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Mexico, for its part, recently passed China as America’s leading trade partner.
If President Trump's policies go into effect, all three countries will suffer a high cost, and that’s a big “if.”
Whatever Trump’s flaws as a person or a leader, the author of The Art of the Deal has always had a shrewd mind for negotiating.
And when it comes to international relations, the #1 thing you need on the table is leverage.
If you don’t have anything to surrender when you come to the table, there isn’t a lot of room to move.
There’s a great episode of The West Wing (I know, I’ve talked about that show a lot lately)...
President Bartlet is playing chess with several members of his staff while talking about an ongoing crisis in the South China Sea, where Taiwan wants to test missiles and China is threatening expanded military action (sounds a little TOO familiar)...
In the episode, the President has ordered a carrier group to move into the South China Sea, a move that would certainly threaten China’s autonomy and control over the region, even if the ships remained technically in “international waters.”
But as the episode unfolds, you learn that this was all a bluff. The order to move the ships was a false flag just so Bartlet could cancel the order and appease the Chinese. He never wanted the ships there in the first place.
But he had to show strength in order to give the Chinese something back in the negotiation.
In my political science classes, they called that brinkmanship. You push all the way up to the edge if you have to to make your point, without ever intending to go over it.
With Trump, there is a lot of madness. But there is at least occasionally a method behind it.
And when it comes to tariffs, I don’t think he wants to impose them nearly as much as he wants to threaten them.
If China and Mexico take serious steps to curb the flow of immigration and drugs across the border, and become partners on that front, then I doubt we’ll ever see tariffs imposed at all.
Right now, as I write this, the markets are showing mixed results this morning, but they certainly don’t seem to be panicking over President Trump’s biting tweets, or… rather… Truth Social…eets? I don’t know what the word is for that.
But either way, I hope you’re having a great Tuesday.
To your prosperity,
Stephen Ground
Editor-in-Chief, ProsperityPub
P.S.: I went Thanksgiving shopping yesterday, and YEESH! Grocery prices are crazy, and buying a 15 pound frozen bird doesn’t help! Fortunately, there are ways to target extra cash through the stock market every single day, and Nate Tucci has isolated one of the best methods. Check it out here!
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