by bArray | 2025-04-30 13:21:39+00:00
> While President Donald Trump pressed pause on his sweeping tariff regimen and placed a 10% blanket tax on other countries, he taxed China more. He placed a 145% tariff on China, which retaliated with a 120% duty on American goods. No trade deal has been made, and it is unclear whether there are negotiations happening. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has put the onus on China to come to the table and ink a deal. Still, just under half of the port’s business emanates from China, Seroka explained. So things could be bleak until then.

Fundamentally this is a game of chicken, and China will definitely blink first. This will be for a few reasons:

1. Unemployment in China is rocketing. Prior to the trade war in February it was sitting at an estimated 16.9% [1] (although it's difficult to believe the stats). In the US it sits at about 4.2% [2], which feels about right with the UK at 4.4% [3]. China doesn't have the "disadvantage" of a significant welfare system, but these people will become increasingly desperate to survive and burden the system in one way or another.

2. With unemployment so high in China, demand for jobs is increased and the salaries are decreased. With less excess money, domestic spending is largely reduced. With the excess stock produced for the US market no longer being delivered, manufacturers look to dump into the domestic market at below cost just to recoup some of their investment and to pay back the supply chain. Remember that with such low margins, manufacturers often get supplies on the promise of payment upon selling the goods they prepare. You're looking at complete supply chain disruption from top to bottom even if the manufacturer didn't export to the US.

3. The Chinese housing market continues to be an extremely large problem. Housing represents approximately a third of their economy and you have several key problems. Prior to the trade war, Chinese property developers were having customers buy properties (with mortgages) before ground was broken and using this money and borrowing to develop the properties at relatively low margins. Due to corruption and corner cutting, a considerable number of these buildings were "tofu dregs" (meaning poorly constructed). Despite these cost cutting measures, there was still not enough money available to develop the promised properties. This lead to the likes of Evergrande, Country Garden, Zhongzhi, Vanke, etc, to (begin to) fail. The customer's money is gone and the bank paid it out to the developer, so the customer is still on the hook for a property that doesn't exist - the bank tells them to pay up and to take up their issues with the property developer. Even those that managed to get a property found that the developers were desperately liquidating properties at discount rates to cover debt interest, lowering the value of properties in the market. With reduced income, increased mortgage rates due to instability, some look to sell their properties and escape the backlog of missed mortgage payments. Those people may find their property devalued by some 50%, and that they still have an outstanding debt despite selling the property and receiving no equity due to the devaluation of the property.

Although not outwardly said, the Chinese leadership have long considered themselves at war with the US. They have celebrated every issue the US has had, reacted negatively when the US experiences wins, and generally want to see the US fail. We're talking about the same CCP of the Mao Zedong era that considered the UK, US and Japan as enemies to crush. This is why that despite very obvious economic issues being experiences, the CCP refuse to negotiate.

> “What we’re going to see next is retailers have about five to seven weeks of full inventories left, and then the choices will lessen,” Seroka told CNBC. That doesn’t mean shelves will be empty, but in Seroka’s hypothetical, it could mean if you’re out shopping for a blue shirt, you may see 11 purple ones—but only one blue that isn’t your size and is costlier.

Maybe you can't find a blue shirt for a while and have to wear a purple one whilst textile manufacturing is scaled up in other asian/middle-eastern nations, but things could be far worse.

> Earlier Tuesday, Gabriela Santos, JPMorgan Asset Management chief market strategist for the Americas, told CNBC: “Time is running out to see a lessening of the tariffs on China.” Everyone knows the tariffs are unsustainable, she said, but markets need to see them actually drop.

Translation: The tariffs will affect our bottom line. Remember that JPMorgan as an entity do not care if jobs are lost in either the US (historically) or China (currently), as long as it does not affect their margins. The idea that JPMorgan does well and so does the US populace is wishful thinking.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-youth-jobless-rat...

[2] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate

[3] https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotin...