Uncertainty surrounding upcoming U.S. tariffs has weighed on global markets over the last month — but President Donald Trump’s highly-anticipated Wednesday announcement may not end the turmoil, analysts say.
Trump is expected to flesh out many unknowns in an address on Wednesday at 4 p.m. ET (9 p.m. BST), including exactly which countries and sectors will be impacted, when the measures will come into effect, how high they will be or how they will be calculated, and whether there will be any or many notable exemptions.
Investors have been attempting to parse rhetoric from reality in the run-up to the presidential address. Global stocks suffered their worst month for a year and a half in March, according to the MSCI World Index. Europe’s Stoxx 600 dropped 4.18% while the U.S. S&P 500 tumbled 5.75%. Asia-Pacific stocks were slightly more resilient, though China’s CSI 300 dipped 0.07%.
Zoe Gillespie, chartered wealth manager at RBC Brewin Dolphin, said the Wednesday announcement is “unlikely” to contain full details — and would still leave a lack of clarity over the outlook.
“The danger is actually, what’s going to happen after the announcement, whether we’re going to see the European Union coming back with some retaliatory tariffs, and really the kind of the outlook from that,” she told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Wednesday.
“There could still be more uncertainty as this plays out, and [questions on] whether it becomes a bit like the inflation story, more entrenched in the longer term. And I think the danger is that we don’t have much clarity for a longer period of time, and the impact on growth, and if we start getting some negativity coming through then it could actually delay any real ‘this is the peak bottom’ signals.”
‘Carnage day’?
While Trump has branded April 2 “Liberation Day,” a better descriptor might be “Carnage Day,” Ozan Ozkural, founding managing partner at Tanto Capital Partners, told CNBC on Tuesday.
“This is just classic Trump shock and awe in trying to get counterparts to the negotiation table to try to get a better deal for United States,” he said.
“The way he is going about doing that, and the fact that there is a continuous news cycle which is sometimes contradictory, is what’s making it very difficult to price any asset right now.”
“If you take a look at the commodities markets, it’s crazy, because on the one hand you’re talking about secondary sanctions on Venezuela oil, potentially a Russia-Ukraine deal, which may bring Russian crude back into the market, which is a completely different game, and now potential secondary sanctions on Russian oils. It is very difficult to price anything at the moment, so we are taking it day by day and hour by hour, sometimes,” Ozkural said.
He added that he was nonetheless betting on the U.S. outperforming Europe in the long term, despite its rougher start for 2025 in markets. While Europe will benefit from tailwinds including regional commitments to rearmament and Germany’s huge new defense, infrastructure and climate fund, the continent will continue to suffer from its innovation gap, he argued.
RBC Brewin Dolphin’s Gillespie also said the wealth manager saw the U.S. eventually outperforming, even if it had trimmed its U.S. allocation recently.
“Because of the U.S.’s broad nature and the quality of companies, it’s quite difficult to look elsewhere, longer term, and avoid the U.S.,” she said, citing the impact from artificial intelligence.
But further uncertainties clouding the near- to medium-term outlook for investors include what impact tariffs will have on U.S. growth, inflation and the path for interest rates, Gillespie continued — which in the short term could spur investors to look at more domestically-focused companies avoiding global supply chains.
However, Arnaud Girod, head of economics and cross asset strategy at Kepler Cheuvreux, said Wednesday may mark “peak uncertainty” for markets.
He also noted that the U.S. had seen a huge pullback in the first quarter, logging one of the biggest outperformances in Europe on record.
“I’m hoping that there is a sense of moderation tonight, we’ll see. Maybe that’s too naive, after everything we saw from Trump,” he told CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe.”
“What’s for sure is that a lot of numbers have been shared by analysts, they have been modeling every kind of scenario. So I’m hoping tonight is the worst, is the peak of uncertainty, and from there there will be negotiations, discussions, and hopefully the impact will be slightly less than the worst case… and so hopefully that can help the U.S. markets recover.”
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