About 10 days ago, an increasingly confident Scott Bessent began telling Wall Street executives that he was on the verge of removing the big dark cloud hovering over the US markets and economy: The Treasury Secretary said he was
making significant progress in cutting trade deals with India, Japan, South Korea, and Australia, some of our biggest trade partners.
The markets would love the move; President Trump could move forward with his broader plans of isolating the rogue of the global trade, China, with its high tariffs and frequent theft of US intellectual property.
He would avoid an existential threat to his young presidency in a tariff-induce economic meltdown that could lead to rampant inflation and a recession.
But that was last week, and there are still no deals — at least none that look imminent by press time Monday — which is why the
markets resumed trading after the weekend in free fall. It didn’t help that Trump added to the uncertainty, when he called Fed Chair Jerome Powell a “major loser,” more than hinting that he will try and remove him over his reluctance to cut interest rates because tariffs might stoke inflation.