Another view on what’s priced in for Trump tariffs

Earlier today, I highlighted a Goldman Sachs note suggesting that market participants were expecting a 9% reciprocal tariff rate.

Now, Deutsche Bank is out with a survey of its own list of 400 investors and they estimate 50% tariffs on China and a tariff of slightly below 10% on everyone else.

However they also try to price out the market via breakevens, which they correlate to a 5% universal tariff, or a 10% universal tariff that exempts Canada and Mexico. Via they dollar, they struggle to find any tariff pricing.

What will make the tariff announcements tough to trade on is the second-order effects. Will there be retaliation? Will other countries tee up fiscal stimulus? Will the tariffs allow the US to pass a tax cut? Does China devalue?

“We
would caution against extrapolating a large follow-through beyond the day of
the announcement given all these moving parts. Ultimately, the tariff impact on
markets will boil down to the aggregate level of harm done to the US (via equities) and to the relative harm it does to the US
versus the rest of the world (via FX).”

The conclusions from Deutsche Bank is that it’s very difficult to establish what’s priced in.

“So
what is the market pricing on tariffs? It is very hard to tell,” DB writes.