Hello, my friends. Today is February 1st and this is Markets Weekly. So this past week was a super exciting week in markets. We had all sorts of things happening, so we have a lot to talk about. First and foremost, of course, we have to talk about the topic du jour. That is Trump tariffs. It seems like President Trump today will start the tariff wars by announcing levies of 25% on Canada and Mexico and 10% on China. Secondly, this past week was also a big week in tech. We had deep-seek and of course, a lot of MAG 7 earnings. So let's talk about what happened over there. And lastly, there was also a lot of data last week. Let's talk about that data as well as foreign central bank actions. Okay, starting with tariffs. Now over the past few days, President Trump has been talking about announcing tariffs starting February 1st, but of course, the market is not, wasn't super sure. Indeed, on Friday, there was a news report out saying that Trump would announce tariffs for February 1st, but wouldn't implement them until the end of the month.
And there would be a process where people could apply for exemptions, which sounded very, very moderate as if it was just a negotiating tactic, giving time for the parties to come to a deal. However, not too long after that press release, we had a White House press secretary, Caroline Levitt, basically say that, yeah, the tariffs are still on. Now, many of you may not have been trading around the first term of Trump, but this is actually very, very common. So the way the Trump world operates, it's kind of like a king's court. And there are many different power centers and many different groups that try to influence policy.
So, you know, I don't know if it was a purpose leak or anything like that, but the truth is oftentimes these different power centers don't actually know if they have the king's ear. And so it's kind of like Trump's TV show, The Apprentice, where everyone is just trying to compete for attention from Trump. And it's hard to know if you're the favorite party. At the end of the day, you don't actually know what's going to happen until the king speaks. And he has spoken. Let's listen to a little bit about what he said. Mr. President, is there anything China, Canada, and Mexico can do tonight to forestall your implementation of tariffs tomorrow? No, not right now. No. Not a negotiating tool? No, it's not pure economic. We have big deficits with, as you know, with all three of them. And in one case, they're sending massive amounts of fentanyl, killing hundreds of thousands of people a year with a fentanyl.
And in the other two cases there, making it possible for this poison to get in. Number one, and number two, we have big deficits and it's something we're doing. And we'll possibly very substantially increase it. We're not. We'll see how it is. But it's a lot of money coming to the United States. As you know, we have about a $200 billion deficit with Canada getting close to $200 billion. They've treated us very unfairly. And I say, why should we be subsidizing Canada? They, you know, it's wonderful. I have so many friends in Canada. It's a great place. Is there a concession? They're looking for, sir? No, we're not looking for a concession. We'll just see what happens.
So that was fun from a press conference Friday evening. And it's very clear that President Trump wants to do tariffs. And there's kind of nothing these other guys can do to change his mind. Now that's actually really interesting because, you know, all these other countries, they want to have white tariffs, but they don't really know how. Now, last week, there was a very interesting podcast recorded on the looting hour, which is a good podcast I recommend with Danielle Smith, who is the premier of Alberta. A premier is basically like a governor. And she talks about her experience when she went to Mar-a-Lago to discuss with President Trump about working together. And my sense was she didn't really know what the Trump administration wanted. Did you want? Did you want? Is it about the border? Is about fentanyl? Is about military spending? You know, just tell us, and we want to work with you. After all, we are good allies, and we want to work together. But I came away with a sense that she didn't really know what Trump wanted. And from press conference yesterday, I'm getting the sense that, you know, Trump is not really forthcoming.
He keeps talking about fentanyl and so forth. But even when people are willing to work with him on that, he doesn't seem to change his mind. Now, Mark Stonewep and Flak this post from from Someone on X, which noted that under the Trump trade agreements, the USMCA trade agreements, again, we have a somewhat of a free trade zone. But one of the ways, one of the exceptions where you can have terrorists in this context is if it's for security. And so maybe Trump just keeps repeating these fentanyl and border stuff because it's his legal basis for putting tariffs on Canada and Mexico. So if that's the case, what does he actually really want? Is it just to revenue? Is it in anything else?
