Yves here. This article gives a high-level overview of Trump’s economic policies. It argues they weren’t a mystery, even though Trump didn’t talk meaningfully on the stump about tariffs or the idea that Americans would be expected to suffer higher inflation. In addition, Trump then, as he does now, said so many contradictory things that one could go back and find him having foreshadowed pretty much anything on the economic front.
Note that the key elements of this program were in Project 2025, Trump distanced himself from it publicly (even though it is conceivable that his key allies winked and nodded otherwise). And again, Project 2025 itself had numerous contradictions and inconsistencies, so it is hard to depict it as presenting a coherent program.
With all that as a quibble, the post distills the core elements of what Trump sees as his new order.
Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website
In a series of high-level discussions in Rome and Berlin, Thomas Ferguson—a leading authority on money and politics—offered a sweeping analysis of the deeper forces driving President Donald Trump’s tariff agenda. Far from a spur-of-the-moment decision, Trump’s economic moves reflect a broader political realignment and years of behind-the-scenes preparation.
Ferguson, who serves as Director of Research at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, reveals that what is unfolding now is more than just a trade war—it’s the unraveling of a decades-old global order. Trump’s tariff moves signal the rise of a new coalition of economic and tech elites—a “red tech” bloc—and a scramble to control the future of money, energy, and AI.
To understand where things are headed, and why the stakes are so high, here are seven key takeaways from Ferguson’s analysis.
1. The tariff bombshell didn’t just drop from the sky.
Trump’s plans for changing the world economic system are massive—on the scale of FDR abandoning the gold standard or Nixon closing the gold window in 1971. By contrast, comparisons with the 1985 Plaza Accord, which devalued the overstrong U.S. dollar, are somewhat misleading, since that really represented a lower-order realignment among friendly allied countries. The perception that Trump is simply improvising misses the mark: the DOGE initiative was quietly debated for some time, while the broader international economic strategy was telegraphed several months in advance, with key drafts circulating rather widely.
2. An end to the Post-World War II global economic era is the aim.
This crisis of the global economic system is different from earlier ones, for example, in the 1970s. This time, the aim is to terminate a system that allows countries like China and Germany to accumulate large trade surpluses year after year, while the U.S. runs persistent deficits to support global demand. The administration believes that this dynamic has benefited surplus countries at the expense of American manufacturing and workers, hollowing out industries and increasing reliance on debt. As the system unravels, the U.S. risks losing economic leverage and faces rising pressure to rebalance without the global structures that once cushioned the blow. Trump believes domestic dissatisfaction arising from these imbalances was the primary reason he came to power. Objections about how the administration arrived at the various tariff levels it proposed miss the key point: the tariffs are really the first stage of a broader realignment of the whole international monetary system.
3. Key Trump policies reveal his agenda.
Ferguson notes that Trump embraces a unitary executive theory—the belief that the Constitution grants the president full control over the executive branch, limiting congressional checks on presidential power.
He is devoted to re-balancing the international economy, and he has been executing a diplomatic revolution with friendlier relations with Russia as a tactic to throw China off balance and a decided cooling of relations between the US and Europe.
Trump recognizes that the era of low interest rates is over—4 to 5% poses a serious challenge to funding deficits. But he supports extending his earlier tax cuts, which would balloon deficits without much larger spending cuts. Enter DOGE: a political tool both to target opponents and help fund tax cuts, aligned with his broader goal of rolling back New Deal-era social policy, though as Ferguson notes, far more money could be saved by scrutinizing the health care system and defense procurement.
Trump is also fostering an energy counter-revolution, aiming to slow the transition away from fossil fuels—driven in part by the high energy demands of AI, which is critical for defense and other sectors, and his deep support among oil and gas producers.
4. Mainstream political science and economics have largely misunderstood Trump’s appeal.
Democrats’ failure to improve life for workers slipped under many analysts’ radar. Ferguson highlights that, despite many claims to the contrary, real wages actually fell during the Biden administration—not because hourly wages didn’t rise, but because average working hours declined, dragging down weekly earnings and real median household income. While Trump’s tax cuts were a boon to the rich, establishment economic analysts failed to pay enough attention to how increased working hours (if not higher wages) raised incomes for many groups during the first Trump administration.
