Trump’s delay on car tariffs
There was good news today for car manufacturers as Trump has decided to delay his decision on car tariffs for up to 6 months.
Share prices went up accordingly, but this cloud is going to continue to hang over them until there is some more clarity.
This is probably a good move on Trump’s part because stirring this whole thing up with Japan, Germany and South Korea will create pandemonium and just over-complicate his dealings with China.
I would have thought that it would be in the interests of all those makers to delay the whole tariff thing for as long as possible given the proximity of the presidential election next year.
Giving China a hard time is one thing, but surely voters won’t be too supportive of Trump treating America’s allies too harshly. Mind you, with Trump in the driving seat, who knows?!?
Tencent’s results
The other thing I wanted to highlight today was Tencent’s results, which showed signs that the company was getting back on track after being consigned to the naughty step by the Chinese government’s clampdown on gaming.
Tencent is the gaming and internet giant that owns Fortnite developer Epic Games, among many other things, and it managed to get through this lean period in its gaming division via the strong performance from its cloud and fintech businesses.
I think that a relaxing of the regulatory bottleneck plus the advent of a new “Netflix for games” streaming service will power this company up to new heights in the not-too-distant future, all things being equal.
