When the headline and the text of the story tell a completely different story | Forexlive

The latest headline that moved markets was from Politico and it was this:

White House is ‘close’ on Japan, India tariff agreements — but expect them to be light on specifics

That sounds promising, right?

Within the story it sounds more like the “the terms of reference to lay down a roadmap for the negotiations” that the USTR announced earlier today:

“I wouldn’t even call them deals,” another person close to the White House said of the frameworks the administration is looking to announce. “Basically, [it’s] an agreement that we would like to talk about doing a deal.”

And this:

“They’re going to start rolling out a bunch of stuff that just says, you know, we’re signing something that says we’re going to start talks,” they added.

As for a timeline?

It may take months to hammer out the final deals

How many months? The average US bilateral trade deal has taken 18 months to hammer out. The USMCA in Trump’s last term — which was the light re-hashing of NAFTA — took 13 months. The US wantts to do 90 deals in 90 days.

After the initial headline excitement, the market has recoiled at these details. The President can proclaim these kinds of things loudly as ‘deals’ but you’re not going to fool the market and this won’t remove any uncertainty.

At best, I could see a situation where within the 90 day period, they announce a few things and bring tariffs down to 0% while deals are negotiated. How realistic is that? Not very.

The S&P 500 has now given back 60 points of gains.