Ferguson argues Biden’s Green New Deal rhetoric met party resistance and collided with AI’s energy demands—then, amid inflation, Biden dodged tougher steps like cracking down on commodity speculation. His administration also embraced the geopolitical logic of continuing to promote exports of oil and natural gas even while investing in a more sustainable economy.
Though Biden initially showed interest in tougher bank regulation, he retreated as Trump’s political momentum returned. These issues trace back to Obama, who campaigned on change but largely maintained the status quo—favoring bank bailouts over assistance to the population, extending Bush-era tax cuts, and generally failing to deliver for many voters, as reflected in the steep drop in turnout in the 2014 midterms.
5. The coalition that elected Trump is a new and evolving force.
It brings together major industrial sectors like steel and metals with a rising faction of Silicon Valley figures increasingly anxious about China and put off by the Biden administration’s efforts to regulate tech. Tech elites like Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, and Ben Horowitz, along with defense-focused tech players like Peter Thiel, Palantir, and Anduril, are all part of this emerging bloc. It’s a powerful alliance of industry, tech, finance, and national security interests—united by a shared concern over competition from China and a belief that Trump will back a more aggressive and strategically assertive economic agenda. Ferguson refers to the emergence of a “red tech” bloc (the color associated with Republicans) bringing together champions of AI, startups in defense, and crypto.
6. There are big crypto plans afoot.
Crypto billionaires are rapidly rising—many now appearing on the Forbes 400—and are an integral part of Silicon Valley culture, wherever they locate their home offices. They believe they can run global payment systems more efficiently than traditional banks, and they deeply distrust the Federal Reserve. Their goal is ambitious: to replace the current financial infrastructure, dominate global payments, and profit by controlling the pipes through which money flows. Ferguson noted marked differences within the crypto industry. “A major part of it is basically another form of gambling, or less politely, tulip selling,” he said. Ferguson doubts that stablecoins can actually remain stable for very long, absent regulatory oversight and guarantees that will rest in the final analysis on intervention by the Federal Reserve or some other state entity. Crypto’s popularity among real criminals – it is the medium of choice for most ransomware – is also deeply concerning and should give conscientious regulators nightmares.
7. The AI factor is key.
Ferguson emphasizes that “everyone in defense now needs AI—it’s a new backbone of modern military power, so welcome to a new kind of 1890s-style race for critical raw materials and minerals, but this time driven by algorithms, not iron.” The race is on for rare earths and critical minerals, the essential resources powering this AI arms race. Right now, most rare earths are processed in China. The Trump administration is clearly intending to change this, and its preoccupation with containing China is obvious. It is certainly a driving force in its determination to alter the global trading system, and it will likely lead to major escalations in military spending on both sides.
Speaking of Project 2025, if anyone has a few minutes, Mrs. Betty Bowers, America’s Best Christian, had the scoop on Trump and 2025 in July of last year.
<a href="https://youtu.be/XJC9kFtEMps?si=-uVuXOViYUfvM05p
For myself, I fill in the 2025 and AI gaps (or A1 gaps, if Linda McMahon is speaking) with good ol’ fashioned hubris. The smartest guys in the room have vision! Just yell at minions and they’ll work out the details!!!
Linda McMahon’s A1 moment was eye opening. She obviously has no idea what AI is or what the Broligarchy’s plans are for it. I imagine there are many like her in Trump’s cabinet. Their job is just the slashing and burning, clear cutting for the red tech bloc to implement their vision.
It’s fascinating to watch. I can’t imagine that Trump’s base is excited about AI given their historical disdain for big tech, but I guess if you mask it as firing lazy government bureaucrats then they’ll back it?
Another billionaire shatters the illusion that intelligence and wealth/success are connected
#7 shows the continuing lack of any knowledge and understanding of the size and complexity of the supply chains needed to produce anything let alone chips.
Rare earths are easy to mine, hard to concentrate and refine. What about the machinery to do that refining. What about the other materials and equipment to make the chips.
The US under the Chips act is trying to onshore chip manufacturing but not the manufacturing of the equipment needed to do it. So we end up relying again on things made 1/2 a world away for repairs.
I”d love to see a full list of all the raw materials, refining, manufacturing processes……. from the smallest screw the largest machine, that would need to come back to the US to actually make these things.
And then who would be the trained and educated people from the US to design, build, make, fix, everything from the mines to the finished product.
