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Notes -
Trump tariffs McDonald's:
BBC article for a more detailed overview.
Highlights or lowlights include:
I'm not an economist, but I don't think it's a good idea to throw out tariffs with such clear absence of rigor. The only saving grace is that Trump is fickle, so if enough people yell at him from his in-group, he might pivot in a week. If not, bloody hell.
On Trump
As @IGI-111 says below, and as I said before and after the election, Trump’s position on tariffs is his only true ideology. On everything else he is malleable. On tariffs he is a zealot.
That is not to say that he might never change course. As the actual tariffs show, his grasp of the math is limited or nonexistent. If a foreign leader flatters him, praises him, and manufactures some no-more-fictive numbers that show that America is not [anymore] “getting ripped off”, then there is a reasonable chance of capitulation.
But this is real ideology in play. The sad thing is that it is this that he truly believes in, and not immigration reform.
On the economic consequences
A major asset price correction is long overdue. These may trigger it, or something else will. In the long term I am more sanguine; the great economic disruption of the next decade will not be tariffs but AI, and if anything front-loading some mass unemployment for more mundane economic reasons might well spur some innovative and forward-thinking planning for the coming (far greater) employment crisis.
Bringing manufacturing back to Western countries is also critical in the age of AI because service exports will decline when professional services are fully automated and software can be developed for tiny fractions of the current cost, which will benefit those with large domestic manufacturing sectors that can be quickly automated and hurt countries reliant on white-collar service sectors.
I could imagine a feedback loop where anything that boosts wages boosts housing prices, as sellers and landlords try to capture that value. So a labor shortage, a minimum wage hike, that kind of thing. Then the labor shortage ends and wages slow down, but housing stays expensive.
What I don’t get is what actually triggers an asset price correction. How does the market stay, apparently, uncorrected, and why does it stop? Why can’t houses depreciate without an apocalyptic event?
For most people, housing is by far the most important investment they own. So they’ll do anything rather than sell their house at a lower price than they bought it.
A friend inherited a house and selling that house has become the centre of their life for years now. They’re convinced that if they just hold on, the price will return to what it was 5 years ago. Taking out loans to pay inheritance taxes, whatever. Anything to get the price from ‘nice income boost’ back to lottery money.
Is your friend my father? After all the kids left the nest, my father divorced my mother to move in with his aging dad with a large house in Southern California. He took care of my grandpa and the house until my grandpa passed away, and is now trying to keep the house value up and sell it for "what it's really worth." The house is 60+ years old now and most developers just want the land. I worry he's going to pass away before he sees any profit from the investment that robbed him of the last decades of his life.
@OracleOutlook, I am your father
In all seriousness, pretty similar situation. The friend spent 10 years taking care of her father and in her head the (hypothetical) money from her father's very valuable London house became the solution to all of the problems in her life. Now prices have dropped massively, she's on the hook (I think) for inheritance tax based on the old value not the new value, and it would be VERY nice amount of money but it's not going to pay for a divorce and a comfortable retirement.
Prime Central London housing is down at absolute most maybe 20% (10-15% is a more realistic number) in nominal (sterling) terms since 2014, more in dollars although with the strengthening now that’s starting to change. A poor investment especially compared to US equities over the last decade, and a loss in real terms, but if her father lived in a house that was worth, say, £3m in 2015, she’s still doing pretty well today.
If you bought a house in central London any time before 2012 or so, you’ve made good money. If you bought before 2004/2005 you’ve made a lot of money. If you bought before 1998 or so you’ve made insane amounts of money. That’s all still true.
How the hell is "prime Central London housing" down, at all??? (And can American blue states be persuaded to do the same?)
Why would it not be down? Salaries in London are flat, crime is rising, illegal immigration is unstoppable, the country is in a state of complete malaise, and most of all there's just not that much to recommend London relative to Vancouver, New York, Seattle, Sydney, Dublin, Zürich or even Berlin or Barcelona if you want to invest some money in property. If American blue states want to get there, well, just raise taxes and reduce quality of life as much as you can -- you'll get there eventually.
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