Have You Noticed That No One Is Bullish On The Trump Economic Agenda... Except His Appointees?

People who deal with hundreds of millions and billions of dollars in investments try to put their political proclivities aside and today they are very bearish on the Trump economy. Writing for Barron’s, Paul La Monica reported that “Big Money pros are more anxious now than during the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the 2008-09 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic. America’s money managers are more bearish today than they have been in nearly 30 years. Barron’s latest Big Money poll of professional investors finds 32% of respondents bearish on the outlook for stocks over the next 12 months— the highest percentage since at least 1997.”

They know Trump is a life-long incompetent who has failed his way into the Oval Office. Even if foolish exurban voters don’t get it, these people do. They didn’t have to watch the Netflix series Trump: An American Dream, to know what Trump is. But his moron voters should have:

And now he’s clownishly taking on China and Russia— and failing miserably… on behalf of our country and our economy. Trump can’t lie and gaslight his way out of this one. And, in the end, he won't even to blame all his idiotic blunders on Biden.

“With trade talk between the US and China finally getting underway,” wrote Rebecca Wilkins, President Xi Jinping is setting off on an ideological victory lap to assert his vision of a world with waning American influence. The Chinese leader begins a four-day trip to Russia today for his first meeting with Vladimir Putin since Trump rocked global trade with America’s most disruptive tariff regime in a century… The visit further showcases the ‘no-limits’ partnership declared by Xi and Putin, even as Trump seeks to rebuild US relations with Moscow. And it’s a reminder of Beijing’s sway with a contingent of countries eager to see US hegemony replaced by a multipolar world order embraced by Xi and Putin... [A] more tangible sign of Xi’s success in projecting China as a more reliable partner than the US may come from a reset in Beijing’s ties with Europe, despite frictions over the war in Ukraine. Before setting off for Moscow, he called on European Union leaders to stand with China against unilateral bullying, a thinly veiled reference to the US. If he can translate that detente into an expansion of economic ties, it’ll be the clearest signal yet that Xi’s multipolar world is here to stay.”

Ruth Carson expanded, also for Bloomberg, by noting that “The dollar may face a $2.5 trillion ‘avalanche’ of selling as Asian countries unwind their stockpile of the world’s reserve currency, according to Stephen Jen. Asian exporters and investors may have amassed an ‘extremely large’ pile of dollars through the years, widening the region’s trade surplus with the US, Eurizon SLJ Capital’s Jen and Joana Freire wrote in a note on Wednesday. As a US-led trade war deepens, some Asian investors might repatriate chunks of funds or ramp up levels of protection against a weakening dollar— potentially triggering an exodus from the world’s reserve currency.

The greenback’s long-term appeal is coming under threat as Trump’s efforts to remake the global trade order prompt investors to reconsider their US exceptionalism trade strategies. An outsized jump in the Taiwan dollar on Monday added to speculation that Asia’s policymakers may be prepared to let their currencies appreciate versus the dollar as part of efforts to secure a trade deal with the US.

Bloomberg’s dollar gauge has dropped about 8% from a February high and all Asian currencies have strengthened versus the greenback in the past one month.

… Accelerating the multi-trillion dollar flows may be “naked long-dollar positions” prevalent among Asian countries that run large external surpluses, he wrote, referring to positions that are not hedged against fluctuations in the dollar. Some of these countries include China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Vietnam.

There is an “important imbalance in the world that puts the dollar in a vulnerable position,” Jen wrote in the latest report.

Meanwhile, the unschooled moron-in-chief claims to be digging in on his absurd and unsustainable China tariffs. Kevin Breuninger reported that yesterday, the idiot said “he would not consider lowering the United States’ 145% tariffs on China in order to spur trade-war negotiations with Beijing. Trump flatly answered ‘no’ when asked at the White House if he was open to pulling back on the steep import duties to get China to the negotiating table. Trump’s commitment to his tariffs came three days before U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was scheduled to meet with his Chinese counterpart in Switzerland to discuss trade and economic issues. China said earlier Wednesday that the U.S. requested that meeting, and that Beijing remained ‘firmly’ opposed to Trump’s tariff hikes heading into the talks. Asked what he expected to come out of the meeting in Europe, Trump said, ‘We’ll see ... we were losing a trillion dollars a year, now we’re not losing anything, you know? It’s the way I look at it.’”

The way he looks at it is the way a delusional ignoramus looks at it— and certainly not the way money managers anywhere in the world look at it. What would Trump do differently if he WANTED to cause a recession? Let’s see… his policies already seem tailor-made to destabilize markets and erode confidence. By doubling down on tariffs that strain global supply chains and alienate trading partners like China, he’s certainly risking inflated costs for consumers and businesses while inviting retaliatory measures. The bearish outlook from Big Money investors reflects a stark reality: Trump’s economic strategy is seen— at best— as a gamble with catastrophic downside. If he were deliberately aiming for a recession, he might lean even harder into isolationist policies, further alienating allies and accelerating the shift toward a multipolar world order led by Xi and Putin. He could even blunder into escalating tariffs beyond the current 145% on China, ignoring the warnings of currency devaluation from analysts like Jen or dismissing the upcoming U.S.-China trade talks as inconsequential.

The irony is that his purloined “America First” mantra may hasten the decline of U.S. economic dominance. His inability to understand and grasp the interconnected nature of global markets, coupled with his simplistic view of trade deficits as “losses,” betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of economics. In fact, if he wanted a recession, he might simply stay the course— because, as the Barron’s poll and global market trends suggest, he’s already steering the U.S. economy toward a precipice. Does he even recognize the cliff ahead.

Ask yourself why a man so transparently incompetent, corrupt, and dangerous won back the White House. For one thing, the the electorate is pathetic and filled with non-voters and a loud, grievance-soaked minority. Trump’s base doesn’t read Barron’s, and they don’t care what the markets think. They didn’t vote for stability or competence. They voted to make the people they hate suffer.