Is it possible to do, I think not.
same goes for drugs I think I posted this a few days ago
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/pharmaceutical-tariffs-what-and-how
Sending production to China and elsewhere has been a 30-35 year project with smart, organized people orchestrating on the receiving end.
Our ideologues think “the market” did that and all they have to do is tariff and the market will do the rest. Or, more likely, Yves is right and this is just a smash and grab: break the economy so your rich buddies can buy the wreckage on the cheap.
How killing the economy is supposed to make a market for AI & fossil fuel remains a mystery to me.
This plan doesn’t sound like a plan–particularly for those who think AI is mostly vaporware designed to extend a tech bubble that has run out of ideas. Also techie oligarchs like Musk are recent converts are they not? Musk hooked up with Trump last summer after Biden started threatening Musk via his own executive overreach. And according to Walter Kirn Trump’s choice of the tech connected Vance was another of Trump’s last minute and impulsive decisions just before the convention announcement. The establishment wanted Rubio.
Plus on the political side it was populism, fake or not, that elected Trump along with big support from the ME MIC faction (the Adelsons) who needed Trump’s Abraham Accords commercial approach to ethnic conflict to boost their cause.
Personally I think intellectuals who try to analyze Trump don’t spend a lot of time listening to his speeches or reading his Tweets. It’s entirely likely that our president is just a big boob.
I agree with your hypothesis: ‘president is just a big boob’. Nonetheless I wouldn’t undersell AI. First, and most important, machine learning IS AI and underpins everything from the dopamine stimulation algos that power YouTube and TikTok to financial lending decisions to pharmaceutical research. It doesn’t seem like a stretch to me to believe that modern defense requires investment in machine learning and other forms of AI. Generative AI has a lot of issues, well covered on this site, but nonetheless it is pretty wild that we have reached a stage where you can ask a natural language question and get an answer that is often (but not reliably) correct. In a decade it MIGHT be reliable enough to be a valuable assistant, but the juries out on that one.
I think that there a miss on the Trump agenda. He is not concerned about cutting spending or deficits, his goal is to dismantle the government, all in the service of enriching the top 0.1 or 0.01%. This is clear from the agencies that were targeted in the first wave of DOGE actions. As noted in the text, monetary savings from DOGE slash and burn are minimal, in fact they will cost the government in the short term, as the real savings would be from tackling defense and health care.
The objective is to dismantle the existing government infrastructure so much that even if Republicans lose the power in 4 years, it would be difficult for subsequent governments to take enforcement or regulatory actions through lack of personnel and agency infrastructure. This would usher an era of deregulation by default, where this is achieved not through legal mechanisms, but through dismantling the enforcement.
All these agencies and regulatory mechanism took years and decades to build up and develop and cannot be rebuilt quickly, so the current slash and burn of the government will take years to reverse, ushering 10+ years of minimal regulatory oversight.
“Trump recognizes that the era of low interest rates is over—4 to 5% poses a serious challenge to funding deficits. But he supports extending his earlier tax cuts, which would balloon deficits without much larger spending cuts.”
It would appear that he is trying to force rates lower, at least temporarily, by manufacturing a crisis and allowing for debt refinancing. Is this article suggesting we will likely see higher rates for longer? It would make sense based on historic monetary policy as a response to a higher inflation environment that is being expected due to tariff policy. There’s rumours of taking power from the Fed which I would think is to promote monetary policy contrary to historic ways. I’m curious what Trump and friends’ ideal monetary policy would be if they could implement whatever they please.
I’m certain the answer to your last sentence will be a full-on digital currency that is controlled by elites.
So far the federal reserve seems to be standing pat with interest rates due to inflation risks. Since the FR is a private consortium of big banks I’m not sure how Trump can break it.
They want the Fed to set up swap lines to lend dollars to reserve holders at par against their long-term Treasury debt holdings. This, like the reduced tariffs, will be one of the perks of joining our anti-China trade bloc..
They also want the Fed to engage in currency manipulation through the Foreign Exchange Desk so that they can charge interest on remittances and withhold remittances (from China) without spiking interest rates or crashing the dollar below their desired devaluation levels.
The pendulum in the commentary and analysis space is swinging wildly between:
Trump is officially winging it and hasn’t a clue what he’s doing,
and
Trump is aggressively shifting the tectonic plates of the existing world economic order but there’s a method to his madness and those who survive the resulting earthquake will emerge from underneath the rubble into a new global order with America firmly in charge and all pretenders to the throne vanquished (or to use the common shorthand, “he’s playing 4D chess”).
