Amid the torrent of tariff headlines March 4, it was the Panama Canal one that got us to sit up.
It feels like an age ago that President Trump took China to task for what he said was its excessive influence over the key trade nexus. In the intervening six weeks or so, the topic rarely resurfaced—until Tuesday’s announcement that the Hong Kong-based owner of two key ports is selling a majority stake in those facilities for nearly $23 billion to a BlackRock-led consortium.
Business as usual, a company leader said—“purely commercial” and entirely the result of “a rapid, discrete but competitive process.”
You may not like the policy and/or the polemics of the president. But his process has repeatedly produced at least a portion of what he set out to achieve. Our latest Market Moves Strategy starts out by noting that, amid the cacophony, it’s worth acknowledging—and planning around—the decent probability that significant elements of the Trump agenda will become reality.
