Wall Street Grapples With New Risk: A European Buyers’ Strike
Howard Lutnick during a Bloomberg Television interview during the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Photographer: Chris J. Ratcliffe/BloombergUS Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told the elites gathered in Davos that the Trump administration believes globalization is “a failed policy” that left America behind. A day later, his boss, President Donald Trump, predicted the US stock market would double from records he openly took credit for.
There’s a stark tension lurking between the lines spoken by the two American billionaires: Foreign investors have had an insatiable appetite for US stocks over recent years, playing a huge role in driving benchmark indexes to the records Trump likes to boast about. Europeans, in particular, have been voracious buyers.