Will Bill Ackman's thought experiment about tariffs even roughly play out in real life?
24
Ṁ1923
Jul 9
5%
chance

Based on this tweet from Bill Ackman:

https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1910715542593249411

From Ackman:

"A thought experiment. Imagine if: Within the next 89 days, the US, Europe, and Japan agree to go zero/zero on tariffs and remove all trade barriers. Then Europe and Japan join the US in raising tariffs on China to 145%. Then the US, Europe and Japan as a united front negotiate with China to remove tariffs and trade barriers, and put in place strong structural protections for IP."


This seems to be the consensus "best case scenario" from a lot of the tariff supporters:

Resolves YES if the following three things happen in Trump's 90 day tariff-pause window:

1) The US, Europe, and Japan agree to going "zero/zero" on tariffs (or even any sort of tariff deal that leads to a great reduction of tariffs between the countries if not all the way to zero absolutely)

2) Europe and Japan join the US in raising tariffs on China. It doesn't have to be to 145% as Ackman says, but any sort of tariff increase from Europe and Japan on China would suffice. Even the threat of raising tariffs to a high rate by a certain date would also suffice, from both Europe and Japan.

3) The US, Europe, and Japan negotiate enter into credible, unified negotiations with China on their trade/IP/whatever practices.

Resolves NO if these things have not happened by July 9th, 2025.

I will NOT bet in this market, obviously, to remain objective.

I will be fairly generous with judging whether the three things have happened, as it's a very specific scenario. If, for example, two of the things have very clearly occurred, but there's debate as to whether the third one has, I would lean towards a YES resolution.

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Wow, didn't expect this to fall all the way to 1%... I feel like:

CRUDELY:

50% chance of 1

20% of 2 conditional on 1

20% of 3 conditional on 1 and 2

That gives 2%, which seems about right to me

opened a Ṁ500 NO at 6% order

1) is not that unlikely, 2) and 3) are pure cope

Was there any other recent market here where the answer was as clear-cut and quick?

Funny how much closer we were to zero tariffs between Europe, US and Japan just a few weeks ago

bought Ṁ20 NO

Some nice fan fiction from Billy