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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mark Adams who wrote (42061)	11/25/2003 10:04:30 AM
From: Mark Adams	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Ho ho ho, more prozac stat. Freer Trade in Asia: As the U.S. turns its back on freer trade, the rest of the world is embracing it: Japan has started talks towards achieving a bilateral trade deal with Korea and is also about to embark on formal trade negotiations with Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines by the end of the year. But in the USA, it's politics that hold sway... and there are no fewer than 63 (of 270) electoral college votes to be had in those steel-producing states of Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. And according to the folks at Bloomberg News, Mr. Bush only won the first two in 2000 ... but he knows that no GOP President has managed to take the White House without winning over Ohio since 1900. Fully 74% of voters polled by an internal GOP survey (reported in BN) in those 4 states support the steel tariffs and fully 37% said they were less likely to vote for him if he gave in to the WTO decision. The Republican pollster, Bill McIntruff, pulled few punches and told Bloomberg News that "a reversal in current policy direction does little to help the President". This headline on page 3 of the FT speaks volumes too—"US Silent on Bush’s Stance Over Tariffs". It wasn't enough to live through the 1930s all over again in terms of an equity collapse in 2000-2001; now we have to live through a rebuilding of trade barriers too (and now all we need to complete the picture is a premature tightening by the Fed a la 1931—when the discount rate was hiked 200 bps to what we're sure must have been referred to at the time as a 'still accommodative' 3.5%—to really rekindle the memories of Smoot-Hawley and Herbert Hoover). Meanwhile, China's threats to retaliate over bras with restrictions against American-made goods—with agriculture as one target—already had their effect yesterday in dragging down soybean, wheat and corn prices. Rosenberg/ML/MorningMarketMemo