Nobody knows

I saw a Tweet yesterday with someone saying that Trump doesn’t know that words can have multiple meanings and he thinks a trade deficit means they are losing. I laughed but then realized that this very well could be the truth. I’d like to think that Trump isn’t dumb enough to not know why a trade deficit happens, but I have no evidence to the contrary.

In fact, he seems to have doubled down on trying to eliminate the trade deficit with each country. Of course, there’s a reason why we buy more goods from countries like Vietnam than they buy from us. Another Tweet I saw the other day said that this trade war is like “Hiring a house cleaner to clean your house, but then fighting with the cleaner so you can keep cleaning the toilet”.

The problem with all this is that no one actually knows exactly what Trump wants or aims to get out of all this. Even the countries who he’s negotiating with and has been open to negotiate.

My two simple theories: Trump thinks a trade deficit is bad for some reason and wants to eliminate said deficit. And/or he simply just wants to flex his power over the rest of the world for a bit because of his ego. Unfortunately both these things can still be true.

We can only hope that this does not continue for much longer. There is no one I respect in the business or investing world out there that says that a prolonged trade war is good for the country or world. Let’s all hope this works out.