims to strike 90 trade deals in 90 days, but the challenges to quickly resolving the president's trade war are already apparent. European Union trade chief Maros Sefcovic

will be among the first foreign trade officials to arrive in Washington on Monday for emergency talks on the retaliatory tariffs Trump announced on April 2. But when Sefcovic arrives , the top negotiator on the tariffs, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, will be in Buenos Aires to show support for Argentina's economic reforms, not in Washington , even though Argentina accounts for just $16.3 billion in total annual trade with the United States. Bessent's absence on Monday underscores doubts among trade experts about how effectively the administration can manage so many simultaneous negotiations and the overall prospects for reaching 90 deals in 90 days. "Getting these decisions done is going to take serious negotiation," said Wendy Cutler, a former chief negotiator for the U.S. Trade Representative who heads the Asia Policy Institute. White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told Fox Business Network that Bessent, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick could get the job done. "So we'll do 90 deals in 90 days. It's possible," he said. Ultimately, Trump, "the boss, will be the lead negotiator. Nothing gets done without him looking at it very carefully," Navarro said  . " There is no way in this timeframe that we are going to make a comprehensive deal with any of these countries . " "So we will do 90 deals in 90 days. It is possible," he said. Huge task  Trump started the 90-day countdown clock this week when he paused the implementation of his highest tariffs on several countries after financial markets collapsed on fears of recession and inflation, among other factors. He said the 90-day suspension would allow countries to make bilateral deals with the United States.

Gaining the confidence of financial markets is another critical goal over the 90 days.
Investors sold off U.S. bonds this week, pushing up yields and pushing down the dollar on fears of a U.S. recession and a resurgence in inflation.
Gold, a safe haven for investors in times of crisis, hit new records.
Wall Street ended a turbulent week with solid gains on Friday, with the Dow up more than 1.5%, the S&P 500 up 1.8% and the Nasdaq up 2%.

Cutler said the turmoil would put pressure on Trump's team to score quick wins.
"The onus will be on them to show that they can quickly make deals with countries and instill some confidence in the market and with other trading partners that there is a way out here ," he said.

Gaining the confidence of financial markets is another critical goal over the 90 days.
Investors sold off U.S. bonds this week, pushing up yields and pushing down the dollar on fears of a U.S. recession and a resurgence in inflation.

[andrewfi]

So, 90 trade deals in 90 days? Right. And I shall write 90 symphonies in the same timeframe, assuming nobody minds if I don’t actually know how to read music or show up to rehearsals.

This is performative policy-making at its finest. Like much of Trumpian strategy, it’s heavy on optics and light on planning. Announce a ludicrously ambitious number. Frame inevitable failures as betrayal, sabotage, or success by another name. The fact that the top negotiator is swanning around Argentina instead of greeting EU officials doesn’t scream "well-oiled machine" to me.

Let’s be clear: 90 deals in 90 days isn't diplomacy, it's speed dating with nuclear consequences. Even back-of-a-napkin bilateral trade deals, if they're to mean anything, require months of legwork, coordination across departments, and some kind of stable strategic direction. When the lead negotiator is also the lead disruptor, we’re not looking at a plan. We're looking at a branding exercise.

Financial markets, to their credit, appear to have figured this out. The flight to gold and the bond sell-off are tells. Investors aren’t buying the idea of Trump as the maestro of multi-front trade ballet. They’re hedging for the chaos.

And just to round it off: if the deals do start to appear, read the fine print. Because what’s being spun as trade liberalisation may turn out to be a string of unilateral demands dressed up as bilateral agreements, where the other side is expected to say "thank you" for being punished less severely than the guy behind them.

[Texan77]

Yea it is like everything else he does. It all goes to S**t poorly done then fake news about how great of a job he has done. The USA economy will fall off a cliff by the end of the year and calls to impeach him will be sizable. When republicans learn that he is toxic with voters and no longer get them reelected they will drop him like a rock. For reasons I do not understand, we just have not reach that point yet.