The author appears to be in the latter camp and is seeking to ascribe method to the prevailing madness. My takeaway is that Trump is trying to turn the clock back to the unipolar moment and has among his cast of fellow travellers on this journey backwards in time crypto bros, finance guys, hoodie and flip flop wearing defense startup founders, oil men, tech billionaires etc and all are trying desperately to keep a stiff upper lip while he undertakes a (un)controlled demolition of the global economic system. For the reasons stated in the post, the crypto guys are more a liability than an asset on this journey. Add to this the fact that, by weaponizing Swift the way it has, America has frittered away the trust the world had in the stability of a US led financial system so American crypto bros owning the payment rails that power global commerce will be a tough sell to people around the world. As regards AI, I know those cocooned inside the Silicon Valley echo chamber have retreated into its reassuring warmth after Deepseek briefly shook their confidence in the inevitability of America winning the AI race. They’re back to breathlessly asserting that the US is leading the race when in reality no one knows who’s leading or even what leading looks like.
It’s hard to tell from this post whether Ferguson believes the vagaries of Trump’s economic policy will achieve the overarching geostrategic aims he’s ascribing to him, or whether he’s just opining on what Trump’s driving motivations might be. Either way, it’s sure going to be a bumpy for citizens of planet Earth.
I know Ferguson and he most definitely does not believe that what Trump is doing will work in terms of creating positive outcomes, but if the aim, say, is to make China lose, he can do that even if it means the US loses even more.
Regarding the swings, I don’t think you get what Ferguson is saying. His parsimoniousness about what Trump is doing is in and of itself a finding. He is saying Trump has some specific aims. That is not that big a claim. It does NOT add up to a strategy or at least what he pretends his grand strategy is (MAGA).
It looks like by the time he’s done with tariff carve outs for cronies the people hurt most will be his base.
Electronics, next will be pharmaceuticals, then whatever the next highest bidder wants until only those who cannot ante up are left holding the bag.
Cold turkey tariffs may hurt China, but by the time the US gets over the withdrawal, it will certainly be a weaker, disoriented country.
Agreed! I don´t think they really want to – at least here in Germany – to rearm. Or put another way: rearmament s not the main goal of the defense spending. If that was the case they would first look what they need and then proceed from there. In reality the powers that be are scared shitless of what the end of the German automotive industry portends. First they (and Larry Fink) forced the big automakers to disband their huge R&D departments for gas and Diesel engines. Presicely where Germany had an edge. The only exception was privately held BMW. Then they promised them the world if they changed over to Electric vehicles. Unfortunately the Chinese went there first and now are years ahead. The main component is the battery and there Germany will never get the production scale to meaningfully compete.
Now it turns out that nobody wants to buy electric vehicles in any numbers that approach what these companies used to sell in Gas and DIesel. But a return to leadership in Gas and Diesel engines is not possible anymore. It takes years to rebuild the engineering capacity that was outsourced to China. In fact the new gas engine of Mercedes is designed in China as the Chinese of course didn´t put all their eggs in one basket.
Volkswagen and hundreds of suppliers are directly threatened and so is the SPD which rules this part of Germany and now sits in the central government. Niedersachsen (the state where Volkswagen is based and which is also the most important share holder) is the last bastion of the SPD and – lo behold – the Volkswagen plant in Osnabrück is converted to military production. Expect many more plants to follow. And that is no matter that Drones have made the old way of warfare obsolete. As I already mentioned: rearmament isn´t was all this is about. It is about saving our ruling elite from the wrath of hundreds of thousands of industrial workers. And it is already working: Niedersachsen has the highest growth rate of all German states.
“Trump believes domestic dissatisfaction arising from these imbalances was the primary reason he came to power.”
I believe that, too. We have 17 million Americans who have lost good jobs because of our Trade Policy, which means something like 40 million American Voters are suffering because of the Trade Deficit.
Even better, most of these disaffected voters live in the Midwest, meaning The Swing States.
The problem is that most of these jobs are not coming back – most of the US manufacturing capability is not there any longer.
I don’t think the American public voted for shipping their jobs overseas (even though they voted for Republican and Democratic parties that enabled it).
