There is an added risk premium for sure. The market is deciding how much needs to be baked in to long term growth. Trump has a 4 year term, he blinked on tariffs, and polls aren’t exactly supporting his actions. That suggests there is a limit to the chaos.
A lomger term consequence is building though. That’s the US status as a destination for talent. Trump is damaging universities and discouraging the best and brightest for coming to the US. That puts at risk everyone currently in the system along with anyone going in to the system the next 4 years. Through grad school, more than 10 years of graduates are affected that will move home once they are done, leave midway through a program, or never go to school here to begin with.
Lol…on Fox News Sunday the Ag Sec just blamed all the spending of Trump 1.0’s farmer bailout on DEI, GND, and other wastes (note: they are exploring another bailout due to tariffs).
Apparently, Lutnick is now walking back the latest set of exemptions. More uncertainty.
What has happened to the US?
Its like a bonfire of the incompetents and grifters.
Nobody is going to be investing money in the US with these people at the helm.
I think it’s pretty clear.
The US had a large number of voters who fit in at least one of the following categories:
- They dismissed criticism of Trump as left-wing hysteria
- They resented economic challenges of the prior few years
- They resented various mandates during the pandemic (even moderate Americans don’t like being told that they have to do something)
- They felt marginalized for a few decades by a government they perceived as serving “elites”
- They were tired of seeing their tax dollars spent on things perceived as not relevant to them
- They got most of their information from echo chambers dominated by Fox News, OANN, and Russian-promoted populist social media
- They were frustrated with the prior administration’s support of the war against Hamas
- Their misogyny prevented them from supporting a female candidate for President
- Their racism prevented them from supporting a Presidential candidate with darker skin
They elected Donald Effing Trump again, as well as a cadre of politicians who are either addicted to power that comes with being attached to him, or who are too scared to publicly oppose him.
On top of that, you had a think tank that has, for years, been planning on what they might pull off if given the opportunity…and they were able to network appropriately to put their plan mostly into motion when that opportunity arose.
And thus we’re stuck in this mess for probbaly at least another year.
Your experience with Brexit what led to should give you most of what you are looking for.
Might even help you predict how bad (or not) it will be for the US.
Yes.
But (in my view) the US has much further to fall.
The UK sinking due to Brexit doesn’t have large global consequences.
The US Govt is cranking up some rather serious global instability, and that will have grave economic consequences down the line.
Not just for the US. But everybody in the world.
I always thought the US could have been more surgical by imposing specific sector tariffs on other countries rather than use a sledge hammer approach. However their execution now of their sector tariffs has been a gong show. There really seems to be no coherent strategy and total chaos but that is Trump modus operandi.
The whole thing has transmogrified into a reality show with Trump at the helm saying crazy things, and his lieutenants (apparatchiks) trying to explain and justify the crazy to the country.
Every time I read their commentary I ask myself:
How did these absolute morons get elected??
Its like a banana republic on steroids.
FDI into the US will absolutely crater because of this.
A year? More like 4?
Plus,.I think Americans are hunkering down telling themselves the pain is worth the end result, because the end result is going to be great.
They seem to have no concept that the end result isn’t a rebirth of the US, it’s just destruction. It’s not going to get better.
At least a year.
This time next year Republican congresspeople and some Republican senators’ thoughts will be turning to primaries and fundraising for the general election.
Some of them will be tempted to deviate from Dear Leader’s dictates in the interest of preserving their own self-interests. And even if they don’t, the administration will have to adjust its tactics and messaging to preserve Republican seats in Congress, lest they cede Congress to the Dems.
Or alternatively, they could drop the pretense of a republic and do something previously unthinkable to fully embrace authoritarianism. I think the odds of that are low, but sadly not zero. I’m not certain when the administration would need to pull the trigger to make this happen, however.
Possible triggers for that latter option would include the Senate pulling tricks to advance the SAVE act (rigorous proof of citizenship to vote; no chance of getting 60 votes to invoke cloture, but there are tricks that can be used to get around that) or creating some kind of crisis that would give the administration an excuse to suspend the midterm elections.
That the administration is moving so fast with the insanity is by design. They only have 12-18 months to execute their agenda. They know there’s a good chance that (if elections are held) they will lose at least one house of Congress in the 2026 midterms. So, they have to moderate their activity enough before the midterms to give enough voters time to forget to limit their midterm losses.
If the Dems get at least one house of Congress, the US shifts back to having a paralyzed government. The administration can still cause shenanigans, but the Dems will be able to impose a little sanity.
Of course, if the Dems win one house of Congress, we still have the hell of a couple of months of the lame duck period, between the election and the sitting of the new Congress, when the administration will make one last blast of insanity.
And if the Dems manage to lose…then we shift back to gloom, despair, and chaos for another year (November 26 - November 27) before the 2028 general election starts to become a consideration.
Fareed Zakaria (CNN) had an interesting segment this morning on another type of political grift we may soon see more of.
When the Trump Administration imposed tariffs in 2018 it also introduced an opportunity for companies to apply for individual exemptions. Thousands of firms did so and subsequent analysis of the approvals showed, unsurprisingly, a strong skewing of success or failure depending upon whether the company had supported the Republicans or Democrats before the election.
We are already seeing some of this political influence by companies and industries, eg lower tariffs on Canadian oil and gas imports, carveouts primarily benefiting Apple, but it will be interesting to see whether a formal exemption program eventually develops.
Zakaria said one reason he left India for America was the entrenched system of corporate cronyism in India compared to the free markets of America……
A critical mass of absolute morons voted.
I haven’t encountered anyone like this irl, but I’m probably in a bubble here.
We’re already past that point imo. The kidnappings and disappearings are so far beyond the pale. The media has really been complicit in obfuscating how dangerous that aspect of this horror show can get.
Glad it went well. River cruise crowd are pretty genteel so not surprised they were polite to you. If you had gone to a sports competition and started yelling U S A! U S A! it might have been different.
It is a real concern within the global travel industry though that Americans will get more nervous about foreign travel and start staying home in larger numbers.
What’s the current situation? I read that Trump came out and said that there was a 90-day pause, then said that the 90-day pause was fake news (but I thought he announced it?), then heard something about a pause on most electronics like chips and phones that I thought was official, but now heard that Trump Truthed that the electronics pause is fake news.
Last I knew, we still have a 25% tariff on all incoming auto parts that’s becoming effective sometime soon, and I read that the auto parts tariff was an exception to the 90-day pause - though now I understand the 90-day pause might be reversed. 
https://www.yahoo.com/news/um-turns-no-one-ports-200726562.html
Edit: guess the 90-day pause is on. Because it was leaked, then denied, then happened.
We go on a vacation with Mamasmurf’s family every year and her sister is getting cold feet on Mexico due to concerns over anti-US sentiment.
Going to be interesting this fall to see how the NFL and CFB manage in their out of country games.