ECONOMY/FEDERAL RESERVE/TRADE DEALS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Here’s a question for economy watchers: Is American economic policy in 2019 more like ouroboros, the ancient Egyptian symbol of a snake eating its own tail, or maybe more like an M.C. Escher painting in which a series of stairs wrap around a room in mind-bending ways? Both seem like decent approximations of the strange ways in which trade policy, monetary policy and financial markets are intersecting this year. And never more so than this week. On Wednesday [7-31-19], the Federal Reserve cut its main interest rate target, aiming to guard the American economy against damage from ‘trade uncertainty’ and a slowing world economy, as the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, said at a news conference. But markets fell, with investors interpreting his comments to mean that the Fed won’t cut rates much more in the months to come. Then on Thursday, President Trump announced a new round of 10 percent tariffs on $300 billion worth of China exports, suggesting that a trade war détente from earlier the summer may be coming to an end.”
–Neil Irwin, “The Increasingly Bizarre Interplay Between Trump’s Trade Policy and the Fed,” The New York Times online, August 1, 2019