China have built whole cities dedicated to serve factories. Americans and the west do not have the democratic capacity to do what is necessary to have a booming industrial sector. Do American workers want to be controlled and directed by federal industrial strategy, or do they want small government and freedom. I am not sure they know what it is they want. From the outside they look confused and leaderless. Trumpism is all vibes, incompetence and an axe to grind.
They didnt vote to ship to send their jobs abroad, but they also did not do much resisting 40 odd years ago.
>>>They didnt vote to ship to send their jobs abroad, but they also did not do much resisting 40 odd years ago.
When the entire political class is for the deindustrialization of the United States especially as the Clinton’s DLC had defenestrated all the remaining Democrats in the New Deal Coalition, it becomes difficult to resist. And don’t forget such things as the Battle of Seattle.
Those who kept their trust in the system were betrayed, and those who fought were overwhelmed often with questionably legal tactics.
Thank you JBird. Paul Wellstone comes to mind.
https://youtu.be/D8Ad2kzAzak
This came up on my youtube feed: “The Decline Was the Plan: How the Global Elite Are Replacing America” – I’m not hearing anyone else talk like this. Something we’ve known for a while is that Global Capital is hollowing out the US, just like they do to all third world countries. The results are a phasing out of the US are the world’s financial center. The Wealthy are taking their money and leaving.
“Thomas Ferguson…offered a sweeping analysis of the deeper forces driving President Donald Trump’s tariff agenda.”
It also seems important for the MMT Left to begin to offer a more sweeping and deeper analysis of the non-elite MAGA base as well as a deeper self-reflection on our own inadequacies.
Answers to the following questions might be useful:
Why does the MAGA base find Trump so compelling?
Does the MMT Left suck at actual politics and, if so, why?
Does the MAGA base correctly feel that they don’t have much of a stake in our major institutions, especially when many of the people who run these institutions tend to be actively hostile toward them?
Has the MMT Left ever considered the possibility of attempting an alliance or at least a deeper conversation with the MAGA base about MMT ideas on the economy and the financial structure?
The US population has nowhere to to turn, there is no meaningful choice: political bribery has been formalized, and both parties are funded and directed by the donor class (power elite, oligarchy if you will). There is no functioning democracy, but the US is has a public relations entertainment democracy that serves only to distract and divide the public while the oligarchy and their monopolies/oligopolies continue to privatize and asset-strip the place.
The working-class has been divided and distracted, Democracy Inc. and the sycophant-media/PMC are paid well to perpetuate the status -quo. IMHO the only way for meaningful change is to organize outside of the phony sham of electoral politics
The encouraging thing is that roughly half of eligible voters in the US usually do not vote. They know it is a waste of time and helps to legitimize political fraud.
Instead of participating in undermining our interests, we should boycott Elections Inc. and protest with a list of specific demands instead. But that’s wishful thinking on my part.
one way to talk MMT policy with the right is instead of government spending make it government lending.
government lends money to citizens for college or to start a biz or buy a house or whatever at 0% interest rate and then the citizen pays it back over 15 years or so.
no free rides but also no profit being made on a person trying to better themselves. they will certainly listen to that type of proposal.
MMT cannot gain political traction because the USA’s best-government-money-can-buy two party system is dominated by FIRE sector interests. Congress critters who vocally advocate MMT will find that their fundraising phone calls from their off-the-hill cubbyholes to Wall Street and other financial centers around the country are no longer answered. As Upton Sinclair put it over a century ago, “It’s very difficult to convince a man of something when his salary depends on his not being convinced of it.”
The poobahs of the Green Party should consider adopting MMT as the economic basis of a broader platform that focuses on restoring American prosperity while preserving what’s good about our Constitutional system. While they’re at it they should change their name to something that connotes both the wider focus and the Constitution. “Preamble Party” would be a good choice.
I know it’s a long shot, but we can’t give up.
I disagree. I think we have witnessed MMT being practiced for the benefit of the rich since W. and Obama. Look at the money flows from the COVID bailouts. Look at the money flows from the 2008 crisis. Manufacture a crisis, transfer billions and trillions to the wealthy in bail out schemes and fed-designed stock market inflation, then raise taxes on working stiffs and cut benefits to the poor because deficits. If anyone was serious about cutting government waste and fraud, they would start with the list of defense contractors. . .
