Trump will spark a sharemarket boom – then an almighty bust

Trump 2.0 is Trump unleashed. That much we know, with the Republicans on track at the time of writing for a clean sweep that will give the new president almost unprecedented power, and Trump himself seemingly unwilling to compromise on almost anything. No more of the half measures that many supporters believe stunted his first term in office. It’s undiluted Trump this time around.

Yet still we cannot be entirely sure.

Wall Street has been surging in the wake of Trump’s victory but pain could be just around the corner. Credit: AP

Some still believe, possibly as much in hope as expectation, that more cautionary voices will eventually prevail, and that in practice he’ll be forced to retreat from some of his more hardline positions. Trouble in the bond markets could, for instance, thwart his plans for major fiscal stimulus via tax cuts. Trump’s bark could, in other words, be worse than his bite.

Don’t bet on it. Criticism of politicians that don’t keep their word is part of his USP, so he’ll push hard in sticking to his promises. These point to the biggest upheaval in political and economic thinking since the days of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, marking a decisive break with the prevailing “progressively” minded consensus of recent decades.

It also leaves the UK badly out of sync with our friends across the water. While the UK shifts left towards higher taxes, a bigger state and more regulation of labour, energy, financial and consumer markets, the US is about to move unambiguously in the other direction.

Trump’s agenda is one of tax-cutting, financial deregulation, “drill, baby, drill” fossil fuel licences, repudiation of net zero orthodoxy and a determined crackdown on bureaucracy, state spending and immigration. There could scarcely be a greater contrast.

When Rishi Sunak jacked up UK corporation tax to help close a fiscal deficit swollen to breaking point by the pandemic, he at least had the cover of a US administration that was broadly on the same page with higher taxes on business.

Not any more. While Starmer’s government comes down hard on British business with swingeing increases in employer National Insurance contributions, Trump promises to slash US corporation tax from 21 per cent to 15 per cent.

In so doing, the US threatens to suck what lifeblood remains from Britain’s already emaciated corporate landscape, leaving the UK stock market as little more than a rundown, provincial shopping centre for rapacious private equity and overseas-based consolidators.

In any event, a big choice awaits. Does Downing Street swallow its scruples and, in the hope of a carve out from threatened US tariffs, set a course that brings the UK closer to Trump’s America, or to the contrary, does Trump’s presidency push the UK back into the European Union’s orbit?

The answer to this question may not be as predictable as it seems, even if Labour’s left-wing vision and evident contempt for Trump have already irredeemably queered the pitch.

Trump’s victory has thrown a giant rock into the established order of things on Europe, global trade, NATO, climate change mitigation and much else besides. Labour must adapt to this change along with everyone else. It may be that, even for Starmer, Europe no longer offers the better option.

Somewhat easier to assess than the geopolitics are the implications of Trump 2.0 for financial markets.

Historically, changes at the White House have had little impact on the US stock market, which tends to be driven by wider underlying trends in the US economy.

But right now these drivers are overwhelmingly positive, giving Trump a strong following wind for much of what he wants to do.

There’s no apparent slowdown in growth and jobs creation, as there is in much of Europe. The US stock market might already seem to be a bubble about to pop, having virtually tripled in value since Trump was first elected eight years ago, but tax cuts in combination with a strong deregulatory agenda are likely to drive it higher still.

For Trump, the performance of the stock market is seen as validation of his own achievements, and he will not want it to stumble. He needn’t worry, at least for now.

History shows that financial and business deregulation is like rocket fuel for speculative stock market activity, and with more money in people’s pockets from tax cuts we may be about to see a share price boom equal to that of the roaring ’20s.

Character-wise, Trump has nothing in common with the presiding president of that time, Calvin Coolidge. The two are like chalk and cheese, one bombastic and boastful, the other so taciturn and self-effacing that when he died a leading commentator of the day asked, “how can you tell?”

Yet one thing that unites them is belief in a low-tax, small-state economy with a decidedly pro-business, hands-off approach to government.

It hardly needs pointing out that the roaring ’20s ended in the worst stock market crash of all time, followed by a decade of economic depression.

Making the parallels seem more worrying still, Trump proposes the biggest package of tariffs since the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which set off a mutually destabilising chain reaction of trade retaliation and competitive devaluation.

US consumers face a spike in inflation if Trump keeps his election promises on tariffs.Credit: Bloomberg

There are other dangers in a Trump presidency, too, most notably that of crony capitalism, where favoured billionaires get special treatment and are first in line for government contracts.

Already, Elon Musk’s unequivocal support for Trump looks set to pay off handsomely, with the value of Tesla crossing the $US1 trillion threshold on the stock market on Friday for the first time since the depth of the pandemic. Those less than full-throated in their support during the election campaign can look forward to years of sidelined persecution.

In time, Trump’s closed-border policies will not just be inflationary, both for the US and the rest of the world, but will also crimp the US’ currently enviable rates of productivity growth and innovation by limiting competition to domestic players only.

Trump draws his inspiration from the 1890 Tariff Act championed by William McKinley. This imposed across-the-board tariffs of up to 50 per cent, and was seen at the time as a possible substitute for income tax. It didn’t work back then and it won’t work today.

For Trump, the performance of the stock market is seen as validation of his own achievements, and he will not want it to stumble. He needn’t worry, at least for now.

What it will do is poison the rules-based international order the US was instrumental in establishing in the aftermath of the Second World War and isolate the US from its natural allies in Europe and beyond.

Trump says he’s going to end inflation, but what does he think is going to happen to food prices once agriculture’s access to cheap migrant labour is cut off, or to American exporters when overseas jurisdictions take retaliatory action against Trump’s tariffs?

Last time around he ended up having to subsidise US soya bean farmers as compensation for loss of once-buoyant export markets in China.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned and my belief in free and open markets is past its sell-by date. But the planned mix of deregulation, tariffs, closed borders, tax cuts, Sinophobic measures and crony capitalism looks to me like an incendiary one.

An initial almighty boom seems fully baked in. So, too, does an eventual almighty bust.

The Telegraph, London

The Market Recap newsletter is a wrap of the day’s trading. Get it each weekday afternoon.