“So the money could boost revenue, but it’s not Mexico paying,” Mr. Ortiz-Mena said. “It will be U.S. companies or U.S. workers at the end of the day paying for the wall.” After exploring a few other long-shot scenarios, he said: “I can’t see it. Sorry.”
Some of Mr. Trump’s supporters also can’t see it, and have taken matters into their own hands. A crowdfunding effort for a U.S.-Mexico border wall has raised nearly than $17 million. More than 279,400 people have donated to the GoFundMe page, titled “We the People Will Fund the Wall,” which aims to raise $1 billion.
Other economists say the price tag for a wall is a moving target—partly because of Mr. Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs. In recent days, the president has modified his description of what his “big, beautiful, impenetrable” wall would look like, suggesting that steel slats would do the trick.
“We don’t use the word ‘wall’ necessarily, but it has to be something special to do the job—steel slats,” Mr. Trump said last week.
Prices for steel and aluminum, both imported and domestic, are on the rise due to the administration’s global trade dispute. Mr. Trump placed tariffs on all countries from which the U.S. imports the metals, save a few exceptions.
The move “increases both the price of steel you import from countries like Mexico and Canada, but it also leads to increases to the price of steel you make in the United States,” said Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “American steel companies don’t face as much competition from imports so they are able to jack up their prices and charge American taxpayers more for infrastructure projects like the border wall.”
Trump has always been erratic and impulsive. Why is Wall Street surprised now?
Was the president trying to shore up his support with a base grown tired of foreign interventions? Did he cave when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told him over the phone that he was going to carry his operations against the Kurds into Syrian territory? Was Trump’s decision a momentary whim now incredibly become indelible history? Who can say? Just in time for Christmas, Trump has finally brought us the peace that passeth all understanding.
Even by Trumpian standards, the troop-withdrawal announcement looked haphazard. And it wasn’t the Trump administration’s only holiday surprise. On Saturday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced (on Twitter, naturally) that the president had no intention of firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell. Which of course raised the possibility that he might. On Sunday, Mnuchin returned with a stunning encore: He said he had spoken with the heads of the United States’ six largest banks to confirm that they had “ample liquidity available for lending” and haven’t had “any clearance or margin issues . . . the markets continue to function properly.”
.. Mnuchin’s actions are both more and less mysterious than the president’s. Less, because it seems clear why his Twitter feed developed a sudden nervous tic: He was trying to appease his boss. More, because neither Mnuchin nor anyone else understands how to calm the impetuous, irascible occupant of the Oval Office.
Presumably, the president is displeased by the recent decline in financial markets. It’s less clear whether he, or anyone else, actually believed that investors would perk right up if the treasury secretary, for no apparent reason, started shouting, “Guys, everything’s fine! We’re not going to have another financial crisis, okay?”
To be fair, it’s not clear what would cheer them up. Which brings us to the deepest mystery of all: Why were investors so optimistic in the first place?
I asked a number of financial professionals that question back when the bull market was still charging ahead. After all, Trump had promised tariffs, which large, publicly traded corporations tend not to like; he had promised immigration restrictions, which such companies really don’t like; and finally, he had promised lots of uncertainty, which those firms hate with the white-hot fire of a thousand suns.
The boom could be viewed as a collective sigh of relief that Democrats wouldn’t be finding new and creative ways to regulate the private sector. But given the protectionist drawbacks of a Trump administration, this didn’t really justify a 35 percent increase in the value of the S&P 500 from November 2016 to September 2018.
The best answer I got was that investors and chief executives assumed that Trump was planning to do the stuff they wanted — the tax cuts, the deregulation — and that the rest of his campaign promises were just base-pandering rhetoric that would be quickly abandoned. Their belief seemed touchingly naive, even quaint. But also sincere and strongly held.
.. Which may solve the twin mysteries of boom and the bust: Wall Street believed that Trump was just playing erratic and impulsive for the cameras, but that behind the policy scenes, what they’d be getting was a normal Republican presidency, only maybe a bit more so. The current correction may simply reflect Wall Street’s belated realization that investors would be getting exactly what they’d seen on the stump: a man who substitutes reaction for planning, and angry tweets for policy.
One thing, of course, is totally unsurprising: that when those on Wall Street finally figured out who they were really dealing with, and prices slumped, the guy from the campaign stump was going to find a way to make it all worse.
How Tariffs Could Trickle Down to Your Kitchen Remodel
Just about every material you’d need to remodel a kitchen is now subject to the earlier round of tariffs. Many U.S. vendors import the majority of their materials from China. Flooring, cabinets, countertops, sinks, refrigerators and lighting fixtures are on the list of imports from China that now have a 10% tax, as are many of the materials used to make them, from plywood and quartz to stone and granite.
‘I Am a Tariff Man’
It’s a bird, it’s a plane. No, it’s the President of the United States.
Trump officials continue to express optimism about the commitments that the Chinese made, and what they call a new seriousness from Mr. Xi and his chief economic adviser, Liu He. That is consistent with the message that recent U.S. visitors in private business have told us that they have also heard in Beijing.
But Chinese officials have been notably quiet and unspecific since the weekend about the commitments they made in Argentina. They haven’t even confirmed the 90-day negotiating deadline that Trump officials have stressed. In other words, who’s on first?
Then on Tuesday Mr. Trump belly-flopped into the debate, as he is wont to do. In a Twitter barrage, the President expressed optimism about his weekend meeting and the chances of a deal. But he added that “remember . . . I am a Tariff Man. When people or countries come in to raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the privilege of doing so. It will always be the best way to max out our economic power.” All that was missing was a leotard with a T on the chest and a cape.
Markets apparently didn’t see the super hero humor and promptly sold off. Perhaps they know that tariffs are taxes on commerce, and when you tax something you get less of it. Mr. T’s unveiling also hit on the day after the yield curve on some Treasurys began to invert—which can mean trouble. The economy is still strong enough to survive some uncertainty, but Tariff Man shouldn’t go to war with the laws of economics. He’ll lose.