To be sure, trade tensions are rattling US stocks.
The author of Death by China and Trump’s Director of Trade and Industrial Policy today said, “There’s no plans to impose investment restrictions on any countries that are interfering in any way with our country.”
With the Dow plummeting 400 points by mid-day, Navarro’s soothing - yet confusing - comments immediately reversed the Dow's trajectory.
Formerly a professor at UC Irvine and a Harvard PhD, Navarro is considered well outside the mainstream of US economic thought. In 2012, Navarro made Death by China into a documentary Trump called “right on.” The A.C. Club, an apolitical entertainment website called it “the documentary equivalent of a raving street-corner derelict.”
Whether a coherent US trade policy will emerge remains unclear.
In the meantime, White House histrionics and shilly-shallying seems only to be hurting the companies they claim they are trying to protect.
Weekly Update through June 22,2018 The S&P 500 lost -87bps, even as the Dow Jones declined -2.03%, the Russell 2000 added 11bps the Nasdaq lost -68bps.
As for US bonds, they declined -1bps.
Globally, the MSCI World Index lost -88bps and the Barclays Global Aggregate Bond Index added 11bps.
The Euro Stoxx 50 declined -1.81% in local-currency (Euro) and -1.45% in USD. Meanwhile, the Topix lost -2.47% in local-currency (Yen) and -1.90% in USD.
