Category Archives: tariff protection

yield curve inversion, external shock and recession

August 15, 2019 By in Current Market Thoughts, Recent Market Action, securities markets, Strategy, tariff protection, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , 3 Comments

Stock markets around the world sold off yesterday in wicked fashion after the yield on the 10-year Treasury “inverted,”  that is, fell below the yield on the 2-year.  This has very often been the signal of an upcoming recession.  Typically, though, the inversion happens because the Fed is raising short-term interest rates in an attempt to slow too-rapid economic growth.  So it’s first and foremost a signal of aggressive Fed tightening, which has in the past almost always gone too far, causing an economic contraction.

In the present case, this is not the situation.  The Fed is signalling ease, not tightening.  Arguably, arbitrage between long-dated US and EU government bonds is suppressing the 10-year.

While trading robots, unleashed by the inversion, may have been behind the negative stock market action yesterday, my sense is that this is not all that’s going on.  I think the market is beginning to step back and focus on the bigger economic picture.  It may not like what it sees, namely:

–worldwide, economies are now being hit by a significant negative external shock.  It’s not a tripling of the oil price, as was the case in the 1970s, nor a collapsing financial system, as in 2008.  Instead, this time it’s the Trump tariffs, which appear to be reducing growth in the US by more than expected (not that anyone had extremely precise thoughts)

–the 2017 tax bill is not paying for itself, as the administration claimed at the time, but is adding to the government deficit instead–implying that further fiscal stimulation is less likely.  Giving extra cash to the ultra-rich, who tend to save rather than spend, and keeping tax breaks for industries of the past hasn’t bought much oomph to growth, either

–channeling his inner Herbert Hoover, Mr. Trump is trying to export the weakness he has created by devaluing the dollar.

 

Stepping back a bit to view the larger picture,

–pushing interest rates near to zero, depreciating the currency and defending the politically powerful industries of the 1970s all seem to mirror the game plan that has produced thirty years of stagnation in Japan and similar results in large parts of the EU.  Not pretty.

–on a smaller scale, this brings to mind Mr. Trump’s fundamentally misguided and ultimately disastrous foray into Atlantic City gaming, a venture where he appears to have profited personally but where those who supported and trusted him by owning DJT stock and bonds were financially decimated.

 

It seems to me that Wall Street is starting to come to grips with two possibilities:  that there may be only impulsiveness, and no master plan or end game to the Trump trade wars; and that Congresspeople of all stripes realize this but are unwilling to do anything to thwart the president’s whims.  In other words, the real issue being pondered is not recession but Trump-induced secular stagnation.

 

 

 

$30 billion in new tariffs–implications

August 2, 2019 By in administration economic strategy, Current Market Thoughts, Recent Market Action, Strategy, tariff protection, tariffs, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

Yesterday Mr. Trump announced by tweet that he intends to impose a 10% duty, effective next month, on all US imports from China that are not yet under tariff.  That’s about $300 billion worth, which would produce an extra $30 billion in tax revenue for the government, were imports to continue at the pre-tariff rates.

What’s different about the current move is that tariffs will be predominantly on final goods, that is, stuff that’s completely made and ready for sale, things like like toys and everyday clothing.  For the first time, tariffs won’t be disguised.  Up until now, they’ve been mostly on raw materials or parts, where the connection between the tax and price increases of the final product is obscured–the political fallout therefore milder.   The new round will be more visible.

 

Standard microeconomics will apply:

–the cost of the new tax will be borne in part by US companies and in part by consumers, depending on how much market power each has

–over some period of time, companies and consumers will both look for lower-price substitutes for items being taxed.  Firms will, say, offer lower quality merchandise at the current price point; consumers will either buy fewer items or shift to cheaper merchandise

 

The new tariff amounts to a subtraction of about $250 from family discretionary income, meaning income after taxes and all necessities are taken care of.  That’s not a big number.  As with the other Trump tariffs, however, average Americans will be disproportionately hurt.  The bottom 20% by income have less than nothing after necessities now, so they will be the worst off.  Residents of the poorest states–eight of the bottom ten voted for Trump–as well.  So too anyone on a fixed income.

 

Netting out the positive effect of the 2017 income tax cut, the only winners are the top 1%, traditional Republican voters.  Other Trump supporters appear to be the biggest losers, although far they don’t appear to have connected the dots.  Nor does anyone in Congress seem to be questioning the administration rationale that national security does not require better infrastructure and education but does demand more expensive t-shirts and toys.

 

The stock market selloff underway today doesn’t seem to me to be warranted by the new tariff.  And it’s not exactly news that Washington is dysfunctional:  we’re led by a man who thinks our independence was won by controlling the airports; the leading opposition candidate somehow mistakenly thought his businessman/repairman/car salesman father was a laborer in the Pennsylvania coal mines.  So the most likely explanation is that in August human traders/portfolio managers head for the beaches, leaving newspaper-reading robots in control of Wall Street.

