Trade War May Make The Economy As Vulnerable As In The 1970s As Cold War 2.0 Begins: Carlson Capital

The trade war between China and the U.S. has been dominating headlines for months, and it won’t go away any time soon. U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to meet at the G20 summit this month, but it’s unlikely any agreement can be reached in a single sit-down.

Q3 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc

Of course hedge fund managers have been keeping a close watch over the trade war and its effects on both countries’ economies and financial markets, and many of them wrote about the issue in their recent letters to investors. ValueWalk has been able to review a number of these hedge fund letters.

U.S. engages China in Cold War 2.0

For example, in his third-quarter letter for Seth Klarman backed JHL Capital, CEO James Litinsky describes the trade dispute between the U.S. and China as “Cold War 2.0.” He also draws a comparison between it and the original Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which went on for decades before finally coming to a sort of unofficial end in the early 1990s. A few sources refer to the tensions between the West and Russia after the 2014-15 conflict in Ukraine as “Cold War II,” so it’s important not to confuse Litinsky’s use of a similar term with those other casual uses of the phrase.

He doesn’t expect the G20 sit-down between Trump and Xi to result in anything more than “some positive headlines and warm photo ops.” He also feels that those who are expecting to see progress are “missing the much bigger picture.”

Litinsky sees China as “an economic superpower on the verge of matching American hegemonic status.”