The Wall Street Journal, our last bastion of conservative journalism, has not exactly been kind to the Trump Administration. Friday's lead editorial led with the headline “Trump Stages a Trade-War Retreat.” Was that really necessary? Surely the world-class writers on the Journal staff recognize by now Trump’s “Art of the Deal” negotiating tactics, where he asks for the moon, when his goal is to settle for something in the middle, but still an improvement over the status quo. And, to call an agreement with the UK that is to our advantage a “retreat” is disingenuous, and had it appeared in the New York Times, it would have qualified as partisan rhetoric. Granted, Trump’s weaponization of tariffs to reorder international trade is risky, but so is maintaining the current trade deficit. The Administration claims that countries are lining up to cut a deal, and this week’s forum in Switzerland will give us a better indication of whether or not that is true. But market gyrations do not please the Journal’s desire to appease Wall Street’s voracious appetite for easy money and aversion to volatility. Patience has never been an investor virtue, preferring knee-jerk reactions to subtle trends and a herd mentality. Recall, we are only a month after “liberation day”, the market has regained nearly all of its losses despite rampant pessimism, and even the most conservative investment firms are pulling back from their doomsday recession predictions. Patience, my friends. Reassess after Lutnick and Bessent return from the economic forum. And remember, with Trump-style negotiations, everything is in play.
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