他一直在谈论芬太尼等等。但即使人们愿意在这方面与他合作,他似乎也没有改变主意。现在,Mark Stonewep 和 Flak 从某人在 X 上发布的帖子中指出,根据特朗普的贸易协议,即 USMCA 贸易协议,我们实际上有一个相对自由的贸易区。但是在这种情况下,对商品征收关税的例外情况之一是出于安全考虑。所以,也许特朗普不断重复这些关于芬太尼和边境的问题,是因为这是他对加拿大和墨西哥征收关税的法律依据。那么如果是这样,他到底想要什么呢?只是为了增加收入吗?还有其他原因吗?
Now, I think just looking at his past history and reading between the lines, I think it's going to be different for both Canada and Mexico. So for Canada, maybe he really just does just wants Canada. I mean, I think he looks at Canada and sees a region that is very much completely integrated into the US economy, right? Very interdependent there. He sees people who are basically completely dependent upon the US for defense. And I don't know if you guys have ever been to Canada, but the people there, they sound like Americans, culturally very similar, and many places in Canada look just like America. And so functionally, maybe he just thinks that this is functionally very similar to America. It has, in fact, he also has natural resources, access to the Arctic. Maybe his ambition really is to extend the US border. And I understand that many Canadians don't want that, but that that is one possibility for how Trump is thinking about this. In any case, it seems like nothing the Canadians can do will satisfy President Trump.
Now, what are the economic ramifications of this? Well, it's kind of going to be a mess because these the economies of Canada and the US are really tightly integrated. Now, Canada does have a very large trade surplus with the US, but a lot of that is actually oil. So, the US imports a lot of oil from Canada, specifically the province of Alberta. Now, if you exclude oil, it seems from what I hear that Canada actually has a trade deficit with the US. So a lot of that is oil. And during that press conference, Trump later on also thought about said that he might lower tariffs on oil, so as to not impact oil prices too much in the US. The oil thing is kind of tricky because the US imports these heavier grade oil barrels, oil from Alberta, mixes it with its own oil and then refines it.
And the refiners can easily be recalibrated, and it's not as easy to replace these heavier barrels. So, in a sense, the US really needs those Canadian barrels. And similarly, Alberta is kind of in the middle of a lot of the oil production facilities in Alberta are kind of in the middle of nowhere, and it's not easy to sell them elsewhere. The system is kind of set up so that they're piped down to the US. So, both sides are kind of captive when it comes to oil. Another point is that there's a lot of automotive manufacturing in the US and Canada. So, this is really helpful chart by the Bank of Canada showing that a lot of parts are manufactured in Canada, sent to the US, and then sent back and forth. Again, these supply chains are very integrated, so that could totally cause a lot of turmoil.
Now, the Bank of Canada had the misfortune of having to publish a monetary policy report last week. It's a misfortune because they have no idea what's going to happen. They gave a forecast, noting that of course, if we have tariffs, all those changes and we don't really know what's going to happen. So, it seems like one of their simulations is saying that if we have this big tariff war, I don't know what's going to happen, but best guess is that we're going to have slower growth in Canada in higher inflation, and that sounds totally reasonable. To me, again, there's many moving parts to this. It's basically impossible to predict the consequences.
Now, something interesting is that the Liberal government over there is basically telling everyone that if the US puts tariffs against us, we will definitely retaliate. Conservative party leader there, Piero Polyviere, also was saying that he is on board with imposing retaliatory tariffs, and the Liberal government there, now, again, Trudeau is still in charge. He is still, until the election, he's still in charge over there, is basically talking about huge spending, maybe pandemic level stimulus to help the Canadian people. My sense is this is going to be quite a volatile mix because it's very stat stationary if we kind of have this tariff shock and then they continue to spend a lot of money, very, very bad news for the Canadian currency. So, we'll see how that happens. Everything is up in the air, and President Trump does change his mind, so we'll find out over the coming days.
Now, on the Mexican side, it's also really difficult to see what Trump wants. Now, again, there has been an open border policy between Southern border and Mexico, and a lot of people have been coming through that Southern border. Now, whereas Biden told everyone that we needed to have congressional legislation to fix this, that's obviously not the case. And since the Trump term, there's been a significant decrease in illegal crossings. A large part of that is cooperation with Mexico in ringing in illegal crossings. So, Mexico has done, has really gone out of their way to try to please President Trump. But even after cracking down on illegal immigration, even after putting more enforcement on drugs, it doesn't seem like that's enough to avoid tariffs. And I think that again speaks to a bigger point that Trump is Trump, bigger goals that Trump wants.
