Donald Trump sends his regrets

| 6:04 pm EDT August 25, 2019
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“President” Donald Trump insisted he was ordering American companies to stop doing business in China. That statement, with his preface “I hereby order” was derided and outed as a nonstarter. Think of Apple and its CEO Tim Cook heeding any such mandate, for example.

On Sunday, while at the G7 Summit, Trump was asked if he regretted the escalating trade war with China. Trump responded to questions about regrets and second thoughts, “Yeah, sure. Why not. Might as well. Might as well. I have second thoughts about everything.”

But like many statements that Trump makes, his team immediately suggested he had been misinterpreted and the media had falsely cast what he said. (For those who believe Trump and his team, just google it and you can see right there on video the exchange and exactly what he said and what the question was.) Apparently, Fox and his allies immediately panicked that Trump was softening or changing his views on China and the trade wars. To quell those fears, Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham rolled out a follow up to “correct the record” and stated:

“The president was asked if he had ‘any second thought on escalating the trade war with China.’ His answer has been greatly misinterpreted. President Trump responded in the affirmative — because he regrets not raising the tariffs higher.”

Trump also announced that he and Japanese Prime Minister Abe had reached a trade deal in principle, with no details disclosed by either. If past deals in principle are like this one, it means that there is not much of anything but an agreement to try to agree. Time will tell on Japan. Finally, at the G7, Trump announced that he might very well invite his handler, Vladimir Putin, to the next G7 Summit that will take place in the United States. He will get resistance from the other G7 members on that front.

The announcement that Donald Trump wished he would have raised tariffs even higher is not likely to go down well on Wall Street this week. We might be in for another roller coaster of a week in the markets heading into the long Labor Day weekend.