so how's the trade war going?

Five by Five!

on a side note... why the F*ck would you post stock market valuations when you are referencing federal policy?
NEVER, the twain SHOULD meet

Logistics guy here. In trucking I'm seeing slightly lower rates to most places this week, but significantly higher rates to the West Coast. Those west coast rates are higher when everything is lower because there's nothing coming out of the port and the West Coast ports are a massive massive source of freight volume. My port logistics lady I haven't called and asked about it mostly because listening to a stone cold professional panic over the phone wouldn't be great for my mental health... and it's not like I have any inbound freight from China to call her about lol.

Buckle up boys if Donald isn't lying about these trade negotiations taking another 3-4 weeks this might be bigger than COVID on the supply chain side of things. Yes many many many firms have significant stockpiles of inventory in warehouses right now because they anticipated this... but many do not. When the tap turns back on the ones that didn't are going to be under a lot of stress and in a huge huge hurry. Turning off all this freight really is essentially capacity destruction that will generate a sizable supply shock. It could end today and it would suck pretty bad, every minute this goes on the size of the tidal wave slowly rolling towards us out on the horizon gets bigger.

The way the market feels right now reminds me a lot of March 2020. It's so cheap many of the trucks are parked so it's harder to find trucks for the market rate than usual when it's cheap. I've only ever seen that the one other time in March 2020.

I suspect this post is fascinating but I think its written from a perspective of already understanding a lot of this. Can you dumb it down? eg, what does "when the tap turns back on" mean in this context?

When tariffs go back to semi normal a bunch of submit order buttons will get hit. This will result in attempting to move 300 gallons of **** through a 10 gallon per minute rated pipe in about an ten minutes. To say that it's going to be a mess is putting it mildly. Also it won't physically happen, what will happen is a small increase in capacity as we pull in all kinds of weird let's call it 'irregular' capacity and a large albeit probably temporary increase in rates. Some stuff will be on back order forever because everyone decides that to hedge against future trade shocks they need more of that thing permanently now that they can get it. It's worth mentioning here that this might be a short term bonanza for trucking companies, but the fact that it's front run by probably 1-2 months of below cost of operations level revenue and followed by a lengthy freight recession once there are more trucks than there are loads again as we burn off the excess 'irregular' (read poors in whatever they can afford towing the largest trailer their vehicle can handle without instantly breaking down) capacity we brought in to handle the surge.

Nobody is winning this.

It's a different variant of what COVID did to supply chains. Supply chains do not like coming to a full and complete stop. It's a lot of work to stop them and it's a lot of work to start them back up again. It's like making changes on a construction project when you're already halfway built. Unintended consequences chain into unintended consequences. During COVID I saw trucks we desparately needed on the road broken down 5-6 weeks at a time because they couldn't get replacement parts because supply chain issues. Thus the supply chain issues contributed to additional rolling supply chain issues.

Speaking of... what are the best stocks to short right now?

I see a lot of money coming back in, especially to big box retailers, and I've been pouring over financials to see which ones make the most sense to short.

The gamble here of course is, Trump can change course at any point.

The US has already won but keep in mind I ignore all US based news completely.

My understanding is that the Jiang Zemin faction of the CCP is why Bessent was able to calm the markets down.

Xi has held China back and the reformist elders are tired of this.

The Jiang Zemin faction wants to work with the US as a matter of principal. The Xi faction is the opposite of this.

Of course, in the US if you read basically anything it is just going to conclude "Trump bad" and imply to morons "Xi good".

It is really why I have bets on BIDU and up huge already on BABA.

Cheap call options on what comes after Xi.

It isn't probabilistic, it is more like Popper's propensity theory. To me, the propensity is after Xi for the reformist to take massive control.

Bet on that accordingly.

USA winning so much moody lowered the U.S. credit …

Trump Says Xi Will Help Fight Fentanyl. Will China Follow Through?
Getting China’s cooperation has been a recurring challenge for U.S. presidents
By​ Brian Spegele​, WSJ
Nov. 3, 2025

For years, the U.S. and China have been locked in a pattern on the deadly issue of fentanyl. The White House pressures Beijing to stop Chinese companies from exporting chemicals used to make the drug to Mexico. Beijing takes incremental steps in exchange for Washington dialing down economic pressure—only for China to drag its feet when relations deteriorate.

