I still think it’s heading to 29,000. Question of when not if.

He also will be the person to unintentionally cause the dollar to lose its status as the premier global currency. Or at least to accelerate the process. It’s already too late. The dollar will be defeated by China and Bitcoin. This is even if he wins the Trade War as I expect. In fact, since he would lose only to China, I expect he will resort to his only option to salvage anything or win, which will cause most, or almost all, of the tariffs to be implemented.

The stock market is actually down today, not so much because of the tariffs directly, but indirectly because the dollar is starting to weaken against China.

In other words the stupidest thing Trump did was pausing the tariffs against everyone but China. He can’t win against China. The only positive for Trump or Wall Street from the delay is allowing time to prepare, mitigate, or perhaps to negotiate less devastating terms, conditions, or consequences.

But the delay against everyone but China was far stupider than the tariffs ever could have been. They exasperate everything everyone thought was stupid about the tariffs, reverse the positives, irreparably and permanently damage the dollar, accelerate the damage to the dollar, essentially, immediately, and finally end any hope for the US as a “superpower”, move the US budget essentially to the equivalent of “intensive care” as a medical patient, damage Trump’s creditability, deterrence, intimidation, and reputation further, especially where he most needs it, and best maintained it, allow his critics validation, and promise false hope for solving the issue. It’s too late to prevent the damage, and the pause without China makes it much worse. They can try to mitigate, but it will only prevent the disaster from being as sudden.

this has largely been a total disaster for trump and he shockingly had the awareness to turn back from the cliff at the last second

The “temporary” pause on tariffs on electronics, which will almost certainly become permanent, was the right decision, but only really because it was necessary to avoid complete disaster for Trump (for now). Those tariffs were simply and obviously untenable.

He lacks any significant or relevant awareness, and has no prospect for such. Just as you lack any significant or relevant awareness and lack any prospect of such. The same is true of all Homo Sapien, and almost certainly of any other potential future species of Hominid (which will certainly be driven to extinction by my species in the future before becoming a new species), besides my own present (contemporary and contextually new), current, and future species.

His escalating tariff war on China, and pause on everyone else, absolutely made it worse, not better.

So, he seems to be forfeiting his leverage to China. Scott Bessent has already said the tariff war is unsustainable. They may hope for a better deal than before with China; but now China seems to have called Trump’s bluff twice from his own crisis, and his threats to punish them for retaliation are emptier than ever.