U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs have so far taken the shape of country-specific, sweepingly reciprocal, targeted at sectors and applicable only to countries with a certain trade relationship with another.
He has also been “flexible” in implementing them — as he remarked Friday on the possibility of doing so — granting last-minute pauses, exceptions to goods under trade agreements and potential reprieves even for across-the-board tariffs.
Markets rallied Monday, driven by Trump’s hint that countries could get a “break” from reciprocal tariffs. But it’s unlikely to be a sustained upward trend, given the wild swings in the types, and the unpredictable executions, of Trump tariffs.
Strategists often look at technical trends in stocks’ movements, such as their 200-day moving average, in an attempt to divine their future. It might be more fruitful, in this political epoch, to shift that scrutiny to Trump, who has alternately caused markets to pop — and plunge — with one pronouncement.