President Trump, after a summit on Thursday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, said tariffs he had imposed on China over its role in the fentanyl trade would be lowered to 10% from 20% because of Beijing’s “very strong action” in cracking down and Xi’s commitment to do more.

It was the latest U.S. bid to win China’s help to stem a scourge that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.

The challenge now for Trump is to make sure that China takes action—and sustains its cooperation, particularly when Beijing has consistently pushed back against U.S. tariffs.

A White House official said that the Trump administration will be setting up working groups with Chinese officials in the coming weeks to set objective measures and ensure that all sides live up to their commitments. China’s Foreign Ministry also said China would work with the U.S. to implement the agreement to strengthen cooperation in the field of drug control.

China’s main connection to the opioid crisis is as the source of the chemicals, known as precursors, used by Mexican cartels that produce fentanyl and smuggle the drug into the U.S. But while Trump has leaned on Mexico to mobilize law enforcement, convincing Beijing that it is in China’s interests to crack down is more difficult.

China calibrates its cooperation on counternarcotics in response to the overall U.S. relationship, said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a counternarcotics expert at the Brookings Institution.

“If it’s going well, it’s willing to extend that cooperation,” she said. “When the relationship deteriorates, it weakens the cooperation.”

The fentanyl-related tariffs imposed by Trump earlier this year have been a sore point in U.S.-China relations, viewed by some Chinese officials as a bid to embarrass Beijing—a suggestion it was soft on crime, when working-level cooperation on fentanyl had been progressing through the end of the Biden administration.

Chinese authorities have insisted that pressure from Washington on fentanyl aims to make their country a scapegoat for the U.S.’s own shortcomings in addressing a domestic addiction crisis. Around 80,000 people died last year in the U.S. of drug overdoses, though the annual total is declining, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Even when Beijing toughens regulations on individual precursors, as it has done several times in recent years, including this summer, Chinese producers can get around the rules by slightly altering the chemical structure of their products.

Trump acknowledged the challenge after his meeting with Xi. “I believe he’s going to work very hard to stop the death,” Trump told reporters. “But again, it’s complex because of what fentanyl is, what the precursors do.”

Many of the Chinese precursor chemicals are produced in small workshops, and then sold over the internet, at times using cryptocurrency for the deals, according to U.S. officials.

Some of these chemicals are shipped to the U.S. via consolidated commercial shipments. The content is harder to identify because there is no registry of individual packages in the shipments, and the only way for law enforcement to detect precursors is to go through each package, U.S. officials say. Once the chemicals arrive in the U.S., they can easily be smuggled south into Mexico.

An underworld network connects China to Mexico’s most powerful drug-smuggling cartels and their distribution and money-laundering rackets in the U.S.

Chinese criminal groups also serve as money launderers for the cartels. Given China’s desire to control its financial system, stamping out that activity is an area where the U.S. and China could find cooperating easier. In the meeting with Trump, Xi mentioned combating money-laundering as an area for the two countries to work together, according to a statement on the summit by China’s Foreign Ministry.

Trump has also exerted intense pressure on Mexico, the world’s top producer of the drug.

In February, after Trump threatened to impose tariffs if Mexico didn’t step up its fight against fentanyl smuggling, the administration of President Claudia Sheinbaum deployed 10,000 troops along the border. Her government has sent more than 50 imprisoned drug bosses to the U.S. and destroyed dozens of fentanyl and methamphetamine labs this year. U.S. fentanyl seizures at the border dropped nearly 50% in the year that ended Sept. 30.

Trump granted a reprieve to Mexico recently by delaying punitive tariffs, but he has continued to press for deeper U.S. military involvement in the fight against drug cartels.

The U.S. military recently carried out lethal strikes on speedboats allegedly operated by drug smugglers in international waters near Mexico’s southern Pacific coast. The Trump administration has considered using drones to blow up fentanyl labs and sending U.S. Special Forces to capture or kill drug bosses, according to people familiar with bilateral security discussions.

Mexico recently handed over to the U.S. a suspect considered to be the most important link between China and the Mexican cartels. Zhi Dong Zhang, considered by U.S. prosecutors to be the world’s top fentanyl producer, was extradited from Mexico to the U.S. on Oct. 23.