US Treasury Secretary Bessent: Over 50 nations have responded positively to Trump

*Insert comedic comment about "penguins have yielded to Trump"*

There were two big areas of concern during this whole process once Mexico and Canada were removed from the spotlight: China and the EU. The majority of other countries were undoubtedly targeted as distractions (or seen as potential means through which China/EU could pass goods circumventing the intent).

This "50 countries have reached out" comment is day(s) old at this point. But I'm sure you'll keep hearing about all of the great work being done. Hey, gotta give credit where credit is due though: $6 trillion + in market cap losses [may] have brought people to the table. Who'd have thought?

If you read it carefully though: "anticipating meaningful negotiations in coming weeks" means tariffs are not going anywhere before the negotiations....so there will most likely be economic disruption before things settle. How the market feels about that (and how far forward it is able/wanting to look) is still the big question.

Was today the short term bottom? Or, will this afternoon sell off into the close like the past few days?

Prediction: we don't end the day right here at essentially unchanged (although that WOULD produce a juicy doji daily candle after the gap down)

D.Center - On August 15, 1971, President Nixon unpegged the US dollar from gold, signing a new are of fiat money. The 50th anniversary of this event is a good opportunity to remember what exactly happened and how it affects our present days.

The after-war Bretton-Woods agreement, championed by the US, was supposed to bring monetary order: member countries sold their gold to the US at $35/ounce, and the US dollar would become world’s reserve currency, redeemable for gold at any time. However, US economic struggles and later need to finance the war in Vietnam made it impossible to keep its word. So Nixon unilaterally threw the US promise out of the window, all while keeping the gold of course.

Without gold redemption the Fed could print as much as it wished – and it printed plenty, to distribute mostly among the well-connected and powerful figures, bringing big money and politics closer than ever.

US diplomats have been excelling in their art, trying to keep the dollar as the dominant reserve currency across the globe, which motivated the Fed to print even more. Some countries with rebellious ideas of replacing dollar with other currencies saw American troops landing on their soil, others – economic hurdles. To this day dollar is the universal unit of account and the most popular reserve currency, which makes other countries so dependent on the USA and the Fed in particular.

The Covid signed another stage of fiat money history, unleashing dollar-printing machines to unprecedented levels. And while average Americans have a small chance to grab a piece of a pie before the inflation gets out of control (like investing their stimulus checks into real assets), other countries have absolutely no control over their dollar reserves that lose value day by day. Some, like Russia or China, have been exchanging dollars for gold for several years already. El Salvador bet on Bitcoin. Others, however, are more like silent spectators of their fortune dilapidation (corruption really comes to mind when trying to find the reasons).

Trump maintains that the penguins are taking advantage of America. Says he has proof..

Next round of tariffs will be on Atlantis. Says he knows where to find the lost continent...

Without China, right.

I guess all of them offered zero tariffs, but the Orange Head wants zero or negative surplus.