If you remember back to April when spring was slowing coming in, the weather started to be warmer and there was much to look forward to. Then President Trump announced Liberation Day and the stock markets went down because this was a drastic change to global supply chains.

In an article by Jamie McGeever of Reuters, he asks the basic question, what was the point of all that Liberation Day chaos and confusion?

President Trump is the self-styled Tariff Man, although it took till mid-May before he realized the companies that import the items will charge higher prices to consumers. One can argue the economic merits of his agenda, but was the strategy and implementation?

3 days after Liberation Day was announced, $6 trillion in stock value was wiped out. It has taken a month and half to come back, but only because tariffs were changed to lower or semi-manageable.

According to the Yale Budget Lab, the tariffs are forecast to raise $2.7 trillion in federal revenue over the 2026-35 decade. This is up from an estimated $2.4 trillion. For the extra amount, the Yale Budget Lab believes the US economy will be 0.4% smaller.

Meanwhile, for an economy that runs on consumer spending, US consumer and business spending has slumped to its lowest levels on record and expectations of higher inflation is the highest in decades. At the moment, until people determine some sense of stability, spending is on hold.

Faith in America as a reliable partner has clearly diminished. As HSBC currency analysts reminded their readers: trust takes years to build, seconds to break and forever to remake.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, in the chaos that went through the stock market, we saw institutions selling, but retail investors holding. Partly because if the government made the mess, it could do better and fix some of the mess, which allowed stocks to return to their previous levels. The issue was the time delay. When you invest in the stock market, the record shows overtime the assets perform well, but during the time they also fluctuate in values. When to sell is very hard to know, but overtime the values tend to go up. If you buy a company that makes profits, it values bounce back faster than those that do not make profits.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.