Article #247575

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

While many exporters around the world cheered when the supreme court ruled against Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs last week, the unintended consequence could be that the trade war escalates further, says Neil Wilson at the broker Saxo Markets.

Trump warned countries not to ‘play games’ and threatened ‘a much higher tariff’ than they had agreed to...the unintended consequence of the Supreme Court ruling could be an escalatory trade war that markets hadn’t anticipated. Or as Trump put it the Supreme Court had ‘unwittingly’ handed him ‘far more powers and strength’ to levy fresh tariffs than before the ruling.

… The White House insists it’s working on a 15% levy at a later date, which gives the president a degree of optionality, but this is evolving into a far messier situation than we had a week ago.

We can all agree that the US is not facing a ⁠balance of payments crisis, which is when countries experience an exorbitant increase in international borrowing costs and lose access to financial markets.