Trump admits Dow would be 10,000 points higher without Donald Trump

PostHuman · Sep 4, 2019

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...uld-be-10-000-points-higher-without-trade-war

Donald Trump said his trade war with China has hurt the performance of the U.S. stock market, but that he had to confront the country’s economic practices.

“Let me tell you, if I wanted to do nothing with China, our stock market, our stock market would be 10,000 points higher than it is right now but somebody had to do this,” the president told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. “It was out of control and they were out of control.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 26,332 as of about 1:00 p.m. in Washington, up less than 1 percent for the day. Trump increased tariffs on Chinese imports this week to try to elbow Beijing into resuming talks on a far-reaching trade deal.

“We’ll see what happens, if they want to make a deal, they’ll make a deal, if they don’t want to make a deal, that’s fine,” he said.

Trump declined to say whether Chinese negotiators will visit Washington this month.

Trump has placed tariffs on some $360 billion of Chinese imports since the start of the trade war more than a year ago. On Sunday, he enacted a 15% duty on about $112 billion of Chinese products, mostly electronics and other consumer items.

An existing 25% tax on about $250 billion of goods is set to rise to 30% on Oct. 1. A separate batch of about $160 billion in Chinese goods, including laptops and mobile phones, will be hit with 15% tariffs on Dec. 15 -- meaning that virtually every Chinese import will have a tariff levied on it.

Trump has previously said the Dow would be 10,000 points higher if the U.S. Federal Reserve hadn’t raised interest rates last year. Trump routinely criticizes Fed Chairman Jerome Powell.

Gregg · Sep 4, 2019

On election day 2016 the Dow Jones Industrials closed at 18,322. The high in early July of this year was 27,398. That's nearly a 50% rise in less than 2 years. (It's backed off 3-4% since the high). That's an excellent accomplishment.
Over the long term the market has risen, on average, about 9 or 10%.

ElaineA · Sep 4, 2019

This illustrates what might just be the most frightening shortcoming about him. Not his narcissism, not his stupidity, but his background coming from a minuscule and tightly held family company. He has never had more than a handful of employees, and he's directed every move the company ever made himself with no input from officers or directors or anyone who could say, "Yanno, that might not be a good idea."

And BECAUSE of his narcissism, he could never look at it and say it didn't work. He disregards all the bad decisions, or calls them shrewd moves that any good businessman would take (like declaring bankruptcy).

And now he thinks he can operate the US government in the same style, and it IS. He's getting away with it. But like all those people left to pick up the pieces after he stiffed them with bankruptcies, or promises unkept, we're going to be floundering and hoping like hell we can recover when he's out.

PostHuman · Sep 4, 2019

Gregg said:
On election day 2016 the Dow Jones Industrials closed at 18,322. The high in early July of this year was 27,398. That's nearly a 50% rise in less than 2 years. (It's backed off 3-4% since the high). That's an excellent accomplishment.
Over the long term the market has risen, on average, about 9 or 10%.

Earnings before interest and taxes is how company valuation is determined. Dropping the corporate rate from 35% to 21% and adding the new 20% pass through deduction directly boosted the market cap of millions of US businesses. This wasn't Trump's tax plan, simply what GOP had already been pushing for since McCain and Romney.

If he would have listened to Gary Cohn two years ago and shut up about the tariffs, the US economy would be going nuts right now with skyrocketing 401ks. Instead, after passing the tax cuts, he introduced a great deal of global economic uncertainty with his inept trade policy. This along with concerns about Brexit made many businesses around the world hesitant to invest in expansion.

Normally there would have been huge investments of the increased after tax profits in ramping up production capacity. Instead we saw a lot of stock buybacks. It doesn't make sense for businesses to invest heavily into expanding when exports are getting hit with massive retaliatory tariffs by our trade partners or softer demand in the client market. Many have been waiting to see if the tariffs will expire before investing in more capacity.

Recently happened with a brand new plant Volvo spent billions building in North Carolina, intended to produce the model XC60 for export to China. It got hit with 40% tariff so they downsized the staff in North Carolina and built second factory in China.

The tariffs were supposedly intended to boost American manufacturing output, but the opposite has happened and US manufacturing indexes contracted for the first time in 3 years.

cornflake · Sep 4, 2019

Gregg said:
On election day 2016 the Dow Jones Industrials closed at 18,322. The high in early July of this year was 27,398. That's nearly a 50% rise in less than 2 years. (It's backed off 3-4% since the high). That's an excellent accomplishment.
Over the long term the market has risen, on average, about 9 or 10%.

Or, you know, not.

The short answer is that Trump has quite a way to go. Under Obama, the S&P 500 grew by 56.4%. The Dow Jones Industrials Average was up 50.6% and the Nasdaq, 92.9%.

The numbers under Trump were 21.4% for the S&P 500, 25.2% for the Dow, and 34.2% for Nasdaq.

ElaineA said:
This illustrates what might just be the most frightening shortcoming about him. Not his narcissism, not his stupidity, but his background coming from a minuscule and tightly held family company. He has never had more than a handful of employees, and he's directed every move the company ever made himself with no input from officers or directors or anyone who could say, "Yanno, that might not be a good idea."

And BECAUSE of his narcissism, he could never look at it and say it didn't work. He disregards all the bad decisions, or calls them shrewd moves that any good businessman would take (like declaring bankruptcy).

And now he thinks he can operate the US government in the same style, and it IS. He's getting away with it. But like all those people left to pick up the pieces after he stiffed them with bankruptcies, or promises unkept, we're going to be floundering and hoping like hell we can recover when he's out.

It's such a combination -- and the problem is we don't know who's pulling the strings and why. I agree that he's never worked anyplace that he had to be accountable to anyone, in any capacity, is a problem, but it's all exacerbated by the fact that he's dumb as dirt, ignorant, narcissistic, etc.

It's not like Trump came up with the idea of tariffs. He can't spell tariff -- and god knows he's got not a fucking clue what trade deficit China does or does not run with the U.S. (or the nuances of trade deficits or etc., etc.), so someone is feeding him the bogus numbers he constantly spews, along with the idea of tariffs. Is it just FOX people? If so who and why? Is it the financial Stephen Miller, whomever that might be?

cbenoi1 · Sep 4, 2019

We’ll see what happens

Translation: I do not know (nor do I care about) the consequences of my decisions.

-cb

MaeZe · Sep 7, 2019

He uses that line a lot.

Trump admits Dow would be 10,000 points higher without Donald Trump

PostHuman

Gregg

Life is good

ElaineA

All about that action, boss.

PostHuman

cornflake

practical experience, FTW

cbenoi1

MaeZe