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President Donald Trump is due to deliver remarks at the New York Economic Club on Tuesday. Analysts will listen closely for comments on trade talks with China.
On Monday, U.S. stocks fell amid concern that the U.S. and China are struggling to get an initial trade deal done, with the S&P 500 slipping as much as 0.6%.
Here’s a sample of the latest commentary:
Cowen, Jaret Seiberg and Chris Krueger
“This speech will be fascinating as we won’t know until he starts speaking if he will stick to prepared remarks or make impromptu comments,” Seiberg wrote. He sees “headline risk on everything from the Federal Reserve to trade to taxes.”
The majority of the speech may be “reserved for a victory lap on the stock market and broader economy, along with warnings on Warren/Sanders and a few jabs at Jay Powell’s Fed,” Krueger wrote. There may be a “trial balloon to gauge the ferocity of expected push-back from influential China hawks,” he added.
Compass Point, Isaac Boltansky
“The bulk of the speech is likely to tout the economy’s strength, but we will be focused primarily on the trade policy language,” Boltansky wrote. He senses the remarks will be “directionally positive for the market,” as Trump may nod at China hawks, but will be “broadly supportive of efforts to finalize a Phase 1 deal.”
Compass Point sees a Phase 1 agreement this year that “indefinitely suspends the tariffs on Chinese goods scheduled for mid-December, boosts Chinese agricultural purchases, cursorily addresses some intellectual property issues, and sets the stage for unwinding the remaining tariffs based on certain mile-markers.”
Beacon Policy Advisors
Expects Trump’s “trade war with China to be prominently featured in his remarks.” Though moderators will ask only pre-approved questions, Beacon noted that “Trump is the type to go off script when asked a question.”
Beacon remains pessimistic that additional trade-deal phases, beyond the first phase, “will come to fruition, at least prior to next year’s election.” Views “the true achievement of the Phase One deal” as “the cessation of further tariff escalation rather than the rollback of existing tariffs.”
Trump probably isn’t “concerned about defending the [Hong Kong] protesters at the expense of his trade deal.” The biggest risk of U.S. action may be the “return of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which is currently stalled in the Senate, likely because Trump has leaned on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to make sure the bill does not get a vote before he gets his trade deal.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Felice Maranz in New York at fmaranz@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Catherine Larkin at clarkin4@bloomberg.net, Scott Schnipper
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