Looking forward to a huge rally tomorrow, especially anything tech-related :)

Take 2 on this, as I lost my initial response I prepared this morning.

 I am very torn on the latest exemptions from the Trump Administration, as him backing down from the exemptions is to me a common sense approach to ensuring that innovation within the USA is not stifled.

If the big companies and their lobbyists have influenced change in the tech sector, I don’t see it being a far stretch that further exemptions will be applicable in the future to these goods.

It just leaves me a little confused about what the point of these tariffs actually are?

Tariff - A tax imposed by one country on the goods and services imported from another country to influence it, raise revenues, or protect competitive advantages

Protect Competitive advantages - The latest decision from Trump feels like a white flag that the USA will never be able to compete in the tech and semiconductors space, and will leave that to the specialists. The protection benefits of these tariffs are still murky (if any at all), especially if capital is not being spent during the extended uncertainty.

Influence a country - It’s clear that China is not backing down on these Tariffs and their own approach is evidence that they are not planning to change in the future. They also now have a clear Achilles heel to attack the US if Trump doesn’t back down.

Revenue – This is becoming apparent that this is the main driver of this whole shenanigan. It appears that Trump is finding his own long winded way of implementing a 10% tax across the board to give some tax cuts and pare back on their debt obligations, without the significant uproar from the population about its implementation.

Any extra revenue they end up generating from China will be gravy on top for the US in a revenue perspective, but its not improving competitive advantages for the US given the extent of products currently sourced from China. The influence will likely be a huge dislocation of the status quo, where suppliers in both China and the US will seek out alternative markets with their goods that maximise their revenue.

A perfect example of this outcome (albeit to a different scale) is what happened to Aus wine exports when China implemented their tariffs a few years ago. Here are some numbers that Perplexity was able to provide me.

I’m not suggesting that they will find new customers overnight, but countries or companies who act as intermediaries between the two are likely to benefit from this uncertainty in the short term.

I don’t know exactly how this plays out however, but either way the behaviour of US and Chinese consumers will not be the same for a while, especially if we do get some stagflation in the mix. Interesting times ahead

@mikebrisy and @SudMav I haven't weighed in until now on all the events of the past week. While this carve out for chips and smartphones etc doesn't surprise me given it was always very unlikely these could be made in the U.S. or another "friendlier" country anytime soon, this now strikes me as market manipulation to the max. I doubt anything will be done about it though given who it's being driven by.

But it smells like a "set up". And that isn't be good for U.S. politics, global harmony or global investors...

As always the rational approach is to play the hand your dealt but at the same time we should want to play in a game that isn't rigged (unless your the one doing the rigging!).

I suspect the rest of the Chinese tariffs still in place are going to hurt a lot of small companies rather than big tech. And it is also probably great news for Private Equity who will be able to screw some desperate smaller companies down in this environment.

Typical shotgun diplomacy between US and China. It's a pity that all these tariffs and changes appear to be done by US executive order. I thought USA was a democracy?

Something has to change there.

I bet cult stock Catapult will fly on the news of mobile devices being exempted and recapture all time highs tomorrow - no pun intended!

As far as I can recall, Catapult devices are manufactured in Taiwan.

The All-In Podcast has a reasonably balanced debate about the Trump tariffs for those who want to go deeper into it The Great Tariff Debate with David Sacks, Larry Summers, and Ezra Klein .

Warning: There is some fairly lively debate between the opposing sides David Sacks and Larry Summers :-)

@Slomo , amen!

Am bracing for a potentially interesting night. The US10Yr Yield is at 4.399% now 1915 WST/2115 EST, and the US10Yr Bond is down to 101'25'5, pretty much near/at the SAME levels on Wed when Trump blinked, so we are back to Wed again. Mohamed el-Erian said that the Fed "nearly had to intervene in the Bond market" on Wed.

And there is this little annoyance of Xi flipping Trump the bird, in his face, again.

Something has to give, again ...