David Craig, on April 4th, 2025Friday blog
Here’s a chart of the FTSE 100 stocks over the last week:
Hence much panic and screaming ‘Trump has destroyed the world economy’ and ‘we’re all going to die’ from the mostly Trump-hating mainstream media.
But here’s the FTSE 100 for the last 10 years:
Oh. Why the current panic? Things don’t look too bad at all.
Anyway, I don’t understand why all the supposed ‘experts’ are predicting a trade war and a global recession. I haven’t read Trump’s book THE ART OF THE DEAL. But his methodology seems pretty clear to me:
- Make an outrageous demand – we’re putting 25% tariffs on Mexico, we’re going to invade Panama, we’re going to buy Greenland, we’re going to empty the Gaza strip and turn it into a holiday resort etc etc
- Trump’s outrageous demand forces political leaders to awake from their lethargy and to come back to Trump with a counter proposal
- A compromise is reached and Trump gets what he always really wanted
I suspect that the tariffs imposition is just following the same playbook and what Trump is really after is tariffs renegotiation with the US’s main trading partners to give the US more favourable trading terms.
But I guess the ‘experts’ need to exaggerate everything out of all proportion to what’s really happening to make themselves look knowledgeable and important, to get the maximum number of readers and/or clicks and to keep their jobs.
So, relax everybody. It’s not the end of the world.
By the way, I’ve just noticed that Amazon are selling the paperback copy of my latest book THERE IS NO CLIMATE CRISIS at 10% off. So now you can buy copies as early Christmas presents saving yourselves just over £0.80 per book.
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I heard Farage saying Trump negotiations are like buying a Persian carpet. Prices start high but can come down.
I have said before that I didn’t agree with you about Trump or tariffs. For someone who has never held a political office to be elected as President the first time was a remarkable achievement and then to have a second term. But he is a bully and now thinks it works in politics. There are past interviews about him and his father. His father was also a bully and his eldest son was expected to take over the business, but he refused because he wasn’t prepared to act like his father. He became an airline pilot and died early from alcoholism. Donald didn’t have any problems. In this term he talks about doing deals and winning. This is not how politics works. Politics is about negotiation and allowing all sides to claim they got what they wanted, whatever the agreement. He talks about good and bad people and things. It is utterly meaningless and doesn’t show much intelligence.
I have seen it said that the US Constitution no longer exists and has been replaced by what Trump believes in. The Constitution was about freedom from federal control. That changed in 1913 with the 16th amendment, allowing federal taxes, and then creation of the federal reserve allowing printing of counterfeit money. This ended the period of true economic growth when there was free trade and limited federal power. The period before 1913 was the true golden age and Trump will not recreate it. Remember Gordon Brown claiming he had created a new golden age of the City and then the banking system collapsed? What is it that Trump really wants? Nobody knows which is why he is so dangerous.
I cannot see that the FTSE graphs tell us anything. This is just the stock market reacting. Wait until prices increases or goods are no longer available. Trump wants production back in the USA. They have no factories and perhaps not even people with the skills needed and the production costs will be high. The cost of living will increase when people in the west are already feeling the increasing cost of living.
All economists know that tariffs are bad. This is why the EU is a problem and we are better off out of it. I have seen views that tariffs can be acceptable but only if there is no income tax. Now we will have the worst of everything.