As I am (sadly) WIDE AWAKE this morning in Spain, I will launch a preliminary “concept of an attempt” towards discussions, post election, of vital macro-economic national policymaking under the oncoming regime.
The GOP will now control the White House, both Houses of Congress, and likely will face no significant barriers to policysetting from SCOTUS. What (relevant to macro-economic investment) will mostly unencumbered GOP majorities do?
Trump and those near him (Elon Musk played his hand brilliantly) will find little opposition from a mostly political dependent or cowed Congress.
Taxation:
Tariffs (but on what goods at what rates how soon?) will somewhat replace income taxes.
Capital gains will likely be taxed lower.
State and local taxation will NOT be exempt from Federal income tax.
Income taxes will likely be cut towards a “flat tax” system
Industrial Policy
The “Rust Belt” (for which read a now Red ex-“Blue Wall” plus adjacent Midwest and Vanceland coal lands) might be rewarded for going red with a “bringing jobs home to the USA” agenda.
“Green” initiatives will lose support, but how much where how fast?
Research, DoD modernization, Schools
Damn if I know.
Will Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare retain their status as untouchable “third rails” or will they be significantly altered? How?
Relations with NATO allies, MidEast, Russia, China etc.,
Ukraine is forced to settle with Russia, re-opening Russian gas and world trade to world markets as USA drops its economic measures against Russia
Mideast gets some sort of major reset, with Iran probably on the short end of a short stinky stick, but the oil will flow, Houthis and other Iran proxies and quasi allies be damned.
China policy looks to be a giant question mark, as Trump and the GOP seem internally conflicted in positions, and Japan, Korea, Phillipines, Australia policy alliance against China’s seven dash line aggressions have a lot of juice and signed ink already. Or am I missing something?
Europe and EU will have tough decisions to make in the midst of their own right-populist vs progressive democratic struggle. Poland with its potent population structure, location between East and West, ongoing modernized industrial structure, becomes ever more important.
What am I missing from this agenda for discussion?
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Been up all night as well. I was shocked the mail in ballots were counted.
You are taking all of it on face value. We simply do not know what will happen.
Success can be failure.
A flat tax would hurt the rich.
Lower capital gains. Higher tariffs but he has room to ignore all campaign promises because his rank and file do not care to hold him accountable ever. They see his remarks as cool negotiations. Fun is. At best he actually does nothing. At worst he creates a living hell.
Oh, I slept well last night (a nice meal and a sherry chaser), forcing myself to bed despite my enjoyment of the happy talk of the talking heads, having learned a horrible lesson eight years ago when I was too exhausted to act on the election results in the morning, but had multiple tough decisions to make.
Husband and I have been in consolidating mode as I age, selling off real estate, and we have had this house on Mallorca on the market with price giving us a big gain. We just took it off the market, as it now might have to replace Mexico as our main non-USA home, and Mallorcan RE continues to climb as international super rich yacht people swarm all over around here. The super-rich love the Med, but more and more want to stay away from anything east of Crete and south of Sicily (Morocco still excepted).
A most telling election statistic. Supposedly a democratic nation is governed by the people for the people. Has government voted in line with "We The People?
capping an improbable comeback for the resilient Republican whose first term ended with his supporters attacking the U.S. Capitol — and who then faced a litany of criminal charges and two assassination attempts on his way back to the White House.
I do! We both love it! And we both have ongoing work (mine diminishing, but ongoing, he is still working over 40 hours a week) in Mexico and will become dual citizens of USA Mexico early next year.
We also have ongoing projects in Spain and Europe, continuing commitments and connections reaching back over 25 years. He is being scheduled to sing in concerts and workshops in Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands next year. We go back and forth, and our town of Soller on island of Mallorca’s best seasons fall exactly when our town of San Miguel de Allende in the Bajio of Mexico has its worst — Spring and late Fall.
While trying desperately to make lemonade from dog poop, I can see one bright side…there are no more excuses for the GOP. Let’s see them accomplish what they have longed claimed they could do:
Limit migration while providing farmers, restaurants, and home builders enough workers to stay in business. Ideology aside, someone still has to pick the produce.
Reduce the national debt/deficit without raising taxes in an America rapidly growing older, fatter, and more drug dependent (from insulin to Glp-1 to fentanyl).
Yes! After decades of full or semi gridlock preventing anything but the feeblest compromises from being accomplished the GOP now has an extraordinary opportunity to actually achieve urgent procedural reforms and do stuff in good order…. and of course I wish it were the other side that had that opportunity.
I have no use for either side and truly believe the vast majority of what passes for political dialog is merely mis direction. (Never mind the man behind the curtain)
But I did watch the returns last night NBC mostly. It went a lot like this.
For those who missed the speech at 3am, est: TFG will take personal control of a program to increase production and consumption of oil. My COP and CVX are responding favorably this morning.
On the state front, “anti-wokies” were elected to the state School Board. LRN, which has been performing briskly of late, is also responding favorably this morning.
But why is TSLA up, in a pro-fossil fuel environment? One of the “promises” has been to end the “EV mandate”.
It is an opportunity and also a great danger. The Founding Fathers were wise to include checks and balances in the Constitution.
Venezuela started to really go downhill when Congress gave CAP extraordinary powers. I kind of liked CAP, somewhat reminiscent of Trump, but his well intentioned policies backfired because he didn’t prepare the country for the initial downside of privatising and eliminating price controls. Popular unrest turned into an attempted coup by Hugo Chavez and the removal of CAP with trumped up charges. From then on it was free-fall.
It’s probably a belief that the “EV mandate” helps their competitors more than Tesla. Plus, Musk now has perhaps the strongest relationship with the new President of any business leader in the country. Which raises the possibility that we may get a proposal that ends the “EV mandate” except for Tesla.
What policies will follow will largely depend on the people he will select to run the show. He had previously [2016] chosen people who were opposing and sabotaging his policies. He lacked the authority and/or will to rein them in.
Did the president-elect learn from that error?
If not, it will be business as usual with increased tariffs rising cost of imported goods. Perhaps a return to increased inflation.
Hopefully stock returns will be similar to his first presidency. https://www.slickcharts.com/sp500/returns
As shown with my washing machine example, expect the tariff stoked increase in the price of imported goods to be met with equal increase in the price of domestically produced alternatives. Resulting in eye-popping inflation, but also offset, with tax cuts for the “JCs”.
The “news” was going around a watch party last night, and I heard one young guy offer “reduced taxes for the rich, so there will be more jobs”, in spite of the fact the “JCs” can’t fill job openings now.
But who will win the contract for the camps to hold the millions of “illegals”?
