Don Yuan

President Xie of China will hit the links with President Trump in April and we would love to be a fly on the wall in those conversations. Our president has not hidden his contempt for alleged unfair trade practices and has also discussed a potential “deal” involving a future haircut on Chinese U.S. debt holdings. President Xie should take some comfort in knowing that he is punching below his weight as the Donald recently called the National Security Advisor at 2 am to question whether we should be pursuing a strong or weak dollar policy ( spoiler alert: the NSA chief commented that he was not the person he should be consulting on economic matters). The bottom line is that with all this rhetoric regarding the imposition of trade tariffs and border taxes, the concept of on-shoring has once again come to the fore. It is interesting that these discussions are taking place at the same time that financial markets are experiencing unprecedented levels of complacency as measured by capital market volatility. Perhaps those in the capital markets should take note that the environment that has produced low levels of volatility( for the most part) was partially predicated on seamless flows of global capital.