Erratic Trump? Erratic Iamaleava? Who?

Erratic Trump. Erratic Iamaleava. Who?

I had wondered why congress would not assert its authority over tariffs and claw back Trump’s actions. The answer is that the republicans are afraid. First they are afraid of Trump and second they are afraid of the political ramifications of them opposing the leader of their party. The democrats in the House are content to sit back and see this play out. They probably know that if the tariffs go fully into effect then the result will be a recession and possibly inflation but surely chaos is global and domestic financial markets. In the Senate, Elizabeth Warren has introduced a resolution to claw back tariffs from presidential control and return them to the Senate. That may pass. Chuck Grassley, Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski are all likely to support it. However, Trump will veto it.

Trump reminds me of the old saying that “the boss may be wrong but the boss is the boss.” I hope that Trump declares victory at some point and recalibrates his “reciprocal” tariffs. But he is just stubborn enough to leave in place his global 10 percent tariff. Let’s hope that he removes them from countries that have zero tariffs and those with a trade surplus with the US. It will be interesting to see the effect on prices of the 10 percent tariff given that the American average tariff was 2.5 percent. If the 10 percent has minimal impact on consumer prices and brings in a couple of billion dollars, will Trump be satisfied? 

Businesses are inclined to wait things out. Trump’s behavior has been erratic and seems to change on a whim. Markets like certainty and the volatility in money and capital markets speaks to the uncertainty caused by Trump’s actions. Maybe he is on an ego trip showing how he can roil markets and disrupt the world’s economies. Regardless, no major investments are likely to happen until there is some certainty back in the markets.

Speaking of erratic, Trump’s carve out exempting smartphones and other electronics from the tariffs is a bad look. Apple, Samsung and Nvidia are heavyweights with stacks of cash, high paid lawyers and lobbyists and direct access to the White House. Small businesses who sell stationery, socks and paper products do not. Small businesses which are the engine of employment and growth in this country are suffering with no relief in sight. I said during COVID that Trump was anti small business with his overt favoritism toward larger retailers while enforcing the closure of small ones. That bias is again evident.

Speaking of erratic, Trump was actually displaced in the Knoxville news by Nico Iamaleava, the erstwhile University of Tennessee quarterback who held out to get more money from his NIL deal and got fired. It may have been a relief to many Vol fans who had long given up on trying to pronounce his name and were reduced to just calling him “Nico” but the greatest surprise was the overwhelming support of Vol Nation to show him the door. The university or rather the booster group that finances NIL refused to renegotiate his deal when he became the first holdout of the NIL era. Tennessee coach Josh Heupel said that no player was bigger than the team or the program. Even though it leaves the Vols without a first line starting quarterback in the brutal SEC, the fans are going to do a first – actually support the team even if it suffers from a losing season. I think Nico and his people miscalculated his value. He will now go through the transfer portal and may find a home. But he has missed spring practice and will be not likely to be ready to start this season. I doubt if any school will be willing to pay $2+ million for Nico to sit on the bench. Also any team that signs him will have to deal with a fan base that will not likely embrace Nico. Some experts have linked him to a desperate UCLA which had a losing season and lost many of its best players to the transfer portal. Others have mentioned Colorado which only makes sense if Coach Prime decides that Liberty transfer Kaidon Salter and freshman Julian Lewis (from my home state of Georgia) aren’t good enough to compete in the Big 12 and at some level Iamaleava’s ability is close to that of his son Shadeur. Regardless, given the lack of demand, I would be surprised if Nico’s new deal was better than the one he walked away from at Tennessee. So with Nico, caveat emptor.