‘Can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube’
Global markets are rebounding on Tuesday even as trade tensions show little signs of cooling. To wit: Beijing vowed that it “will fight to the end” against President Trump’s latest tariff threats.
Wall Street analysts have issued a flurry of downgrades for the S&P 500, and billionaire business leaders are pushing back against Trump. (Among them is Elon Musk, the president’s biggest backer, who directly appealed to Trump to reverse course, The Washington Post reports.)
All this adds to a grim mood hanging over boardrooms and trading floors, with C.E.O.s and investors telling DealBook they worry that an irreversible new era for global business is at hand.
A major concern on both sides of the Atlantic: Trump’s sweeping tariffs won’t just dent global growth, but will also trigger a new era of protectionist policies that drive up inflation, sap corporate profits and chill investment — especially in the United States.
Some are asking whether Trump’s tariffs will reroute the daily trillion-dollar flows coursing through capital markets, much like when the coronavirus pandemic forced a worldwide rethinking of global supply chains. “This ‘can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube moment’ is real, if you ask me,” Joachim Klement, the head of strategy at the investment bank Panmure Liberum, told DealBook.
Even before the tariffs, investors were rethinking their approach to the U.S. For years, fund managers from around the world poured into U.S. stocks, a lucrative trade nicknamed “TINA,” short for “there is no alternative.” That trade has reversed dramatically since Election Day, with stocks in Asia and Europe outperforming their American counterparts. (That said, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase warned on Monday that stock prices “remain relatively high.”)
Others have expressed concern about the dollar, the traditional haven during crises. The greenback’s slump against other currencies has floored many on Wall Street, as did Monday’s sell-off in Treasury bonds. “It spoke to broader concerns about the safety of U.S. assets and their capacity to act as a haven in times of market stress,” Henry Allen, a markets strategist at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a research note on Tuesday.
Some corners of the market are beginning to question their investments in the U.S. That’s true in Denmark, which is squaring off with Trump over Greenland: A pension fund there has begun to shed its holdings in U.S. tech giants.
That’s happening amid a larger debate in Europe about how to persuade Europeans to invest more at home.
There is a concern that Trump’s tariffs have shaken market psychology, similar to how other so-called black swan events have.
Wei Li, BlackRock’s global chief investment strategist, told Bloomberg Television on Tuesday that the coming days could test investors’ mettle. Bullish investors usually return to buy beaten-down shares after huge market plunges, she said. So far, she added, “we aren’t seeing that.”
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In related news, Peter Navarro, a key White House trade adviser, argues in The Financial Times that the point of Trump’s tariffs is to “fix a broken system” of international trade — and adds, “This is not a negotiation.”
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
A key business trade group reportedly weighs suing to block Trump tariffs. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is considering whether to take the Trump administration to court to forestall levies set to take effect tomorrow, Fortune reports. A lawsuit could provide cover for other businesses wary of publicly opposing the president. It could become the latest effort to use the judiciary to fight the tariffs: A nonprofit group has sued the administration over how it imposed new duties on Chinese imports.
Apple is said to be working on an iPhone tariff workaround. The tech giant plans to ship more iPhones to the U.S. from India as a short-term way to offset the newly vertiginous levies on goods from China, according to The Wall Street Journal. (Chinese goods currently face a 54 percent duty, while Indian ones are subject to 26 percent.) Separately, UBS analysts estimated that the price of iPhones in the U.S. could rise by as much as $350 because of tariffs.
The BlackRock-led deal to buy Panama ports hits a new obstacle. The Panamanian government’s top auditor said that a subsidiary of CK Hutchison, the Hong Kong owner of the two ports, owes about $300 million in contractual payments and didn’t receive certain required approvals. The finding casts fresh doubt on the deal, which was arranged to allay President Trump’s concerns about potential Chinese influence over the Panama Canal.
The former C.I.A. director George Tenet is leaving Allen & Company. Tenet, who led the intelligence agency from 1996 to 2004, had been chairman of the well-connected media-focused investment bank for more than a decade. He will become executive chairman of CHAOS Industries a defense tech start-up co-founded by his son, John, DealBook is first to report.
TikTok’s geopolitical game of telephone
Before the threat of a global trade war erupted, one of the major stories that had dominated headlines this year was the race to separate TikTok from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, or face a ban in the United States.
But talks toward an agreement, which appeared to be making serious headway last week, came to a standstill when ByteDance called the White House to inform it that the Chinese government would not let a TikTok deal proceed, Lauren Hirsch, David McCabe and Sapna Maheshwari reported for The Times. The stated reason: President Trump’s new tariffs on Chinese goods.
So how did it get to that point — and what happens now?