If that’s correct, the thing to do is to look for stocks to buy where the selloff appears crazy, getting the money from clunkers, which typically hold up in times like this or from winners whose size has gotten too big.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trumponomics and Huawei

July 8, 2019 By in foreign trade, Strategy, tariff protection, tariffs, Trump, taxes and trade, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

Effective May 16th, the Trump administration placed Chinese tech company Huawei on the entity list, meaning no American company can sell products, hardware or software, to Huawei without government permission.  In addition, the presumption of the administrators of the list is that permission will be denied.

Being on the entity list seems to mean no Intel or ARM-based microprocessors for Huawei-built computers and telecom equipment, and no Android software for its cellphones.

The US  had already been putting pressure on US telecoms, big and small, as well as allies around the world not to purchase Huawei offerings, especially of next-generation telecom infrastructure equipment–a difficult sell, given that Huawei products are better and cheaper than EU or US alternatives.  But the entity list move is a huge escalation.  It seems to pretty much put Huawei out of business unless/until it develops alternate sources of supply.

It seems to me that this decision is qualitatively different from taxing Chinese products entering the US.  The near-term effects are likely to be strongly negative for Hauwei; long-term consequences, in contrast, are likely to be strongly negative for the US, in a number of ways:

–by saying the US will not tolerate significant Chinese competition in tech industries, Mr. Trump is reframing a dispute about terms of trade into a struggle for cultural/economic dominance.  Arguably, this is what is really going on anyway, but making it explicit gives China a cause to rally around

–Beijing’s response to the Huawei decision will presumably be to try to jump start its domestic chip business, an area that is (oddly, to my mind) totally unimpressive despite having been a national priority for decades.  The obvious course for the US today, it seems to me, is to retrain workers and improve our education system, with emphasis on STEM subjects.  That, of course, is a non-starter for both major political parties

–US tech companies must now begin to think about whether they are American enterprises (meaning: willing to forgo Chinese business as/when Washington dictates) or multinationals based in the US.  This may not be a burning issue for mature US firms like Microsoft or Google, although Washington’s white supremacism and nativism are already compelling companies like this to locate research centers outside the US (either because the US will not admit accomplished foreign scientists or they fear for their safety).  For startups, however, Mr. Trump is making a compelling case that, say, Canada is a better place to establish themselves

–tech companies of all stripes will have to think long and hard before building new manufacturing capacity in the US

 

Pre-Huawei, one main consequence of the Trump trade strategy has been to substantially weaken the Chinese status quo’s resistance to shifting that economy away from low value-added exports.  With developing economies, such resistance is, in my experience, an almost insurmountable obstacle to progress.  Huawei gives Beijing a clear mandate to create a high-tech component industry, however.  Making it a victim of malign foreign influences only increases its power, given China’s century of humiliation (at foreign hands) historical narrative.

Taking Huawei off the entity list, which the administration now seems to be in the process of doing, does not, I think, return us to the status quo ante.  The barn door has already been opened.

 

So far as I can see, the US stock market has not reacted negatively to what I consider to be a collosal blunder.  Wall Street does continue to deal with the possibility of more tariffs principally, I think, by focusing on firms it sees to be the most immune–software, especially cloud-based, and potentially industry-transformative new market entrants in a variety of fields.

 

 

 

 

 

Trumponomics and tariffs

July 2, 2019 By in economics, foreign trade, macroeconomics, microeconomics, tariff protection, tariffs, Trump, taxes and trade, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

Note:  I’ve been writing this in fits and starts over the past couple of weeks.  It doesn’t reflect whatever agreement the US and China made over the past weekend.  (More on that as/when details become available.)  But I’m realizing that it’s better to write something that’s less than perfect instead of nothing at all..  I think the administration’s economic plan, if that’s the right word for a string of ad hoc actions revealed by tweet, will have crucial impacts–mostly negative–for the US and for multinational corporations located here.  I’ll post about that in a day or two.

 

On the plus side, Mr. Trump has been able to get the corporate income tax rate in the US reduced from 35% to 21%, stemming the outflow of US industry to lower tax-rate jurisdictions (meaning just about anyplace else in the world).  Even that has a minus attached, though, since he failed to make good on his campaign pledge to eliminate the carried interest tax dodge that private equity uses.  The tax bill also contained new tax reductions for the ultra-wealthy and left pork-barrel tax relief for politically powerful businesses untouched.

