Weekly Investment & Economic Talking Points

I may be dating myself a little here, but all I could think about last week when President Trump floated his tariff plan was the movie “Ferris Buellers Day Off”. There was a scene in that movie where a rather bland economics teacher played by Ben Stein was lecturing a very uninterested class of teens about the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Tariff act which was passed during the Great Depression. Almost as if it was on cue, major news networks ran with the Smoot-Hawley comparisons over the weekend. Let’s ignore the laughable comparisons for the time being and focus in on what’s real. As I wrote on Friday, and was also confirmed on the front page of this morning’s Wall Street Journal, President Trump is likely using the threats of tariffs as leverage to renegotiate trade deals. Personal income increased 0.4% in January and is now up 3.8% over the past twelve…