I’ve been quite busy with our May issue this week, has there been anything going on in the big, wide world that I should know about…?
Only joking, of course. It’s impossible to avoid hearing or reading about the chaos caused by Trump’s latest pronouncements. If Boris Johnson was known as ‘the shopping trolley’ because he veered all over the place and couldn’t be controlled, how on earth would you describe Trump?
Just this week alone, Trump singlehandedly decided he would build a bear market – and let’s be honest, if I was someone whose name rhymed with slump, I would be doing everything in my power to avoid that happening in the markets. Yet that’s precisely what we saw this week; stocks plummeting as panic took hold was bad enough, but when the bond market came crashing down too, it was the final straw. Trump was left with little choice but to cave… hard. A 90-day pause in the introduction of new tariffs for most countries saw the markets bounce back almost instantaneously, just hours after Trump had told people “Now is a good time to buy.” Surely just a coincidence and not market manipulation…right?
The 90-day pause applies to most countries… except China. And as that is where the vast majority of toys are still made, the toy community can’t celebrate just yet. It does seem that despite a realization that his actions were severely damaging the US and global economies and punishing his own backers and voters, Trump still seems determined to engage in a trade war with China. As my old friend* Edwin Starr might have sung, “Trade War. Huh. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.” Except Trump doesn’t see it that way – he seems very much up for the fight.
Quite what the end game is, however, remains up for debate…
Read the rest here.
