By Michael Every of Rabobank
Even shrugging off three-plus weeks of shocking headlines, some in markets must surely wake up today "And just like that…" realize the world around them has changed dramatically. We no longer live in a market dream Manhattan with glamour, lunches, petty insults, and expensive shoes. Rather, we are in a reality with clamor, golf games, petty insults, and expensive jackboots.
President Trump has called President Zelenskyy a corrupt “dictator” who ‘started the Ukraine War,’ warning he must make a deal while he ‘still has a country left.’ That sounded like Kremlin terminology to many European ears. Yet the US walking away from Ukraine without them even being at the table is no shock historically: does one not recall the fate of the Afghan government? Or President Mubarak? Or the South Vietnamese?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 19, 2025
In response, Europe is assembling a crisis group of the EU, except Slovakia and Hungary, and everyone in NATO, except those two… and the US. This leads some to wonder if NATO can hold together. Yet without it, what can the others do? Even as the UK and France float air support for Ukraine, bringing them close to confrontation with Russia, that still requires US logistics: some ‘Great Power’ and ‘strategic autonomy’. Where next if the US defence umbrella which markets have been able to lunch and golf under since 1945/1991 folds?
That question is also aimed at the EU. As Professor of European Studies @stefanauer_hku warns:
“EUrope is finished. And it’s not just that France and Germany might no longer find it possible to work together (as @BecirovicMuamer points out). There will be conflicts between those countries who continue seeking security from the US (e.g., Poland) and those who won’t.”
Making his point, the Financial Times says European bond yields are rising and curves steepening on the prospect of that higher defence spending, i.e., Denmark just raised its arms spending by a massive 70%; as Ireland’s finance minister, the president of the group of Eurozone finance ministers, states the EU should stick to its spending rules rather than increasing defence investment – and who knows more about defence spending than… Ireland?
Beyond the fiscal side, unless one boosts industrial production in tandem, which involves “What is GDP *for*?” choices, then higher defence spending just sucks in imports – and of whose weapons, if Europe and the UK don’t make them, and the US is seen as unreliable?
This isn’t solely an EU issue: China just sailed a warship 150 nautical miles from Sydney, showing its new power projection. Australians may tell themselves that it was just scouting for beach-side property in the eastern suburbs, but that is not much comfort. The jobs numbers today Down Under (+44K vs. +20K consensus) may have been good enough to keep the RBA on hold after their recent cut, but it’s no longer the major focus in Canberra, one might think.
Indeed, the Washington Post reports Defence Secretary Hegseth has ordered 8% Pentagon budget cuts for each of the next FIVE years, which would almost halve current spending. Even addressing layers of fat and invoice-padding, it seems everywhere but the Indo-Pacific region is expendable. Of course, Congress may not agree, but if it does, many will be asking who has their back. One would assume the long end of curves will go back up to reflect that defence spending and uncertainty.
In what would otherwise be headline news, Elon Musk has floated sending $5,000 checks to each American from apparent DOGE savings, as Trump said he favoured sharing 20% of the total saved. Of course, this is all past (mis?)spending and that would just bring the US deficit back again.
Undeterred, Commerce Secretary Lutnick stated a White House goal is to remove the IRS, as Trump backs the House budget bill that includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts: note the 100% expensing for new US factories, the 15% for anything made in America, and lower taxes on oil producers in an attempt to drive energy prices down further.
And that’s as President Putin floats an energy summit between himself, the US, and Saudi Arabia, who together control 40% of the world’s oil, following on from the US and Russia already suggesting that they may develop Arctic oil together.
Failing to make any impact was a headline in The New York Times saying Trump wants a new, better trade deal with China. Don’t we all? That certainly runs entirely counter to the massive tariffs that are coming in around five weeks – unless markets think that the president who can do all of the above isn’t serious about tariffs “because markets”.
An early leak of Europe’s Clean New Industrial Deal is also a U-turn from neoliberalism. In short, it argues for “made-in-EU” quotas for both the public and private sectors and carbon product labels -- economic statecraft non-tariff barrier local content rules-- to make 40% of clean tech in Europe rather than buying it from China. Furthermore, to bring down energy costs the plan is to cut energy taxes and use the European Investment Bank to lend vast sums for new grid and LNG plants, etc. --economic statecraft subsidies and/or off-book quasi-fiscal spending-- and an "EU critical raw material centre" to "jointly purchase raw materials" for groups of companies – economic statecraft market intervention. Naturally, this means more zero-sum global trade policy.
Summarising things, the Financial Times has an op-ed bewailing “Who will stabilize the global economy?” It points out a century ago the rising US giant, then still number two to the wounded post-WW1 British Empire, was a mercantilist rather than a stabilising force. We know how that ended in 1929, the 1930s, and the 1940s. Today, the US is going back down that path in response to a mercantilist China which never tried to go anywhere else – and so nobody is going to stabilise the global economy.
The latest Fed minutes discussed the possible effects of changes in US trade and immigration policy, as well as differentiating between the temporary and the persistent inflation impacts. Frankly, they haven’t got a clue about that, or any of the above news. Indeed, it’s unfair to expect them to --our contemporary central bankers are just not cut from that kind of intellectual cloth-- and a few Fed members might even be looking at the treatment of Zelenskyy and feeling nervous.
For now, US rates are clearly on hold, following which the Fed will say “And just like that…” and…