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MORNING BID EUROPE - Counting the costs of tariff chaos

Wayne Cole gives us a look at what the future holds for European and global markets.

Early Asian reactions to the mess of a U.S. Tariff Policy were to revive the sell America meme. The dollar and Wall Street futures both dropped. The Supreme Court has now struck down President Trump's emergency tariff policy. They basically said that he had been violating the law for over a year. Trump then holds a?media?conference in which he announces that a 10% tariff will be applied to all goods from Tuesday. He then announced on social media that the tariff would be increased to 15% immediately. This apparently caught some of his officials by surprise. White House posted on Friday a list of items that were exempted from the initial tariff rate of 10%. It's unclear if this will still be the case for the new rate. Trump's bill, which he is now using for the first ever time, prevents discrimination among countries. Therefore, everyone must get the 15%. This includes Russia and North Korea who were initially not included in the tariffs. This means that some countries like the UK and Australia will face higher tariffs while others, such as China, could see theirs fall dramatically. The European Commission has ruled out any changes to the deal between India and the U.S. The power lasts only?150 before Congress must extend it. This is something that Republican legislators will be reluctant to do, given the?unpopularity of tariffs in opinion polls. White?House officials claim that tariff rates won't change much, and that trade agreements already agreed upon will remain in place. It's not clear how this works, given that these deals were made under tariffs which no longer exist.

Treasury Secretary Bessent threatened to embargo trading partners if they did not honor these agreements. Imagine the U.S. excluding itself from global trade. Would the U.S. Navy blockade Chinese port? Or European ports? It might be easier for the navy to blockade all U.S. port. There's also the rush to get refunds for the roughly $170 billion of now illegal tariffs that were paid. More than 1,800 lawsuits have already been filed at the US Court of International Trade. Any money that is reimbursed to the importers will likely not go to the consumers who paid the tariffs through higher prices. Due to the uncertainty, European stock futures have fallen 0.5%. S&P futures have dropped 0.8%. Nasdaq Futures are down 1%. Markets were already nervous ahead of Nvidia’s earnings on Wednesday. This will test the strength of the AI market. The world's largest company is expected to report a 71% increase in earnings per share for the fiscal fourth quarter, on revenues of $65,9 billion. Analysts expect an average?EPS for the upcoming fiscal year of $7.76. Estimates range from $6.28 up to $9.68. Options indicate that its?shares may move by at least 6 percent in either direction after the announcement.

Market developments on Monday that may have a significant impact

- Appearances of Christine Lagarde President of the European Central Bank, Alan Taylor MPC of Bank of England, Federal Reserve Board Governor Christopher Waller

- Includes data from the Ifo survey in Germany, US factory orders and Dallas and Chicago Fed surveys

(source: Reuters)