Trade Wars Are Bad for the US

In terms of interest rates, historically, our standards have been at the lowest level in the history of mankind from say 3000 BC up to now. So, in 5,000 years of history, we have never been this low. In the US, the low for the 10 years treasury was at 1.37% in July 2016 and in Europe, in many cases, there have been negative interest rates.

Recently, that has moved up a little bit but in Switzerland and in Japan, basically we still have negative interest rates and we have had them essentially for the last eight-nine years. This is a very unusual situation. I do not think anyone could expect interest rate to stay this low for much further. There is a rising tendency but recently the treasury bonds in the US have sold off quite considerably and I believe that we could have one more decline in interest rates as a result of a recession that may happen later on this year or next year. So, I actually went long on some treasury bonds in the US.

Concerning global trade, you are right. The idea was that multinationals in Europe and especially in the US could open up new markets like China and then sell their goods into these markets. But conditions have somewhat changed in the sense that it is the Chinese and other emerging economies that sold their goods into the US.

So to some extent, it backfired on the US and as you know the US is not the fair player and they reacted negatively. These trade sanctions or trade barriers, in my view are not very negative for China and other countries. Rather they are very negative for the US. This is my assessment of the situation.

Source, Marc Faber via ET

Reprinted from Marc Faber Blog.

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