At least one expert is urging cooler heads to prevail over the latest tariffs threats issued by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Barry Knapp heads Ironsides Macroeconomic Research, and maintains that financial markets will turn out fine even if Trump follows through with tariff threats on all Chinese imports.
"It'll have an impact but I think it'll be a fairly small impact," Knapp told the media Friday. "It is not going to be as disruptive as you'd be led to believe by the market reaction."
Many investors have braced for the worst as Trump has shown that he is willing to go to the limit to force concessions out of China. But others have played a wait-and-see approach ahead of Saturday's meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires.
In the latest tariff moves, the U.S. levied 10 percent duties on $200 billion worth of goods from China, prompting Beijing to put tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. goods. Before departing for Argentina on Thursday, Trump told reporters that the U.S. is "close to doing something with China but I don't know that I want to do it."
On Tuesday, the president told The Wall Street Journal it's "highly unlikely" that he would delay January's tariff hike on those $200 billion worth of Chinese goods from 10% to 25%. Trump even reiterated his threat to put tariffs on the rest of Chinese imports.
