As we should all know, erecting trade barriers among close trading partners has an adverse effect on the economy. Sadly, many of these effects occur long term. This means the one implementing them may only have to deal with the #inflation caused by their actions and not the disfigurement of their economy and the gradual shift of trade away from the country implementing one sided trade barriers which are usually illogical because they usually do more harm than good and cause massive unforeseen results because they let he opposing side do one sided actions as well.

There should be a basic economic test the Republican party requires before a candidate is elected because #Trump's position on this is more liberal than even Clinton's which is depressingly sad coming from a person who's suppose to be a businessman.

This is more due to stock pushing than anything fundamental. I wouldn't trade on it.

Sad. Too much was given up with nothing really from N. Korea. They shuttered their old test site because it caved in and aren't doing more tests probably because they need more equipment to make more missiles which a resumption of trade will make easier to sneak more material to them to make them.

The last time the US let up on North Korea got Americans killed in the Korean war. With nukes, this is an even bigger issue. I'm afraid we will regret the years of dilly dallying with N. Korea. They will export their weapons to Iran and others. The world is more dangerous not safer.

Rather than a pullback or collapse money should move from highly leveraged balance sheets to low levered balance sheets. This implies rotation more than a collapse. A collapse will not be caused by debt alone, but rater a drop in growth or in earnings. This will make it hard or impossible for some companies to cover their debt load and justify it to investors.

Not really, but if a trade war ensues and inflation appears then you will get a real pullback.

I'm not sure about the rally, but the rotation out of debt heavy investments like REITs are real no matter what dividends they pay out. Likewise smart money has been moving towards oil, commodities, and companies that have low debt and grow.

TBTF exists in other places besides the US as well. The main issue is to gradually break them up and diminish their size. Sadly, at least in the US TBTF banks used their designation as an award and got bigger as fast as they could to retain that status, the opposite of what would have helped the US.

Sadly there are no winners in trade wars and that's why they should be avoided.

The whole issue is oil prices are on their way upwards regardless of potential short term disruptions. Asian and SE Asian demand up and will keep rising at least until $100 a barrel is reached, not like that will happen soon. Saudi Arabia and OPEC are fighting oil prices rising which is even harder to do than fighting oil prices falling given OPEC is almost maxed out on production already.

Inflation is currently more about oil price increases, global trade tariffs, and potential trade wars. The only way for the Federal Reserve to fight this is to raise rates substantially enough to cool these effects which would be disastrous because the causes are globally focused. For instance oil is rising because of growing demand in Asia, India, and SE Asia.

Trade #inflation caused by #tariffs and actions overseas really can't be reversed unless monetary action substantially decreases demand which would impact the whole economy, not just the items being affected. The best way to calm this tide is to get rid of the factors causing global trade tensions, not monetary action.

There are reasons for gradual rate increases. These are to give the Federal Reserve breathing room to fight a future downturn, keep policy roughly in line with rising rates which were happening even before the Federal Reserve moved the ball, and to enable the US to sell its growing debt load and thus support the dollar. These things should be more of a concern than inflation.