What if the US makes its universal tariff baseline permanent?
A permanent above-10% universal baseline reprices every import contract, so this is a broad stagflation impulse - higher goods CPI plus a growth drag - hitting margins market-wide, with the China-centric cascade understating the breadth. Rhymes with the April 2025 Liberation Day repricing that knocked ~10% off the S&P in days before the pause. As a universal measure it hits all partners (EU, Mexico, Vietnam, China) at once; the forward angle is that permanence removes the negotiation optionality that rescued the 2025 selloff.
how we built this number — every step
The class rate is measured from our dated, sourced event library (decade-normalized Poisson — the full table is public at base_rates.json). The variant’s share within its class is the analyst’s editorial call, published so you can audit it. A wider range means thinner precedent. Full recipe: methodology · scored at Reality Check.
The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (gold) over time vs the crowd's (Polymarket, blue), from the past toward the 6–18 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. The gold path is an illustrative reconstruction anchored to today's estimate — real dated events, not a live re-estimate history.
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. Congress makes the Section 122 surcharge permanent and lifts the universal baseline above 10%, repricing every supplier contract. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Growth surprise ▼ · Inflation surprise ▲ · Trade tension ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.
If it happens — the markets it would move
Biggest moves first. Projected moves are cascade-model priors; hist A–B% = what comparable past events actually did (measured abnormal returns), and model prior · unmeasured marks markets with no analogue backing yet. Tap any market for its price history.
| Market | Class | Projected move | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nasdaq 100 NDXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -3.3% hist -2.23–-1.04% · other way -0.56% (n=12) |
| 2 | Semiconductors SMHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.9% hist -1.8–-0.16% · other way +1.1% (n=12) |
| 3 | Nvidia NVDAon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.5% hist -1.42–-0.83% · other way +2.18% (n=12) |
| 4 | TSMC TSMon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.4% hist -1.62–-0.69% · other way +2.02% (n=12) |
| 5 | Tech sector XLK 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.4% hist -1.5–-0.55% · other way -0.47% (n=12) |
| 6 | Alibaba BABAon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.9% hist -3.13–+0.05% · other way -1.25% (n=12) |
| 7 | AMD AMDon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.0% hist -1.63–-0.37% · other way -1.86% (n=12) |
| 8 | Broadcom AVGOon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.0% hist -1.79–+2.22% · other way -1.79% (n=12) |
| 9 | Micron MUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.0% hist -1.54–+0.71% · other way +4.47% (n=12) |
| 10 | Marvell MRVLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.0% hist -1.22–+0.05% · other way +1.54% (n=12) |
| 11 | ASML ASMLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.8% hist -2.58–+0.07% · other way -2.98% (n=12) |
| 12 | Chinese yuan CNY 📈 chart | FX | ▼ -1.4% hist -1.46–-0.17% · other way -0.7% (n=12) |
| 13 | Qualcomm QCOMon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.3% hist -3.66–+0.54% · other way -1.53% (n=12) |
| 14 | MicroStrategy MSTRon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.4% hist -1.86–+1.96% · other way +31.9% (n=12) |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade short on ARM: only 4 analogues, all clustered in the 2025 tariff regime where the AI-capex bid lifted every chip name — thin sample, idiosyncratic driver, not a baseline-tariff signal.
Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did
Across 40 analogous events (overlap‑weighted), as abnormal returns — market beta stripped, so it's the event's own effect, not the market backdrop. Shown at 20 days (persistent) and 5 days (immediate); ↺ fades = the two horizons disagree. Confidence = consistency × sample × significance.
| Asset | History says | Abnormal (20d · 5d) | Hit | n | Confidence | vs cascade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CL CL | SHORT | -2.8% · 5d -1.5% | 77% | 31 | 0.41 | ✓ matches cascade |
| INTC INTC | SHORT | -2.1% · 5d -2.6% | 70% | 33 | 0.35 | ✓ matches cascade |
| BABA BABA | SHORT | -2.0% · 5d -2.5% | 68% | 30 | 0.32 | ✓ matches cascade |
| KWEB KWEB | SHORT | -3.2% · 5d -1.7% | 68% | 30 | 0.31 | ✓ matches cascade |
| CNY CNY | SHORT | -0.7% · 5d -0.3% | 62% | 31 | 0.22 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XCU XCU | SHORT | -0.5% · 5d -0.4% | 64% | 31 | 0.22 | ✓ matches cascade |
| 30y yield DGS30 | LONG | +9bp · 5d +5bp | 61% | 36 | 0.22 | ✓ matches cascade |
| AMD AMD | SHORT | -0.6% · 5d -0.2% | 63% | 33 | 0.19 | ✓ matches cascade |
| QCOM QCOM | SHORT | -2.7% · 5d -2.1% | 64% | 31 | 0.19 | ✓ matches cascade |
| AUD AUD | SHORT | -0.6% · 5d -0.2% | 62% | 31 | 0.19 | ✓ matches cascade |
| INR INR | SHORT | -0.4% · 5d +0.2% ↺ fades | 62% | 31 | 0.19 | ✓ matches cascade |
| ARM ARM | SHORT | -4.0% · 5d -6.6% | 64% | 23 | 0.19 | ✓ matches cascade |
| ETH ETH | SHORT | -1.9% · 5d -5.0% | 63% | 28 | 0.18 | ✓ matches cascade |
| AVGO AVGO | LONG | +3.0% · 5d -0.6% ↺ fades | 59% | 31 | 0.17 | ⚠ differs |
Why this probability
Congressional permanence of baseline rare; courts/legislature slow; surcharge politically contested even in 18mo. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.