Business Groups Warn of Consequences as Trump's Trade War Spirals.

[elleng]

'The latest whipsawing escalations in the United States’ trade war with China prompted a wide array of business organizations to warn over the weekend that American consumers and workers would soon be caught in the crossfire.

It is now looking increasingly likely that few large American companies will be able to sidestep the toll exacted by the new tit-for-tat tariffs that China and President Trump rolled out on Friday.

Many business leaders have kept a low profile as the trade war intensified, for fear of attracting President Trump’s ire, and in the hope that the threats of tariffs could be negotiating tactics that will lead to some sort of trade agreement.

But with several tariffs already in place, and President Trump staking out an even more aggressive stance on Friday, many industries are reckoning with just how serious the situation has become.

Joshua Bolten, the president and chief executive of the Business Roundtable, an organization representing the leaders of the largest American companies, said on Sunday that many C.E.O.s were already “poised right on top of the brake.”

“The risk is that everybody’s going to slam on the brake, and that would be a disaster,” Mr. Bolten said on “Face the Nation” on CBS.

President Trump’s latest moves, Mr. Bolten said, could “disrupt trade and commerce in a way that would cause huge damage — not just to the Chinese economy, but to the global economy and the U.S. economy.”'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/25/business/trump-trade-war-businesses.html?

[guillaumeb]

1. Many people obviously feel, or hope, that Trump cannot be as crazy as he appears.

Such misguided and uncalled for optimism cannot change the reality of Trump.

[Ghost Dog]

2. "Hey, something bad's coming, hold on."

... While the stakes were higher in the financial crisis, with global economies on the brink of a depression and unemployment surging, for people in markets it was mostly a one-way trade. The number of parts moving now presents a unique challenge, says Gokhman, with the Federal Reserve inciting hair-trigger swings in banks, bond yields and currency while earnings season knocks stocks like Target Corp. and Macy’s Inc. up and down 10% or 20% a day. Maybe that would be fine if it weren’t for the president, whose Twitter blowups have gotten harder to navigate -- somehow -- as the summer dragged on...

... U.S. stock futures turned positive Monday afternoon in Asia after Trump said on the sidelines of the Group of 7 meeting that China has asked to re-start trade talks, hours after Beijing’s top negotiator publicly called for calm in response to a weekend of tit-for-tat tariff increases.

Friday’s gyrations were a new chapter for many veterans, proof that no blueprint exists. After watching index futures get felled by China’s $75 billion tariff counter-punch, bulls were relieved to see Powell push them back to green with a needle-threading speech at Jackson Hole. Trump summarily lambasted the Fed for doing “NOTHING!,” compared Powell with Xi Jinping and said he’d get back to everyone with a response. Wall Street had no recourse but to sit there as stocks slid almost 3% in the ensuing vacuum. “If I tell you ‘I’m going to punch you,’ that’s not as bad as me telling you, ‘I’m going to hurt you in a way that I’m not even going to tell you about,”’ Steve Chiavarone, a fund manager with Federated Investors, said in an interview. “Hey, something bad’s coming, hold on.”

These aren’t people who oppose everything Trump is doing. “We did need to resolve outstanding issues with China,” says Gokhman, though a coordinated approach with other countries that focused on intellectual property theft would’ve been preferable to a “sporadic” one that risks stymieing capital investment. To Chiavarone, 35, it’s “absolutely a battle worth fighting.” A technological revolution is going on, “and the country that controls the intellectual capital that’s driving that revolution will very likely be the world’s preeminent power,” he said. Still, tactics matter, “and undoubtedly the ratcheting up of tariffs has a negative impact on earnings, sentiment and financial markets.” ...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-25/stakes-were-higher-in-2008-but-it-s-way-weirder-trading-trump