Some more interesting (and likely more important) things happening right now, but still wanted to highlight a couple of the details of the US trade data. Seems pretty clear what is happening here 1/
A bit more refined analysis shows the same thing -- namely that US imports from Vietnam and China were inversely correlated in the last few months (as happened with the initial section 301 China tariffs) 2/
The consumer goods from Asia tariff front running was more subtle than the pharma front running -- it shows up as higher than usual imports from Asia overall in q1 (usually a seasonal low). April saw the first overall fall in imports from the most relevant set of countries 3/
And this graph speaks for itself -- the tariff front running in the EU data for March was crazy (way bigger than even the April fall in imports from China). Almost all Ireland too ... 4/4
