• US stocks were poised for more gains heading into a new trading week after a series of wild swings last week as investors navigated the latest twists and turns in President Donald Trump’s trade war. Late Friday, his administration unveiled tariff exemptions, but he warned they are temporary.

Stock futures pointed higher Sunday night, signaling more gains after markets endured a series of wild swings last week as President Donald Trump’s tariff regime has been a moving target.

Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 124 points, or 0.31%, while S&P 500 futures were up 0.58%, and Nasdaq futures jumped 0.85%.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury was little changed at 4.497%, and the US Dollar Index ticked 0.24% lower, though the greenback gained 0.14% against the euro.

US crude oil prices dipped 0.26% to $61.34 a barrel, and Brent crude fell 0.29% to $64.57 as fears of a tariff-induced global recession weighed on energy demand forecasts.

Early last week, stocks tumbled as markets continued to reel from Trump’s aggressive “Liberation Day” tariffs, then they soared when he announced a 90-day hold for most of them. But stocks sank later as China retaliated but rallied on Friday.

Then in a notice published late Friday night, US Customs and Border Protection issued new guidance on his so-called reciprocal tariffs, carving out exemptions for smartphones, chips, as well as other top consumer electronics and tech components.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives called the exemptions the “best possible news for tech investors,” allowing Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft and tech giants to breathe a sigh of relief.  

But on Sunday, Trump and administration officials warned the reprieve is only temporary as new duties will hit tech imports, though presumably the rates won’t be as high as the 145% level China faces.

While Trump can give stocks a boost, bond and currency markets may not be so easily impressed as they rapidly de-dollarize.

That’s as US assets that were traditionally viewed as safe havens are losing that status amid a shift away from the dollar, with former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers warning that US bonds are trading like those of an emerging market nation.

“The market is rapidly de-dollarizing,” George Saravelos, global head of FX research at Deutsche Bank, said in a note this past week, adding that “the market has lost faith in US assets, so that instead of closing the asset-liability mismatch by hoarding dollar liquidity it is actively selling down the US assets themselves.” 

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Energy prices are set to be lower under the current US administration than in the prior one, according to US Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

“Under President Trump’s leadership in the next four years we’ll almost certainly see lower average energy prices than we saw in the last four years of the previous administration,” Wright said at a briefing with reporters in Riyadh. He declined to comment on specific price targets.

The US under Biden frequently clashed with Saudi Arabia over energy policy after the US felt its entreaties to boost production and lower prices to deal with inflation were ignored. Crude averaged about $83 a barrel between 2017 and 2021, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“I can’t comment about where oil prices are today or where they’re going, but if you reduce barriers to investment, reduce barriers to build infrastructure, you can lower the supply costs of energy,” Wright said.

Oil prices have been in decline recently after Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries pledged to boost output and Trump shook markets with broad tariffs. Crude fell to less than $65 a barrel, its lowest level since the coronavirus pandemic and well below the level at which Saudi Arabia balances its budget. That could threaten the kingdom’s ability to continue funding its vast economic transformation plans, according to Goldman Sachs.

Still, the US and Saudi Arabia are eye-to-eye on energy markets, Wright said. “President Trump — and I think the Kingdom — want to see increased demand for energy around the globe and we want to see increased supply.”

The US and Saudi Arabia are also working on a preliminary agreement to cooperate on civilian nuclear power production and expect to make progress on that this year, Wright said. The two countries are on a ‘pathway’ to an accord that would involve non-proliferation and control of nuclear technologies, he said. 

The kingdom would need to sign a so-called 123 agreement, which covers areas including nuclear proliferation issues and technology transfer, Wright said. The US also views it as “critical” that Saudi Arabia does not seek to partner with China on the development of its nuclear program. 

“That view is shared across the two nations and the fact that that may have been in doubt is probably indicative of unproductive relationships between the United States and Saudi Arabia over the last several years,” he said.

Saudi Arabia has previously sought bids from foreign developers including Russian and Chinese companies, along with French and South Korean ones, to build nuclear power reactors.

Under the Biden administration, US cooperation on Saudi Arabia’s nuclear power program had been mooted as part of a broader deal that would also see the two countries sign a defence pact and deepen trade relations. That would have also involved Saudi Arabia agreeing to normalize relations with Israel. However, it was derailed after the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and Israel’s military response.

