President Trump's escalate-to-de-escalate strategy has been of drawing the rest of the world back into alignment with the U.S., using the U.S. consumer as leverage.
His Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, spent the past few days making the case to the world that the U.S. has been and will remain the best place for global capital.
He reminded the world that "we have the world’s reserve currency, the deepest and most liquid markets, and the strongest property rights," and for those reasons, the United States is "the premier destination for international capital."
And to further drive home the appeal for global investors and governments, Mr.Bessent says the President Trump administration's Strategic goal is simply more: "more jobs, more homes, more growth, more factories, more critical manufacturing plants, more semiconductors, more energy, more opportunity, more defense, more economic security, more innovation."
Now, as we've discussed, and part of the sales pitch, the second level of the “escalate-to-de-escalate” strategy is about isolating China.
And with that, over the past couple of weeks, the administration has been making significant public efforts to reduce China's supply chain negotiating leverage over the United States and the rest of the world.
"VP"JD Vance was in India two weeks ago, hosted by Modi, and he made a speech on U.S. and India's shared economic interests.
It was strategic -- a signal to the world that India is positioned to fill the supply chain gap for certain critical low-cost manufacturing, minerals, pharmaceuticals, etc., as a "fair" trading "friend." And This was clearly intended to contrast with China.
JD ended his speech by saying "the future of the 21st century is going to be determined by the strength of the United States-India partnership; if we fail to work together successfully, the 21st century could be a very dark time for all of humanity."
It has since been said by Mr.Trump advisor Mr.Peter Navarro, that India will be the first Trade deal. And Precisely may come by the end of the week.
President Trump said that he will make a "very, very big announcement" before his Middle East trip on Monday. He calls it "one of the most important announcements in many years."
Remember, we talked a few weeks ago about the potential for "a grand coordinated deal, all at once (and probably over a weekend)?"
There's probably a reason, almost a month since "Liberation Day," that no trade deals have been done.
Based on what's been guided by key Mr.Trump advisors: Tariffs get slashed, in exchange for countries opening up their markets (take down their trade barriers), boosting their defense spending, committing to buy more from the U.S., invest in American manufacturing, and buy our Treasuries -- and a very critical piece: isolate China.
How do they potentially deal with China?
The day after Mr.Vance's speech in India, Mr.Scott Bessent called out the IMF and World Bank in a prepared speech, for the failure of these Bretton Woods institutions to stick to their mission. Instead of upholding global stability, they allowed China to (my liberal paraphrasing) corner the world's exports market through decades of currency manipulation, and in the process become the world's loan shark.
In short,Mr.Bessent called on the IMF and World Bank to return to their mission (do their jobs). That would mean policing China. Curbing it's manipulative economic practices, which would result in reducing China's global economic advantage and reducing their geopolitical influence.
And remember, it was two years ago in Nvidia's May earnings call that "C.E.O" Mr. Jensen Huang shocked the world, declaring "the beginning of a major technology era." He told us there was a "rebirth of the computer industry" underway, where "AI has reinvented computing from the ground up." And he told us there was a "retooling" going on across the economy, the beginning of a 10-year transition of the world's $1 trillion data center, to accelerated computing.
He had the numbers to back it up. They grew revenues by 19% that quarter, from just the prior quarter (!), with the outlook to grow over the next quarter by 52% (shockingly huge). As you can see in the chart, this was the beginning of Nvidia transforming itself into an AI company (growing data center business from 60% of the entire Nvidia business, to now nearly the entire Nvidia business).
With that said, as we've discussed here in my daily notes, while the AI infrastructure boom in demand continues, the Nvidia growth rate is constrained by supply. Meanwhile, there is another company that is beginning to put up Nvidia like growth numbers, after finding a transformational AI strategy within its existing business. It's Palantir.
Growing U.S. commercial revenue by 19% from the prior quarter, and guiding around 70% year-over-year growth for 2025. That's a doubling of the growth rate for this time last year -- so growth is accelerating. Palantir's new commercial business called the Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) has only been in existence two years, and is just now taking hold, as (mainly U.S.) companies are scrambling to figure out how to integrate generative AI into their businesses.
And Palantir has become the dominant player in solving that problem - putting enterprise customers through a short boot camp, which results in a product, and they're into production within weeks. And that translates into multi-million dollar contracts for Palantir. For this stage of the technology revolution (deploying genAI competently for all enterprises), it's very early.
Kindly,Subscribe with your Valid Email Address and receive Relevant Notifications to your active Device with Professionalism.
Thankyou for the Scheduled Quality Ample Time.