Being sick has made it hard to keep up on the daily news. Add in complete some insanity from DC and I really can't keep it all straight at the moment. However, I'm telling myself I'm taking some time this afternoon to try to get back thick of it and figure out what's actually going on.
I saw the postal service temporarily stopped accepting packages from China as a result of Trump's order, only to reverse course a day later. Trump has now suspended tariffs on small packages from China, after his sudden order ending duty-free treatment for shipments worth less than $800 left the US postal service and other agencies scrambling to comply this week.
The chaos left many of in the US also wondering about the fate of packages ordered from companies such as Shein and Temu, which had used the exemption for low-value packages to expand rapidly in the US. I know my wife always has packages coming in and we were just thinking they'd be lost in the ether at this point. Trump made the original order as part of the trade war he is kicking off with everyone and was part of the 10% tariff for China by 10%. However, don't get too excited because it sounds like they are trying to figure out how to make adequate systems to fully and expediently process and collect tariff revenue from these small packages since no one really knew how they were going to handle the situation when the order was made.
Let's also not forget that last weekend he said he was putting 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, before rapidly suspending those duties for a month to allow talks to continue. Today Trump said he expected to announce "reciprocal tariffs" on many countries next week too. At this rate you almost just need to wait to see what actually sticks... It throwing the stock market in a sea of volatility as prices whipsaw at single post on Truth Social and X. It's making me feel pretty uneasy about our economic outlook at the moment.
