Equity Bear now obvious

Regular readers of my Substack are aware that I have been warning about the lethal combination of a credit bubble bursting coupled with Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act Mark 2.

Now it’s happening. Trump really meant it when he said he would protect US industry with tariffs, and we knew the answer last night when tariff rates were set out against almost every nation and even one that is not: Two Arctic islands, Svalbard and Jan Mayen were on his list. Some mistake there, surely, other than for US consumers of seal, walrus, and whale meat.

The last time this happened was in 1929—1930, and we know the outcome. The combination of the roaring ‘twenties bubble and the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 resulted in the Wall Street Crash, the subsequent bear market which wiped out about 90% of the Dow, and the depression which led to the failure of about 9,000 banks.

Can it happen again?