Liesman on Tariffs: ‘The Market Is Pricing in the High Probability of a Recession’
RUSH EXCERPT:
LIESMAN: "Well, you know, we can go through the tick by tick. I came into the studio about 650 this morning when China put those retaliatory tariffs on. It was clear to the market, we’re in the middle of a trade war. And I watched the market go down another 500 points. Later in the day, we learned that fed chair Jay Powell, he cannot step in to rescue this market because he has to worry about inflation. He can’t just worry about the downside growth. But if you take a step back, what’s really happening here, Chris, is the market is pricing in the high probability of a recession. That’s really what this is all about right now. How much how little we don’t know. I will say that if there is going to be a recession, there could be further for stocks to fall here. One way to think about this, Chris, is the future value of America is now 7 to $10 trillion less than it was before Donald Trump took office. And I guess another way to think about it is this that, you know, the titanic hit an iceberg by accident. This is the equivalent of steering the titanic towards the iceberg. What’s not happening here is the market is not pricing in some form of golden age, where manufacturing comes back to America and this country prospers. As a result of that, the market prices in future values. And that’s not happening. And just one more thing, Chris, which is a lot of conversations I’ve had with, you know, big investors, people who manage a lot of money, is this sense that the they thought that Donald Trump and especially the lieutenants around him, the Treasury secretary, who’s a hedge fund manager, the commerce secretary, ran an investment bank that they cared about, things like the market and the economy, and they could keep the worst things of Donald Trump from happening. Well, that’s gone. There’s not a sense that anybody I don’t know if it’s competent or anybody who can. The adults have left the room is maybe one way to put it."
