Weekly Recap 04/04/2025

Trump reciprocal tariffs - shock to the world

Okay, real talk:

Whatever Trump’s team just dropped this week?
It wasn’t policy — it was pure chaos.

And no, this isn’t just “more tariffs.”
It was basically a confusing spreadsheet dump that left markets panicking, allies scratching their heads, and somehow slapped a tariff on… a penguin island. I wish I was kidding.

Meanwhile, Russia and North Korea didn’t even make the list.
But Ecuador — a country that uses the U.S. dollar — got called a currency manipulator.

You can’t make this stuff up.

So what is the deal with Trump and what is currently happening?

Well to put it simply Trump wants to bring jobs back home.. How do we do that? Make sure that other countries companies would be better producing inside of USA and not get tariffs on their goods.

Imagine this.. you are running a business and your supplier of goods, has to become your customer or else you will tell them that you will put tariff on their goods coming to your company. In normal conditions company would just call you crazy and look for other customers.

Why are countries still clinging to US..? Because it is still the largest economy in the world.

Trump tariff formula or just a copy from ChatGPT

Here’s their "method" (and I’m using that word lightly):

1. Look at the trade deficit — how much we buy from a country vs. what they buy from us.

2. Divide that by their exports.

3. Call that their “tariff rate.”

4. Then slap half of that number back on their goods.

Yeah… it’s basically the economic version of throwing darts at a wall and calling it math.

Not surprisingly, investors freaked out. Confidence dropped, and the U.S. dollar took a hit — which, by the way, makes stuff more expensive here at home.

Reaction from the market..

2 $trillion in market value vanished in an hour.
Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft got hit hardest.
DOW Jones down by 1600 points in a day.

Funny thing is Trump did mention if DOW crashes 1000 points in 2 days, President should resign. I believe it was back in 2012.

Wall Street priced in a modest 10% tariff.
Turns out that’s just the starting fee. Some countries are facing rates closer to 54%.

So what happens?
Investors rush to “safe” currencies like the yen, Swiss franc, and euro — which puts even more pressure on the dollar.

EUR/USD

XAU/USD

Initial move up due to uncertainty and weakening dollar, rebound due to profit taking and reinvesting into other safe havens, additional move up due to PMI.

NASDAQ

To say the least Nasdaq isn’t having good time with Trump. Tariffs imposes restrictions on companies, less trade overall will happen, it will reflect on stocks. Supply chain shocks as well will happen.

Is it really about fairness?

Let’s look at the numbers before all this went down:

• U.S. average tariff: 2.2%

• EU: 2.7%

• China: 3.0%

Now?

• U.S. average tariff: 29%

That’s higher than during the Great Depression.

Trump says it’s to “level the playing field” — but if this is level, I don’t want to see what unfair looks like.

Even the conservative Heritage Foundation ranks the U.S. 69th in trade freedom now — behind Chile, New Zealand, and yeah… Liechtenstein.

The global vibe? The U.S. is turning inward, fast.
So money starts flowing out, the dollar stays under pressure, and volatility ramps up across the board.

Final thoughts…

It isn’t just about trade deal, but about restructuring them, tariffs will be Trumps gun and it will be held against all countries in the world.

Regardless most countries will be tired of this and find alternatives.

The thing is US in best case might earn 600B$ from investments, but already lost 2T$ in stock markets.

Prices will soar, while consumption will plummet. With inflation projected to reach 5% and potentially more cuts in horizon, US dollar will be weakening even more. High likelihood of recession is in horizon (Jp. Morgan).

With US companies looking to make moves quickly, it might cause a lot more harm.

This type of policy was reckless, but Trump already pulled the trigger on it.

The whole world pricing and valuation of currency will shift and with penguins being tariffed the next one to get hit will be U.S. Dollar

And with that our weekly recap is over

Everything written in this blog post is not financial advice, these are my own thoughts and ideas.