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*                       FIEND'S SUPERBEAR MARKET REPORT                     *

*                                 May 6, 2025                               *

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*                       e-mail: fiendbear@fiendbear.com                     *

*                    web address: http://www.fiendbear.com                  *

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Fiend Commentary

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Tariff Troubles: The Cost of Playing Tough

Cartoon of a cartoon of a person pushing a shopping cart with a panda bear

AI-generated content may be incorrect. 

 

For weeks, the market shrugged off tariff escalation like a mosquito bite — annoying, but not fatal. But now? That mosquito bite is infected, and it’s beginning to fester.

Store shelves are thinning, restocking costs are rising, and even big-box retailers are hinting at “price realignments.” Translation: **things are going to get more expensive.** At the same time, industrial metals — which surged earlier in the year — are pulling back, hinting at a slowdown in real demand.

This is the quiet part of the tariff cycle — when effects are **no longer theoretical.**

Companies hedged, stockpiled, and passed costs along. But those buffers are wearing thin. Layoffs are rising at the margins. Inventory bloating is becoming a theme on earnings calls. And behind all of it is a sense that **Washington underestimated the time bomb.**

You can slap 145% tariffs on foreign goods all day long, but eventually someone has to pay — and that someone is the consumer. Or business. Or both. What was sold as economic nationalism is starting to smell a lot like stagflation.

Meanwhile, China’s economy, despite state-run projections of resilience, is showing cracks. Their youth unemployment is up. Their manufacturing output is lopsided. And they’re not buying our bluff. They know U.S. consumers are not prepared for prolonged price surges.

The Fed? Still silent. But rate cuts keep drifting further into the future as the inflationary ghost won’t stay buried.


 

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