"Making predictions is hard, especially when it's about the future!" - Yogi Berra
"PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald Trump warned the European Union (EU) that its exports will get hit with US tariffs if its member states don’t buy more American oil and gas.
“I told the European Union that they must make up their tremendous deficit with the US by the large scale purchase of our oil and gas. Otherwise, it is TARIFFS all the way!!!” he said on Truth Social."
Many of my dear readers might have grown tired of my constant harping about all the lies, manipulation and misrepresentation from both government sources and media regarding our actual state of affairs but, I won't apologize for sounding the alarm even if I'm way too early.
Only a few weeks ago I predicted the manipulation of actual statistics regarding job creation, inflation and economic growth would go into reverse and dump the actual (horribly bad) numbers on the Trump and his administration so they would get the blame for it.
That is already happening:
This data on most everything has been bad for a very long time, at least the last 2 years since the orgy of covid-stimulus that was injected into the economy in the form of Trillions of freshly printed dollars. That stimulus along with demand destruction from consumers running on credit card buying power which has now dissipated, is gone.
Now, we're left with aftermath.
Meanwhile, Trump will use tariff policies like a cudgel which will make the dollar even less attractive than it is now causing more inflation. Business owners will be affected one way or another since any supply disruptions will creep through the whole daisy-chain of payments and settlements.
Imports of products, parts and/or services could see immediate increases of 25-100 percent on top of already raging inflation.
Service companies that outsource activity from other countries could easily be affected like all the American companies who have their admin staff in the Philippines for example.
Every new headline will cause either panic or relief and have to be walked-back or re-enforced depending on the reaction. Canada alone accounts for a huge portion of American trade that can go up 25% in just a week or two. Mexico? India? China? WTH knows??
With Trump's temperament, it could come down to a single social media post that triggers a new tariff war which could decimate a Yuuge portion of American businesses.
Then there are the capital markets levitating at all-time-highs where most Americans have their retirement funds passively invested. I doubt many of those folks even know what NVIDIA does much less where it's price should be.
There is only one way to go from here in terms of valuation of stocks and bonds. Everything is already priced to perfection and then some.
In the waning hours of the most dreadful lame-duck session at least we can all be comforted to know that Ukraine will be ok for the next few weeks!
We will not be able to skate through 2025.
Prepare for adversity as much as possible is my best advice. Here are some links I think will help your understanding of the situation we're in:
"Are you not entertained by the never-ending bullshit, propaganda, false flags, threats, and revelations produced by those running the show and regurgitated by their captured media mouthpiece whores? The absolute tsunami of misinformation and political theatrics spewing over the airwaves is surely designed to distract the public from something more sinister, diabolical, and self-serving to the Deep State renegades who still wield the real power in this world. Nothing is as it seems. If ever there was a time to keep your hands upon the wheel and eyes upon the road, it is now. They have turned up the volume of misinformation and fear mongering to eleven."
"The office-debt meltdown keeps getting worse. The motto in 2024 was “Survive till 2025” via extend-and-pretend. But now what?"
"A federal appeals court has halted enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), an anti-money laundering measure requiring small businesses to disclose beneficial ownership information, drawing praise from America’s biggest small business lobby, which has panned the law as “burdensome” and battled it in court."