Yes, and look where we are. The results to not investing in infrastructure beneficial to a productive society exist at the end of a long fat tail. Every one of us is only one or two steps from “living in the park”.
“the aim is to terminate a system that allows countries like China and Germany to accumulate large trade surpluses year after year, while the U.S. runs persistent deficits to support global demand”
Can he do that without purposely dethroning (or by accident) the dollar as the world reserve currency?
Can he do that without purposely dethroning (or by accident) the dollar as the world reserve currency?
No.
To have a global reserve currency, other states must in the first place have enough of your currency for them to trade and invest with so it can be a global reserve currency. The only way that happens is by running trade deficits sufficient that enough of your currency is circulating overseas.
For comparison, even the British empire, especially in the 19th and early 20th centuries when the pound sterling was the world’s dominant reserve currency, had problems despite:
[a.] the pound being tied to gold, under the gold standard Britain adopted in 1821, so each pound had a fixed value in gold, ensuring stability and trust internationally;
[b.] the UK being the center of a global empire, with literal colonies and systems of imperial and commonwealth preference by which all finance tended to be siphoned back through the City of London which was then the foreign exchange capital of the world (as it remains);
[c.] the UK remaining the world’s manufacturing center through much of the 19th century.
Even with those systemic advantages, running trade deficits under the gold standard posed challenges.
If Britain imported more than it exported, it meant an outflow of gold to settle international debts. This could deplete reserves, restricting the money supply and leading to potential economic slowdowns. In periods of sustained trade deficits, the UK had to either adjust interest rates to attract foreign investment or reduce imports and boost exports, which often required deflationary policies that hurt domestic economic growth.
Britain remained on the gold standard till WWI made it suspend gold convertibility in 1914. Although it briefly returned to gold in 1925, this was short-lived, and by 1931, Britain abandoned the gold standard altogether, transitioning to a more flexible monetary system.
Not incidentally, the Great Depression did substantially less damage there than in the US, till FDR’s New Deal kicked in and ended gold convertibility for private citizens, requiring them to exchange it for paper currency at $20.67 per ounce, after which the Roosevelt administration devalued the dollar by revaluing gold to $35 per ounce, which greatly increased the money supply and gave headroom for economic stimulus.
You can see why some of the rich would hate Roosevelt enough to try and run a military coup.
I had a revealing conversation with a MAGA relative who has a disabled child at home who depends on Medicaid. I said “Trump is dismantling Medicaid, better find some kind of help”, He said, “Oh, Trump and Musk are *protecting* Medicaid”
Sometimes you can’t open people’s eyes, reality has to smack them in the face.
Echoes of “Get your Government hands off my Medicare” and the Tea Party.
This isn’t a comment on your relative, but on human behavior in the aggregate: as long as they have someone to punch down at/be fearful of (as instructed by their own biases and media distractors), MAGA will stick by Trump.
There will be individual defections – as Mackay pointed out in “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,” people lose their sanity in crowds and only regain it one by one – but MAGA is mostly a reactive blob of fears, resentments and appetites. It’s a delusion to think it has much agency outside of the hidden persuaders who push its buttons.
So you don’t see any emotional commonality between yourself and what you describe as the MAGA “reactive blob of fears, resentments and appetites” especially in the area of resentments?
Lol, at least we’re in therapy of sorts.
Fears? I fear a baser “commonality”.
There will commerative stamps issued to celebrate Trump’s meetings with Netanyahu and Bukele in order promote US values. There will be no objection from the people of the US. Then the US Mint will strike a gold tariff coin depicting Trump in Royal Regalia. China will be #1 to order.
Just off hand:
Another article that about a rumor that won’t stop:
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/Bonds/Japan-s-Norinchukin-Bank-didn-t-dump-Treasurys-over-Trump-tariffs-CEO/
TOKYO — Japanese agricultural lender Norinchukin Bank did not conduct large-scale sales of U.S. Treasurys following the implementation of “reciprocal” tariffs by the Trump administration, President and CEO Taro Kitabayashi told Nikkei in a Wednesday interview.
U.S. stocks, government bonds and the dollar all suffered after the tariffs took effect earlier this month, though U.S. President Donald Trump later announced a 90-day pause for most of the levies on trading partners except China. The plunge in Treasury prices sent yields soaring, which many market watchers attributed to Chinese and Japanese bondholders dumping the assets.