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Lordy, there's a luxury furniture company who manufactures in China, their stock is down 40%. The CEO was on a public call when he got the news

The Trump tariffs are 34% on goods from China.

Welcome to Null's econometrics 300 tonight's essay question: "Will RHs stock fall by the same amount or more? Explain your answer."

One to pages double spaced. It will be 5% of your grade this quarter.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/03/oh-sh-rh-ceo-reacts-live-to-stock-tanking-on-tariffs-poor-earnings.html

China is coming out swangin'!

- 34% blanket tariff in retaliation with no exemptions
- Blocking rare earth exports critical to the US military
- Banning 11 US companies from China who sold military equipment to Taiwan
- Blocking US medical tech from China to break the US hold on that industry
- Blocking the US' top 5 chicken sellers from selling in China
- Investigating DuPont's China operations for corruption violations

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/business/china-trump-tariffs-retaliation.html

So we're seeing a second day of stocks selling off.

Tesla is down another 10% and struggling to find solid support.

Dow DuPont, a normally relatively low volitlatity ticket is down a shocking 20% YoY with most of that happening today on news China will investigate corruption at the firm in retaliation for tariffs.

Oil and gas companies were supposed to be protected by Trump's exemption of oil & gas from tariffs. Chevron is down 12% since the Trump Tariffs despite Trump's favoritism.

One of the dynamics I always find fascinating about the stock market is that investors are extremely good at finding any reason to believe the worst has passed.

So I do expect some of these stocks to recover throughout the month.

However, the stock market also reacts strongly when bad news becomes undeniable. And that point is normally when quarterly reports deliver bad news in black n white.

I expect a second significant drop in about a month from now when enough horrible qrt reports r due.

Throughout this month I expect consumers will realize inflation is coming back with a vengeance and will make big purchases they would otherwise put off, just so they can catch the lower prices rn.

For companies like furniture seller RH this means they will probably not raise prices too much on existing inventory, and will report strong sales for a month or two while they sell through inventory already in the US.

They'll all kick the terrible sales news can down the road till May / June

So if you see retailers claiming "strong April sales" or "limited impact from the tariffs", take it with a Donald Trump sized grain of salt maybe.

They will all be slumping.

Also don't buy the hype if Trump reduces our tariffs, the world literally considers this a problem as big as the invasion of Ukraine or the economic blow of COVID lockdowns.

They are gonna make us regret this and the risk will persist until Republicans are out of power.

Fundamentally we're now in a rapidly evolving situation. Most businesses and stock analyst likely have no clue what the impact of such a large macro change will be.

Even worse, countries all over the world are -just- beginning to react and will take days and weeks to decide how to respond, so things may get much worse for any given company at anytime.

By the time an analyst figures out the impacts for a company the numbers will be wrong, type of situation.

@nat @nullagent These stores are hilarious - literally taking money from suckers that have no idea about what quality furniture looks like or how to put a coherent look together.

There is no reason that at these prices, you could not manufacture locally, but people would rather send their designers to shop in the most expensive retail real estate to get mass produced, average quality.

You have to fill your McMansion with SOMETHING after all ...

@LockEx Exactly this. That's why I'm trying to point out to people that if we do managed to recover that trust, it's going to take at least a full generation to do so, and will not happen unless we make major constitutional, legislative, and judicial changes to dramatically weaken the Executive branch to ensure this cannot happen again. It's literally insane that the President is allowed any authority over tariffs and immigration, nevermind what they are attempting to do that is illegal.

@gcvsa @LockEx I think the media environment has to change too, because people seem to live in completely seperated realities dependent on their media diet. I just can't see right now how this can be done.

@ulsi73 @LockEx The problem with the media is the same problem that we have generally in our society, and that is that neoliberalism has destroyed the very idea of community, of fellow feeling, of a coherent national identity, which is required for us to trust each other enough to believe we have anything in common, that we should have any moral or ethical standards at all save for profits. "Divide and conquer" is the ethos of neoliberalism. Its moral center is "profit at all costs".

@gcvsa @LockEx What do you think when was the last time that solidarity was a thing in the USA ? Can we Europeans hope to see some of that this weekend? I've heard that large protests are supposed to happen..? I count on you guys who care to do something. Thank you!

@ulsi73 The problem with solidarity in the US is that it was always an illusion for too many, and the rise of neoliberalism was very much a reaction to the civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s finally beginning to force America to live up to the ideals of pluralism, tolerance, diversity, equity, and inclusion that supposedly founded this nation. The MAGA movement was birthed by the impacts of neoliberalism on white people, an attempts to return the US to the days prior to neoliberal hegemony.

@ulsi73 Large protests are indeed being planned, but I am not the sort of person who believes these are going to have any significant impact.

The Trump Administration will fall when its supporters finally feel the reality of what they elected has fundamentally harmed them, not by any protest of the opposition. We are a long way from that, yet, largely because the MAGAhats are so misinformed and disinformed.

But as they say, eventually, "Money talks, bullshit walks."

@ulsi73 In other words, it's going to have to get a lot worse before it gets better, and any attempt to impede the destruction being caused by Trump, Musk, Vance, Thiel, etc, is only likely to prolong the agony.

What we need is for everything to come crashing down, for Trump supporter's lives to be utterly ruined by his policies, for them to wake up.

After all, they are the ones with most all the guns.

We need to come out of this with the ability to form a consensus that we need to change.

@ulsi73 And that won't happen if we come out of this with Trump supporters as convinced as the South has always been about the US Civil War, that they were the ones in the right, all along. We are still litigating this in the marketplace of ideas, 160 years after the Civil War ended.

If they continue to refuse to admit they were wrong, nothing changes.

@ulsi73 Protests and "non-violence" can be effective if the regime still has a conscience. The Trump Administration, I believe, is not one such.

@gcvsa True. No conscience there. I'm still glad that some people try something to make themselves heard. Ex MAGA people need a more attractive alternative to turn to