Again, the ultimate goal that Trump talks about a lot is to re-industrialize the United States. Now, this trade agreement and the Biden administration's policy of French shoring actually is not been helpful for re-industrializing the US. It's been helpful trying to diversify supply chains from China, but that hasn't been helpful for US manufacturing, because a lot of what's been happening is that foreign factories, including Chinese factories, have moved and built factories in Mexico. And because Mexico is part of this free trade area with the US, it's basically a way for Chinese companies to backdoor into the US, and that's been happening to a large degree. So, in a sense, French shoring is not going to work under the Trump administration. The factories can't be built in Mexico. They have to be built in US. So, I think that seems to be the problem there and why Trump wants to renegotiate the USMCA. Again, if you are a Mexico, obviously, you want jobs to be in your country and you don't want them to go to the US. So, I think that's going to be a very tough time for for it's going to be a very tough negotiation. And I'm not sure how this is going to pan out.
So, all in all, it seems like we're in a pretty tough place here and set up for some turmoil. Now, again, many people say, Trump is all about the markets, right? The markets, the markets. Well, he was actually asking about this at the press briefing. Let's listen to what he said. Are you concerned about the market reaction around tariffs? No, no tariffs. The word tariff is a very misunderstood word. You've heard me say, I say it kiddingly, but it's one of the most beautiful words in the dictionary. It really is. So, yes, Trump does care about the markets, but we also have to know that he cares about other things as well. And being able to change the global trade order is something that he has dreamed of since the 1980s. And in 2018, 2019, we did have some significant market tumbles over there, but that didn't really change his trajectory. Now, it seems like we're going to have tariffs of 10% on China as well. You know, I'm not really sure how that's going to play out. Chinese, of course, would definitely retaliate. It seems like that's going to be something that's kind of going to be in the back burner first. And it seems like the administration first wants to take care of these events close by before focusing on China. Maybe later on, again, we are only in week two of the Trump administration. So a lot of stuff happening, guys. This is going to be a super exciting year.
Okay, now let's talk a little bit about tech the past week. As we all know, the big news the past week was deep-seek. Now, just to rewind a little bit, deep-seek, it wasn't released the past week. It's been released for a few weeks now, and people in the know have been talking about it. But the market, of course, wasn't listening. And then one day it realizes it and it reacts. So the market is often like that. Okay, it's not super fast and sometimes not very smart. Now, deep-seek is basically a Chinese AI company that's managed to be able to do AI at a much cheaper way. Basically, huge surge in productivity. Again, productivity is same outputs produce more in same inputs, produce more outputs. And deep-seek was able to produce a pretty good product with much less cost. How much less cost? It's not sure. A lot of people debate this, but I think they all agree that they basically, it was a very competitive product, did some good technological innovation and now it seems like AI companies don't need as much compute power to produce their product.
Now, this, of course, has huge implications for a lot of AI companies, specifically NVIDIA. Everyone was buying NVIDIA chips handover fist because NVIDIA chips are the best when it comes to training AI, just running AI stuff, and everyone wanted to have access to that. And so there was kind of an arms race where all the big tech companies buying just hundreds of billions of dollars worth of NVIDIA chips. Now, if you can produce the same product with less compute power, obviously you don't need as much NVIDIA chips. And so that's unambiguously bad for NVIDIA chip sales and you saw the NVIDIA stock kind of tank. Now, at the same time, there's also a lot of people in the market talking about something called Jevons Paradox, which means, of course, that is something becomes cheaper. Sometimes people demand more of it. And so by this logic, having cheaper AI just means people buy more NVIDIA chips because there's going to be more demand for AI. So that increased demand will outweigh the cost savings and end up in more more ship sales. So basically, if AI training is expensive, got to buy NVIDIA, in and of AI training is cheap, also got to buy NVIDIA.
Now, when you see something like this, when a stock can only go up, nothing matters. You guys, it's time to be very, very cautious here. And I would not be surprised if any of the video has talked. Now, of course, this AI theme is also a big driver in a lot of other mags of in stocks as well. And that had a big impact. Basically, if you are someone who buys AI, it's really good for the cost of AI to come down, right? Now, you don't have to pay as much for the same thing. But if you're someone who sold AI, that's not good because you can't charge as much for your AI services. And that's especially bad if you've already spent hundreds of billions of dollars getting ready for a lot of AI demand. So you kind of see that a little bit in the stock price, say, Microsoft not doing that well, Apple, which, you know, wasn't that big into AI doing much better?
