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Comment by FollowingTheDao | Hacker News Reader

It is not that the markets are tricky. Predicting what the Fed will do with interest rates is tricky. By lowering rates they feed more money into the market. Take a look at the last 15 years and you will realize the only thing that gave us a minor recession was COVID, adn that was becasue intrest rates were zero.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS

But they can't do this for much longer, inflation is the first sign, which is why Trump is raising tariffs.

You can see Bond prices going up. Trumps tarrifs are aimed and lowering T Bill rates:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS10

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> But they can't do this for much longer, inflation is the first sign, which is why Trump is raising tariffs.

Trump is raising tariffs because he thinks they are a good idea and has since the 1980s:

> “The fact is, you don’t have free trade. We think of it as free trade, but you right now don’t have free trade,” Trump said in a 1987 episode of Larry King Live that’s excerpted in Trump’s Trade War. “A lot of people are tired of watching the other countries ripping off the United States. This is a great country.”

* https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/trumps-tariff-str...

Trump's mindset is a 1980s NYC real estate guy (zero-sum, one-off games), which when applied to global trade, is basically mercantilist:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism

Meanwhile, in the real world, commerce is often non-zero-sum (both parties get something of value, i.e., "win-win"), and you play multiple rounds with each trading partner and reputation matters (rather than one-off, where burning your bridges could be an actual strategy).

Trump was talking about free trade in the 80s, not in increasing tarrifs, which is not free trade. In fact, it’s the complete opposite.

Trump is saying that nobody is doing free trade except America, and so we should stop being free. He’s had a tariff fixation for decades.

> which is why Trump is raising tariffs.

I question this bit. (That may be why he's raising tariffs; I question whether it will work.)

When tariffs go up, prices go up (delusions that "other countries will pay" notwithstanding). That shows up in inflation statistics, which in turn will (probably) show up in T Bill rates, but as a higher rate, not a lower one.

Except... tariffs might be a one-off increase. They may not compound the way "regular" inflation does. So maybe it will work in the medium term?

Oh, I don’t think it’s going to work at all. For some reason, he doesn’t think it’s gonna raise inflation enough to matter.

Who knows if this is the reason that Trump is putting in place this trade war and increasing tariffs, but this paper is a very interesting perspective on why someone in the position the US is in, in regards to the global economy is extremely thought provoking [1].

Seeing as how Trump appointed the author into his political circle though could be evidence this is the ultimate goal.

The paper is quite lengthy, however, in the beginning Stephen explains this idea of the Triffin Dilemma. A country that acts as the worlds reserve currency and thus creates enormous demand for their currency for things outside of goods are at a disadvantage that exasperate their trade deficit. This is implicit for a countries currency where most global trade is settled in their dollars, not to mention the benefits of holding the world reserve currency as a value store or investment.

I've wondered since the tarifs were announced how much impact they can actually have, but besides that point what is a reserve currency country to do? Give up their reserve currency status? There are significant downsides to that as well...

[1] https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese...

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