CHINA/ECONOMY/TARIFFS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The global economy was already showing signs of a slowdown when President Donald Trump reminded the world of his love of tariffs and sent a chill through financial markets…By Wednesday [12-5-18], Tariff Man had tweaked his message to suggest more optimism on the odds of forging a deal with President Xi Jinping. Their meeting last weekend at an economic conference in Argentina produced a 90-day truce, a suspension of further increases in U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods and a pledge by Beijing to buy more U.S. goods…Still, Trump’s rattling of the global economy came at a precarious moment, with the economic outlook for 2019 dimming and concerns about a potential recession — if not next year then soon thereafter — rising. The economic stimulus from U.S. tax cuts is beginning to fade. Britain is struggling to leave the European Union. Italy’s debt is widening. China is trying to navigate a slowdown after decades of unsustainably fast growth. Germany, Europe’s largest economy, shrank in its most recent quarter.”
–The Associated Press, “Trump’s Push for Tariffs Squeezes a Weakening Global Economy,” The New York Times online, December 5, 2018