On the day of the US presidential inauguration I was told by a top US tech chief executive that although he was likely to be hit by retaliatory tariffs, he assumed any trade war would die down.
“Trump lives by the Dow Jones’ reaction,” he said – something markets call the “Trump put”.
This means that whenever a White House announcement that damaged sentiment came out, the president would row back after seeing a stock market fall.
Those assumptions have now changed, after the president gave a TV interview in which he downplayed how much he was moved by markets.
And only a day after US stock markets fell sharply on worries over the impact of Trump’s policies, the president said he was going to double tariffs against Canada on steel and aluminium, in response to higher charges for Canadian electricity, worth about $100 per bill, in New York, Minnesota and Michigan – although he later halted that plan after Ontario suspended those charges.
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