 

At its core, international Trumponomics revolves around the imposition of import duties on other countries in the name of “national security,” on the dubious rationale that anything that increases GDP is a national security matter and that tariffs are an effective mechanism to force other countries to do what we want.  (Oddly, if this is correct, one of Mr. Trump’s first moves was to withdraw the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, thereby triggering an escalating series of new tariffs on farm exports to Japan by  our “Patriot Farmers,” many of whom voted for Mr. Trump.  I assume he didn’t know.)

If the Trump tariff policy has a coherent purpose, it seems to me to be:

–to encourage primary industry (like smelting) and manual labor-intensive manufacturing now being done in developing countries to relocate to the US (fat chance, except for strip mining and factories run by robots)

–to encourage advanced manufacturing businesses abroad that serve US customers to build new operations in the US, and

–to retard the development of Chinese tech manufacturing by denying those companies access to US-made components.

 

The results so far:

–the portion of tariffs on imported goods (paid by US importers to the US customs authorities) passed on to consumers has offset (for all but the ultra-wealthy) the extra income from the 2017 tax cuts

–the arbitrary timing and nature of the tariffs Trump is imposing seems to be doing the expected —discouraging industry, foreign and domestic, from building new plants in the US.  BMW, for example, had been planning on building all its luxury cars for export to China here, because US labor costs less than EU labor.  The threat of retaliatory tariffs by China for those imposed by the US made this a non-starter.

–Huawei.  This story is just beginning.  It has a chance of turning really ugly.  For the moment, inferior US snd EU products become more attractive.  Typically, such protection also slows new product development rather than accelerating it.  (Look at the US auto industry of the mid-1970s, a tragic example of this phenomenon.)   US-based tech component suppliers are doing what companies always do in this situation:  they’re  finding ways around the ban:  selling to foreign middlemen who resell to Huawei, or supplying from their non-US factories.  Even if such loopholes remain open, Mr. Trump is establishing that the US can’t be relied on as a tech supplier. Two consequences:  much greater urgency for China to create local substitutes for US products; greater motivation for US-based multinationals to locate intellectual property and manufacturing outside the US.

 

 

 

 

 

 

more tariffs?

May 31, 2019 By in Current Market Thoughts, securities markets, stock market, Strategy, tariff protection, tariffs, Uncategorized Tags: , , 1 Comment

Wall Street woke up today to an announcement from Mr. Trump that he intends to place a tariff on all goods coming into the US from Mexico.  The levy will be in effect until that country prevents immigrants/asylum seekers from reaching its border with the US.  The initial rate will be 5%, escalating to 25% by October.

As an American, I think I can understand the issues the administration wants to address.  But I find it more than a little unsettling that there seems to be no coherent, well-reasoned plan being implemented.  I’m pretty sure tariffs are not the way to go.  Also, both sides of the aisle in Congress appear to be eerily content to watch from the sidelines, rather than make it clear that Mr. Trump does not have authority to levy tariffs without legislative consent (my personal view, for what it’s worth) or limit/revoke that authority if the president does have it now.

 

As an investor, however, my main concern is the much narrower question of how Washington will affect my portfolio.

As to Mexico:  let’s say the US sells $300 billion yearly to Mexico and buys $350 billion.  Most of that is food and car parts.  Even if we sell less to Mexico because of retaliatory tariffs and if imported goods are 15% more expensive–to pluck a figure out of the air–the total direct negative impact on the US + Mexican economies would probably be a loss of around $100 billion in GDP.  How that would be split between the two isn’t clear, but the aggregate figure is 8% of Mexican GDP and 0.5% of US GDP.  So, potentially much worse for Mexico than for the US.

Given the nature of US-Mexico trade, the negative economic impact in the US will be concentrated on lower-income Americans.  If earnings reports from Walmart and the dollar stores are to be believed (I think they are), these are people whose fortunes have finally, and only recently, begun to turn up post-recession.

From a US stock market point of view, neither autos nor food has large index representation.  My guess is the negative impact will be roughly equally divided between negative pressure on directly-affected stocks, including names that cater to the less affluent, and mild downward pressure on stocks in general from slower domestic growth.  Because small caps are more domestically focused than the S&P 500, only half of whose earnings come from the US, the Russell 2000 will likely suffer more than large caps.

 

There are deeper, long-term questions that Washington is raising–about whether the US is an attractive place to establish manufacturing businesses and whether it can be relied on as a supplier to buy from.  In addition, it’s hard to figure out what government policy today is–for example, how new tariffs on Mexican imports square with just-reworked NAFTA, or how imposing tariffs that hurt domestic car manufacturers square with the threat of tariffs on imported vehicles, which do the opposite.

Neither of these concerns are likely to have a significant impact on near-term trading.  But heightened Washington dysfunction must even now be becoming a red flag in multinationals’ planning.