Now, from a macro economy standpoint, having these huge productivity advancements is really, really good. If you think AI is going to be a big part of productivity, boom, we're in the future. Well, now it's also cheaper now. So it's super productive. And a lot of these applications are still in an early stage, but just global macro economics, speaking, having these breakthroughs is really helpful. And I would also note that if you have these small companies, just basically out of left field, making these technological breakthroughs, well, obviously, there's a lot of smart people all over the world. And now they know that they can make big advances without a lot of money. So there could be additional disruption going forward.
Now, one other thing I want to talk about is we also had Tesla earnings last week. And it was actually a super interesting earnings call because by the numbers, they were not very good, right? Tesla's margins are shrinking. And it just doesn't seem like from a business metric viewpoint, it's doing that well. And yet at the same time, its stock was up notably after the earnings call. Here's an interesting analyst report from JP Morgan, basically just kind of struggling their shoulders and saying, I'm not sure what's going on here. All the business metrics are turning down. But Elon goes on stage and he says, it's going to be epic. And there's a path where Tesla could be more valuable than all the other top five companies. And maybe we'll have a product that can generate 10 trillion in revenue and so forth. And people hear that and then the stock goes to the moon. So again, that tells you there's a lot of speculative fervor in the market and on top of what we saw in NVIDIA, where you have the Jebbins paradox stuff. And by some data metrics, tremendous amounts of retail, piling into NVIDIA, buying the dip. Now guys, I think there's a lot of speculative fervor in the market in tech especially. And it seems things are changing. So I'm extra cautious about all this, about the market and tech in particular.
Okay, the last thing that I want to talk about is all the big data releases we've had the past week, we had a lot of big data, we had GDP, for example, and also central bank meetings. Now on the US front GDP, a little bit lower than expected, but the consumer is totally booming, right? Much consumer spending, much higher than expected. My own guess is that just linked to asset prices. Everyone is having a lot more money to spend since the stock market is going to the moon, crypto is going to the moon, and that really does have an impact on spending. Now looking at the labor market data, it does seem we have the best metric for labor compensation, the employment compensation index, and it is steadily decelerating. So that tells me that from a wage standpoint, the labor market is definitely softening, wages are coming down, and that is a general cooling of inflation. Now there's some interesting developments when it comes to the worker buyout and Elon's efforts to control federal spending. I think that's going to have an impact on the labor market as well, and I'll write about it on my blog this week, which ultimately, of course, can impact how the Fed reacts.
The big central bank meetings the past week was, of course, the ECB, and pretty downbeat, the ECB cut. It looks like the market thinks will cut again shortly. Overall, the European economy is just not doing well. And so the market is thinking more and more that they might want to go not just to neutral, but to easing mode. And my dad, look, I already noted that they're going to publish new research to give the market an idea where they think neutral is. And as the European economy slows, maybe you might have to go from neutral to easing, which would be below that number. So it thinks not going that well in Europe, in her opening remarks, she pointed out a scenario where maybe as the global economy picks up, you know, we could have more exports and that would be good for European growth. But, you know, I'm not sure that's going to happen. In Trump's press conference, he also explicitly singled out Europe and was very unhappy and get reiterated his promise for more tariffs. So there is a trade war on that front that will open up as well. So not not to looking very good there.
We also had a bank of Canada, they cut again. Now for them, it's really difficult. The Canadian economy is slowing, but you have this tariff war. Now, if the tariff war, and even if you have a tariff war, as a central rank, it's hard to know how to react because maybe things get resolved and everything is okay. But if things don't get resolved, if things really are structural, because, again, Trump is asking for something that the Canadian government cannot give, then you will probably expect much more rate cuts. And, you know, if in combination with significant fiscal spending over there, you know, it would be a very stack evolutionary mix. So again, everything is up in the air because all these developments, the global economy, is going to depend upon what happens in the White House. And that's something that changes every day.
All right, it's been an exciting week. And I think next week will also be as exciting. Thanks so much for tuning in. And also I did a more long-term discussion with Jack Farley of Monetary Matters. I'll post that on the channel as well. Take a look.