Morning from Copenhagen.

We are slowly but surely reaching a point where the need for economic advisors in the Trump administration seems useless when he is constantly defying official statements from the administration on tariffs, and yesterday was another crystal-clear example.

Markets are starting to get exhausted from the constant flip-flopping from Trump, and once again, it didn’t take more than a couple of hours after the delay of tariffs toward Canada/Mexico before Trump was out on social media more or less pulling back the benign stance toward Canada.

Sentiment continues to sour this morning after the Chinese embassy in the US more or less accepted a “trade war,” and the general sign from US counterparts is that countries are now starting to push back against the tariffs—probably not what Donald had hoped for:

“If war is what the U.S. wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war, or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end.” (Twitter post here)

The crucial point is that the US is now, to some extent, on the other side of the table, with peers imposing counter-tariffs. Once Trump realizes that tariffs are hurting US growth, he is suddenly the one begging China, Canada, etc. to lower tariffs against the US. This is probably what risk assets are reacting to now—what if counterparts refuse to lift tariffs when Trump asks them to?

Chart 1: Trump the Flip-Flopper?