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The stock market has been throwing a temper tantrum over the Trump tariffs. The beatdown could get worse because President Donald Trump is expected to announce another round of import tariffs on Wednesday.
The liberal media and Democrats in Congress -- many of whom once supported tariffs -- are feeding the flames. They hate Trump and want to see him fail. But is the market downgrade of American companies to the tune of roughly 10% a rational response to Trump’s trade restrictions?
I am an economist, not a stock market sage, but it is worth a reminder that despite some higher tariffs imposed by Trump in his first term -- which caused temporary stock sell-offs -- those effects were truly transitory. The market later surged month after month. On average, stocks rose by roughly 60% in four years. Not a bad return.
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Here’s why I think we could see history repeat itself: Trump is the most pro-business president in 40 years and his agenda, aside from the tariffs, is positive for the economy and investors.
1. Deregulation
This headline story from the Wall Street Journal on March 29 tells the whole story: "Trump Ushers In ‘New High Water Mark’ for Deregulation."
The story details a rollback of 31 regulations "in a single day" that will reduce costs and increase efficiencies of "power plants, the oil-and-gas industry, electric vehicles and wastewater."
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The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Trade Commission are rolling back Byzantine anti-merger rules that handcuffed the economically vital merger and acquisition industry. The savings could be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. These productivity savings alone could swamp the dollar costs of tariffs.
2. Tax cuts
The Trump tax cut will continue to reduce tax burdens and defuse a scheduled $4 trillion tax increase bomb that is expected to detonate on January 1.
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3. Downsizing government
Elon Musk and his Doge team of efficiency experts predicted gains of up to $1 trillion in lower government costs by ending federal corruption and waste. Preventing theft and fraud is an enormous economic stimulus.
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4. Foreign direct investment
Trump has lured in some $500 billion of new foreign direct investment to the United States just since the start of the year.
5. ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’
By some estimates, the United States is sitting atop a treasure chest of more than $10 trillion in critical oil, gas and mineral resources, mostly in the western mountain states.
Just a back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates that the economy-wide benefits of these pro-growth initiatives is multiple times the potential cost of Trump tariffs. Remember, free trade is important, but imports are only about 16% of our economy.
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Wall Street also seems to be overlooking the fact that if Trump’s reciprocal tariffs have the desirable effect of lowering trade barriers against U.S. products, at the end of the day we could have freer and fairer trade across the globe.
As I look at the economic and political landscape right now, it’s a great time to buy, not sell America.