ByteDance, Washington and U.S. investors had coalesced around a new ownership structure. The proposed deal would allow TikTok’s biggest American backers, including General Atlantic and Susquehanna International Group, to hold onto their investments while government officials brought in new funds to dilute the app’s Chinese ownership. New investors would own 50 percent of a new American TikTok entity, while Chinese owners would retain less than 20 percent.
By Thursday morning, a version of a draft executive order from Trump was circulating that outlined the broad strokes.
But the deal wasn’t quite done. Certain potential new investors viewed any deal as conditional, subject to the due diligence that accompanies any large transaction. Congress also needed to agree that the structure complied with U.S. law.
China was always the wild card. The administration’s lead negotiators weren’t discussing the issue directly with the Chinese government. Instead, they relied on ByteDance’s understanding of Beijing’s position.
Before Trump’s tariff announcement last week, ByteDance believed that the Chinese government was comfortable with the structure coming together in Washington. But even then, there was no guarantee that Beijing would provide its approval.
An escalating trade war may only make talks harder. Trump has repeatedly suggested that he would consider lowering tariffs on China in exchange for its approval of a TikTok deal. The tariff fight may still be raging when a 75-day extension for the TikTok talks, which Trump approved on Friday, expires in June.
“We may well find ourselves back in Groundhog Day,” Anupam Chander, a professor of law and technology at Georgetown University, told The Times.
Seen and heard, C.E.O. edition
As President Trump’s tariff fights escalate, corporate leaders — even those who generally back him — are increasingly airing their frustrations publicly. Here’s a sample.
“Forty-six per cent on Vietnam? Come on! … You might as well tell them, ‘Don’t even bother calling.’” — Ken Langone, the investor and early backer of Home Depot.
“I am really afraid of us abdicating our role of leadership for the free world. That’s the path we’re on.” — Ken Griffin, the billionaire financier and Republican mega-donor, who called the tariffs a “huge policy mistake.”
“Most C.E.O.s I talk to would say we are probably in a recession right now.” — Larry Fink, the C.E.O. of BlackRock, adding that “the economy is weakening as we speak.”
“🍿🍿🍿” — Dan Loeb, responding to an X post by the economist Nouriel Roubini criticizing fellow hedge fund mogul Bill Ackman for initially praising Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, then attacking him for his support for tariffs.
How the market moved $6 trillion in 30 minutes
For about a half-hour on Monday, the stock market went frenetic.
The S&P 500, which had been sliding for days in reaction to President Trump’s tariff plan, suddenly spiked, surging more than 3 percent. Less than 30 minutes later, investors started selling en masse again. Altogether, more than $6 trillion traded hands in 30 minutes, according to one estimate.
Here’s what happened: Traders appeared to be reacting to a post on X that said Trump was open to a 90-day pause on the tariffs, attributed to Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council.
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At 10:13 a.m. ET, a post from the pseudonymous X account Walter Bloomberg read: “HASSETT: TRUMP IS CONSIDERING A 90-DAY PAUSE IN TARIFFS FOR ALL COUNTRIES EXCEPT CHINA.” (The post has since been deleted.)
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The CNBC anchor Carl Quintanilla cited the headline on air. His guest, the economist Jeremy Siegel, said, “That’s huge. I mean that changes the game.”
Traders quickly grew doubtful. “I call BS,” one trader recounted to Bloomberg News. (The Walter Bloomberg account is not associated with the news service.) “This is madness,” another said.
The White House quickly called reports about a tariff pause “Fake News” on X.
How did it all start? The person behind Walter Bloomberg told The Times’s Benjamin Mullin he first spotted the headline on a different X account, which had posted two minutes earlier. “Given the market movement — plus 4.5 percent — I deemed the headline reliable,” the Walter Bloomberg account holder told The Times.
An appearance by Hassett on Fox News on Monday morning probably started it off. Referring to a proposal by the financier Bill Ackman to pause tariffs for 90 days, a Fox News host asked Hassett if the president would consider the idea. Hassett initially said, “Yes,” before adding, “You know the president’s going to decide what the president is going to decide.”
CNBC, which circulated the incorrect news, later issued a correction, as did Reuters.
The market had started to pop before the incident, underscoring both the jumpiness of traders and the prevalence of bot-driven trading.
But it also revealed how desperate investors were for any letup in the trade fight: A real 90-day pause could very well bring markets back into positive territory.
THE SPEED READ
Deals
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President Trump ordered a new national security review into Nippon Steel’s nearly $15 billion takeover of U.S. Steel, raising hopes among some investors that the transaction could be revived. (CNBC)
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PNC Financial hired Mark Wiedman, the former senior BlackRock executive once seen as a potential successor to Larry Fink, as its president. (FT)
Politics, policy and regulation
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