Markets soar as Trump not doing stupid thing yet

The FTSE, Nikkei and Hang Seng indices all soared yesterday on the news that Donald Trump has temporarily paused his plan to implement tariffs on imports to America.

“It’s like the first day of Spring combined with meeting the love of your life and winning the lottery, all on the same day,” said market analyst Jeremy Wonk. “Imagine, it might be as much as three months before Trump drives the world economy off a cliff and we all end up living in mud huts, subsisting on nuts and berries.

“If Wordsworth were alive today, he’d say t'was bliss in this dawn to be alive, but to be a commodities broker was very heaven.

“Of course, it would be nice if we had some actual good news to celebrate, rather than just bad news being put off for a while, but frankly we’ll take what we can get. I suppose there’s the fact that he’ll be gone in 2028, but somehow I believe that less every time I say it.”

The perils of buying an American car

The US auto business is in big trouble because of the Trump Tariff Tempest.  Even the good ole boys at Ford and GM are hit hard because all car manufacturers rely on a global supply chain.

US auto-makers costs have just rocketed, and they are desperate to keep costs down.   So they will rush to replace foreign parts with locally sourced parts.  Or they will use domestic parts designed for one model instead of the correct part from overseas.

What does this mean?  It means that all of that careful design and engineering work goes out the window.  And American cars will be a horrible kludge of mashed up kit that is the best that they could get from their US suppliers, KMart and Walmart.   You can throw away your Haynes manuals right now!

 On the plus side, your car will be delivered already customised, and each one will be entirely unique.  And anything you do to it is unlikely to make anything worse.

Your best chance of buying a car that is built as its designers intended is probably to buy Chinese. Or a restored Morris Minor. 

C5, anyone?

Image: Pixabay/jenu

Musk proven to be far-sighted for starting US goods boycott early

Although it is probable that Elon Musk had forewarning of the tariff blitz by President Trump, and presumably worked out that every country affected (read that as every country bar Russia) would react and fight back by boycotting US products, he showed great prescience by triggering a world-wide boycott of Tesla products weeks ago.

'I don't know how Jeep and Ford are going to catch up with Elon in terms of lost sales.  He sure makes his competitors work,' said a motor industry spokesman today.  Some US auto makers are considering paying crowds to torch their cars on the forecourt to help level the playing field.  Or just publishing the real fuel costs of running them.  

Image: Pixabay/thepassenger