Wright was in Riyadh as part of a tour of several Middle East countries and which had included meetings with Saudi Minister of Energy Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman.

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• President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff campaign is creating doubts about the attractiveness and safety of US assets. But there are still some who believe the US will produce the best returns, despite an epic selloff and signs of a shifting world order. That’s due in part to America’s dominance in critical technologies.

The idea of “American exceptionalism” in the global economy and financial markets has rapidly lost favor this year as President Donald Trump embarks on an aggressive tariff campaign that is creating doubts about US assets.

Stocks have suffered an epic meltdown and only partially recouped their losses. The dollar and Treasury bonds are losing their safe haven status. The economy may slip into a recession, soaring debt may start to overwhelm the “exorbitant privilege” the US enjoys, and the world was already having trust issues with America.

In contrast, markets in China and Europe have been relative outperformers this year after years of lagging behind the US.

But there are still some market veterans who believe the US is the place to be, due in part to America’s dominance in critical innovations.

‘Tech Trumps Tariffs’

Nouriel Roubini, an economist and CEO of the consultancy Roubini Macro Associates, believes “tech trumps tariffs” in the short run and the medium term.

The US boasts leadership in key technologies and industries, so it doesn’t matter who the president is, he wrote in a post on X on Thursday. Meanwhile, China comes in a “close second,” and Europe is out of the picture completely.

Roubini estimates that tech innovations will increase US potential growth by 200 basis points from 2% to 4% by 2030, while tariffs would drag down growth by 50 basis points, even assuming a permanent average rate of 15% after negotiations.

“So Tech Trumps Tariffs even if Mickey Mouse or a clown were to run the US! It doesn’t matter and American exceptionalism will remain and be resilient regardless of Trump given the hyper dynamism and innovations of the US private sector,” he added.

A critical part of Roubini’s thesis is that the nature of innovation itself is shifting from producing an “initial growth spurt that fizzles out over time” to exponential growth that accelerates and gives first-movers enduring advantages versus followers.

He pointed to DeepSeek’s AI model that shocked Silicon Valley earlier this year, saying it’s not a revolution but an evolution that owes its existence to US companies like OpenAI and their years of massive investments.

“MAG-7, hyperscalers and tech firms (in Nasdaq) could not care less about tariffs,” he added. “They gotta continue and increase massive Ai capex to avoid becoming obsolete relative to each other.”

‘Stay Home’

Meanwhile, Ed Yardeni has said that if Trump’s tariffs cause a recession, the US will suffer less than international markets and economies would.

“While some allocation to key international markets might be warranted over a long-term time horizon, we are sticking with our Stay Home investment bias,” he wrote in a note early Wednesday.

That came before Trump put a 90-day pause on his “reciprocal tariffs” on Wednesday afternoon and Friday night’s exemptions on tech imports. But Trump also warned Sunday that tariffs will eventually hit the “whole electronic supply chain.”

Still, the US enjoys full employment, is a net energy exporter, and has a flexible services-driven economy, with productivity growth that’s strong enough to outweigh pressures from supply-chain realignment and less immigration, Yardeni explained.

On the other side, China’s export-driven growth strategy may not work without US demand, while Germany’s manufacturers are being crushed by China, he added.

‘The US has a lot positive going for it’

Then there’s Mark Delaney, chief investment officer at AustralianSuper, which manages $223 billion of assets.

He told the Financial Times on Tuesday that the US is still the most attractive region for long-term investments, even as he acknowledged that Trump’s tariffs were a “significant volatility event.”

In fact, he hasn’t reduced his fund’s US exposure in recent weeks, and it remains more than half of AustralianSuper’s international holdings.

“The US has a lot positive going for it—strong economic performance (though it’s given a bit back), strong productivity growth, strong profit growth and, by any measure, many of the best companies in the world—all that makes it an attractive place to store capital,” Delaney told the FT. 

Even though global trade flows could be upended by tariffs, the companies he’s investing in will likely be affected less.

That’s because tariffs are targeting goods instead of services—for now—though any escalation in the trade war may eventually hit those too.

“Look at any investor’s major holdings,” Delaney said. “There aren’t that many goods, it’s mostly services, that’s the way the global economy has evolved.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com