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• The Dow Jones is holding near 44,400, albeit with a jittery note.
• The Trump administration is back with a fresh round of tariff threats.
• Investors continue to bet that Donald Trump will find a reason to delay tariffs again.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) floated near the 44,400 region on Monday, holding steady in a near-term consolidation zone as global markets bet that a fresh round of tariff threats from President Donald Trump will be delayed, suspended, or otherwise trimmed once again.

New month, new tariff deadline
 

A new deadline for a wide swath of tariffs has been arbitrarily penciled in for August 1, following another delay of Trump’s “undelayable” reciprocal tariffs that were announced in April. On top of the Trump administration’s “liberation day” reciprocal tariffs, Trump is now threatening double-digit tariff increases on some of the US’s closest trading partners, including South Korea, Japan, Canada, and Mexico.

Most countries have already agreed to continue trade talks with the Trump team, but progress remains slow. Despite a near-constant stream of promises that solid trade deals are just around the corner, very little actual progress has been achieved. China has agreed to an agreement to make new trade terms in the future, and the UK and Vietnam remain the only two countries to have come to a trade agreement, although actual details of the trade deals remain limited.

Trade deals are easy to make, but difficult to deliver
 

Neither the US nor Vietnam appears to be in a rush to provide an actual explanation of what the trade deal will entail, other than a blanket 20% tariff on all Vietnamese exports to the US. The tentative trade arrangement also includes a 40% tariff on any goods the US decides have been “transshipped” through the Asian country.

Beginning on Tuesday, the next batch of key earnings reports will begin rolling out. Major banks, including JPMorgan Chase, will begin revealing their latest quarterly earnings reports. Also on the docket this week will be the latest round of US inflation data. US Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation data through June is expected to accelerate as the first batch of tariffs that Trump successfully implemented begins to take hold on the US economy and leak through to headline datasets over the coming months.

Fed is wrong about rates and overspending, says deficit-laden Trump administration
 

The rift between the Trump administration and the Federal Reserve (Fed) continues to widen as Donald Trump pins all of his fiscal policy woes on Fed Chair Jerome Powell refusing to lower interest rates in the face of potential tariff inflation. Trump has ramped up his near-daily personal attacks on the Fed head via social media posts and media statements, which the Fed’s Powell has broadly ignored. Trump officials who helped pen and pass Donald Trump’s “big beautiful budget bill”, which is set to add trillions of dollars of excess government spending to the US deficit, are set to begin investigating the Fed’s spending on a revamp and renovation of the Fed’s main office building in Washington, DC.

Dow Jones price forecast
 

The Dow Jones continues to churn the chart paper in a rough consolidation zone, bouncing around the middle ground between the 45,000 and 44,000 handles. A slow grind lower has cropped up in intraday timeframes, pushing intraday swing lows back into median prices. However, overall bullish momentum remains strong, and stretches to the downside are likely to turn into buying opportunities rather than signals to sell further.

Dow Jones 1-hour chart
 

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