CNN Business Editor Pumps the Brakes on Market Happy Talk: ‘We Are So Far From Being Out of This’
CNN International host and business editor Richard Quest offered viewers a reality check on Wednesday after markets surged.
Earlier in the day, President Donald Trump announced he was lowering tariffs on 75 countries to 10% after he hit their products with markedly higher rates last week. Markets tumbled late last week and early this week, but skyrocketed on Wednesday’s announcement, as the Dow was up nearly 8%.
But as Quest pointed out on The Lead, much of Trump’s tariff regime remains in place, including a whopping 125% on Chinese goods.
“Richard, Goldman Sachs says Trump’s trade retreat has not changed their own recession forecast even though the stock market went up today,” Jake Tapper said. “Its best day in 16 years. Still not back to where the stocks were when Trump announced a so-called ‘Liberation Day.’ Are the gains today – is it like pushing an old lady down the stairs and then wanting credit for helping her back up at the bottom there?
Quest replied:
I was going to sort of say it’s like the arsonist calling the fire brigade and then taking credit… No, this is why Goldman is saying what it’s actually said. Number one, you still have the auto tariffs. Number two, you still have the steel and aluminum tariffs. Number three, you have the Chinese tariffs at 125%. The largest bilateral trade relationship. And number four you have a new global U.S. tariff of 10%, which is three times the previous average of 2.5%. So yes, the worst in terms of Japan, South Korea, the E.U. has been staved off. But there is so much tariff in the system at the moment that’s just going to wash over the global trading system. We are so far from being out of this.
In rolling out the tariffs last week, Trump falsely claimed that dozens of countries had imposed massively high tariffs on the U.S. The president used the misleading framing to refer to some of the tariffs he imposed as being “reciprocal” in nature.”
Watch above via CNN.
