Trump is thinking about signing the steel tariff bill next week in Pennsylvania steel country. But before he could do that, Goldman’s Gary Cohn is desperately trying to change his mind. Bloomberg is reporting that it his efforts fail, he will resign.
SCOOP: Gary Cohn has orchestrated a meeting on Thursday between Trump and executives from American aluminum and steel end users who would be hurt by the tariffs, sources tell me and @margarettalev.
It’s part of a last-ditch effort inside admin to stop or blunt the tariffs.
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) March 6, 2018
“Colleagues and friends who have spoken to [Gary Cohn] believe he could resign at any moment. Mr. Cohn and other aides felt blindsided when word spread Wednesday that the tariffs were imminent, White House aides said.” (via @wsj) https://t.co/OKhpKGaTLN
— Steve Kopack (@SteveKopack) March 3, 2018
Frankly, people have been crying wolf about Cohn resigning since day 1. But you and I both know Cohn isn’t long for the Trump White House.
Here’s Goldman’s take on the proposed tariffs.
“Import tariffs make the U.S. less competitive by raising the prices of raw materials,” the New York-based bank said in a report received on Tuesday. It added: “By imposing across-the-board tariffs to all steel and aluminum imports, the larger economic impact is on Canada, Mexico and the EU, and it ironically eases the economic impact to China and Russia.”
Goldman said the U.S. action — which invokes Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act — would risk adding to inflationary pressures just as the Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates. “The tariffs reinforce the reflationary pressure already under way globally.”
“Net consumers of steel and aluminum in the U.S. now face cost disadvantages relative to their international competitors, especially at a time when the labor market is tight and wage inflation is picking up,” the bank concluded. “This is the irony of Section 232: a tariff intended to support U.S. industry may end up boosting margins and investment for a small subset of producers while leaving the broader economy at a disadvantage.”
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers calls Trump’s plan “probably the most irrational economic policy that any President has ever introduced in the last half century.” Really? See when people read shit like that, it automatically sounds like horseshit.
Trump's tariff plan "is probably the most irrational economic policy that any President has ever introduced in the last half century," former U.S. Treasury Secretary @LHSummers tells me, calling it "really crazy, dumb protectionism."
https://t.co/C2z9qgdXw2— Christiane Amanpour (@camanpour) March 5, 2018
With regards to Canada and Mexico, the President is said to be flexible on providing them exemption, only if they’d be willing to renegotiate NAFTA.
From a media watchdog perspective, they’ve unhinged and are losing their shit over these meaningless taxes on items that can easily be produced here. Relax, the sun also rises.
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Anything that gets the vampire squid junta out of WH is good for the country.
“junta”?
I’m surprised at your restraint in not mentioning Gary Cohn’s ethnic background. Try and make it a trend.
Yeah, I mean after all – he probably belongs to the Elders of Zion.
Imagine Larry, that the $4 trillion pissed away on our earning ourselves new enemies over the last 15 years was instead put into infrastructure and education.
It never goes to infrastructure and education
Good. Please make this happen ASAP!
GTFO GARY GTFO RN!!! >(
Tell me again why the American People WANT a GS exec in such a high position?
Is his resignations a threat or a deal sweetener? Imagine the public poll results:
“Do you favor keeping the tariffs or keeping Gary Cohn?” or
“Would you rather get rid of Gary Cohn or the tariffs?”
In a side note, Investors’ Business Daily just wrote this sentence:
“Netflix (NFLX) stock has been on a tear lately, forcing Wall Street analysts to adjust their models.”
https://www.investors.com/news/technology/click/netflix-gets-price-target-hike-as-stock-hits-record-highs/?src=A00220&yptr=yahoo
That is actually very honest: Wall Street Price targets are based more on technical charts than any fundamental analysis of a company’s business model.
Oh, wait, there is breaking news: NFLX will be bought out. This time, it is different from the dozens of past buyout rumors like in 2012:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/1088431-bullish-on-icahn-getting-long-a-netflix-buyout-with-a-risk-reversal
As for the buyout rumors, while retail investors aren’t fond of Financial Statements, corporate accountants are. The profits are only there in the accounting world, which is why Netflix had a ***negative tax rate*** in 2017: they lost money.
Netflix **still** has negative Op. Cash Flow 15 years after its IPO (AMZN, another high PE stock has had positive cash flow during that same period). Of course, Netflix justify’s their cash bleed by argueing it is solely a result of Netflix’s spending more on Produced content instead of Licensed content. However, even if you discount the content that is still in prodcution, Netflix’s costs are still rising faster than their subscriber base. The problem is two fold:
1) that their new customers don’t like the same shows as their old customers.
2) Netflix subscribers binge watch at an escalating rate, so they need much more content to keep them happy
Imagine if you were a company that had 100 subscribers (2015) and 100 shows (and 4 in production) to make those viewers happy. Now imagine that you increased to 157 subscribers, but you needed **192** shows (and 21 more in production) to make them happy (2017). If 100 viewers watched 100 shows, why do the additional 57 require an additional 92 more shows? That’s moving the needle in the wrong direction. Welcome to Netflix.
I’m also fond of Finacial Statements, so here’s the proof that cost per subscriber is rising instead of falling.
2015
74,762k streaming subscribers
$6,827M licensed content,
$85.70 licensed content per subsctiber
+$62.5M produced content, released (available for viewing)
$86.52 licensed + released production content/sub
+$303M produced content, in production/development
$90.81 in total content/sub
2016
93,796k subs
$9,595M licensed
$98.00 /sub
+$335M produced, released
$101.58 /sub
+$1,044M produced, unreleased
$113.3 /sub
2017
117,582k subs
$11,771M licensed
$97.32 /sub (finally plateauing)
+$1,427M produced, released
$109.45 /sub (still rising – very bad news)
+$1,469M produced, unreleased
$122.74 /sub (also way up, but this number is less important)
Of course, this doesn’t even factor in the escalating marketing costs, again rising faster than subs.
Today, Netflix volume is absolutely out of this world on no news Combined with the high PE and the 60% rise *in just over two months**, this is indicative of a blow-off top, no different than other bubbles.
Disclosure: I was short NFLX at $314, and will be shorting further at the end of the day.
Last post (thanks for the platform Fly!)
Apple won’t buy NFLX. They are rapidly building their own content team, hiring Execs from Sony, the BBC, and Amazon in the last 6 months.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_distributed_by_Apple#History
Will Gartman condemn the shorts or get his day in the sun.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-06/gartman-we-shall-sell-sp-short-morning
The EU just renewed its tariff on steel piping from China (72%) – https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-06/europe-renews-tariffs-chinese-steel-pipes-high-72
I’m not an American, but watching you cuck yourselves arguing against your own country and president for the benefit of greedy thankless foreigners is truly pathetic.
“I’m not an American…”
Well then shut up, mind your own business and go make some more Frenched fries for your new terrorist friends.