Finbarr Bermingham

Good morning, Joe.

Well, the response to the 100% threat, nothing so far.

I think that in the days since that, we've actually seen that both sides have softened their tone.

But it's interesting, what did the 100% tariff threat come in response to?

That was the big one from the Chinese.

That was when China intervened.

announced that it would tighten the curbs on the export of rare earth elements and magnets.

And this was really sweeping.

It would mean that anybody who wants to export those, any product that had a trace of a Chinese rare earth anywhere in the world would have to require a license from Beijing.

So that was huge.

And that's when Trump

then escalated with the 100%.

So it's broader and it has many tentacles, this version of the trade war.

It's very asymmetric, going from tariffs to products and so on.

They seem to be looking for an off-ramp.

Trump seems to want his meeting with Xi Jinping in South Korea at the APEC summit in a couple of weeks.

We don't really know where it's going, but we have seen these sort of patterns before.

We'll see.

I mean, he has done that before.

You know, the term taco, as you use, Trump always chickens out, although occasionally he has followed through.