Charts suggest market could weather Trump tariff increases, Jim Cramer says

• CNBC's Jim Cramer said charts suggest that fears about President-elect Donald Trump's intentions to implement major tariffs on imports won't affect the market yet.
• Cramer examined analysis by Jessica Inskip, director of investor research at StockBrokers.com.
• He also said the charts show that the impact of any actual tariffs will be lessened if the market remains bullish.

CNBC's Jim Cramer on Tuesday said the charts suggest that fears about President-elect Donald Trump's intentions to implement major tariffs on imports won't affect the market just yet, and the impact of any actual tariffs will be lessened if the market remains bullish.

Cramer examined analysis by Jessica Inskip, director of investor research at StockBrokers.com.

"The charts ... suggest that tariffs had little impact on the market until they actually materialized during Trump's first term — all the saber-rattling beforehand didn't do much damage," he said. "Even when the tariffs actually hit and the market sold off, we eventually erased those losses the moment that the Fed stopped raising interest rates. ... I think she's got a real good point."

To explain Inskip's analysis, Cramer reviewed charts of the S&P 500's performance, including one from mid-2017 to 2020, reviewing how the index behaved during Trump's previous term when he raised tariffs on a variety of goods including steel, aluminum and solar panels. The lead-up to the tariffs didn't have a huge impact on stocks, he suggested. But the broader market reacted when Trump actually imposed them, balking at the idea that he had ignited a global trade war, Cramer added.

However, when the Federal Reserve stopped hiking up rates, stocks saw a swift rebound, he said. Cramer honed in on Inskip's conclusion that action from the Fed helped the indexes weather the reaction to the tariffs, noting that the index entered a bullish cycle when the Fed stopped tightening that continued until the pandemic.

Although the tariffs Trump touted on the campaign trail are more aggressive than the ones he put in place during his first term, Cramer said Inskip's analysis is still useful to discern where the market could be headed.

"As Inskip sees it, something like a trade war can certainly hurt us badly when the market's already trending bearishly," he said. "But if we've got a bullish trading cycle like we do right now, then she's not worried as long as we can maintain that cycle."

For the complete analysis, watch Cramer's full explanation below.

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