Yes @poyndexter, theres missing things in your opinion and things which are not true too like the last two points in your No.1 assumptions, be it ...wealth gap widens and Maga base cops negative effects.
During Trumps first term the wealth gap shrank, first time in decades, some say most in 20yrs and some say most for 50 yrs, the lowest wages under Trump 1.0 rose the fastest and this fact means the wealth gap problem was reversed for a period, if you remember companies that got tax breaks actually passed on bonus's to their workers in many cases, $1000's of dollars to employees as they could afford to, i even think Walmart raised it's minimum wage to $10 or something which was like a10% increase from memory. Data from Atlanta fed not politically bias opinion.
" According to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, wage growth among low-wage workers has recently outpaced that of high-wage workers. Pay for the bottom quarter of wage earners, for example, rose 4.5 percent in November, compared with 2.9 percent for the highest 25 percent of earners. The data also showed that wage growth during the period among low-skilled workers grew at the same pace as that of high-skill workers."
And from the Bureau of Labor Stats Trump policies made Womens median weekly wages rise over twice as fast as Mens which is another thing the usual political suspects and policies fail to deliver, he didn't even have to legislate such an increase either.
....... " According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the fourth quarter of 2019 median weekly earnings for full-time wage and salary workers rose by 4 percent, to $936. For the full year, median weekly earnings for men rose by 2.9 percent, and by 6.2 percent for women." https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-apos-blue-collar-boom-024357054.html
If you can also remember in Trumps first term and use of Tariff's the usual suspects and fake news were chanting tariff's are inflationary back then too but the reality was a fall in inflation, the complete opposite of what most talking heads said. Numbers below. Another thing to note....Inflation started roaring again after Biden arrived and after he reversed a lot of Trump policies and increased government interference and investment dollars into ideological ideas like the green new deal because the natural market wouldn't back the ideas. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/historical-inflation-rates/
Trump 2.0 has same sort of policies as Trump 1.0 which benefitted lowest paid and women the most but it also seems to have a whole load more coming too.
I think the tariif's will work and are already working and thats not really opinion either as it's backed up with trillions of dollars of fresh incoming investment into the US, over 3 trillion according to one of these articles now but i think it's actually more, Lutnick was talking 6 trillion the other day, 3 or 6 doesn't really matter it's a lot of money in the first few months of Trump. These investments will spur growth and jobs and a reasonable amount of higher paying jobs too.
I think on some items one may see a jump in prices but other things are down like Oil and energy costs which are very important to keep low for an economy, probably the most important, egg prices are down, orange juice and because these China Tariff's seem quite high rather than the same products being increased in price they might just be withdrawn from the market altogether, i read somewhere last week that 1000's of Chinese Amazon sellers have just pulled the pin rather than try and sell with tariff's.
DOGE cuts will also have a negative impact on inflation, government spending is always the main driver of inflation even if the modern economist still denies such a fact. He's made billions of cuts and much more to come, the other thing they are doing with Government funds is re-deploying it to more beneficial or productive areas, they are also reducing all the illegal immigrant spend and giveaways and renting of luxury tower blocks etc etc etc, they are trying to get Tax cuts through and if they do that will also help reduce inflation, unlike popular belief in the modern economist these days tax cuts don't create inflation, quite the opposite as in the main or general people and companies always distribute monies in a much more productive way than Governments, increasing productivity is essential for economies to help keep inflation low and creating wealth and growing wages, if one has increasing productivity then wages can grow faster without undesirable inflationary impacts, this is one of the big problems Oz has, no focus on productivity and has to get growth from government spend instead of real economy.
Other things to consider are the plans to remove all income taxes for those earning under 150k and replace most of those monies with the base tariff's perhaps, Lutnick has mentioned this in interviews, if they can get that done it will be a massive boost for main streets real incomes, much bigger than Trump 1.0
They will also continue the regulation purge, regulations are a cost on businesses and people, they increase prices of goods and reduce productivity and if one has a common sense approach when looking at a lot of these regualtions in the US or here or UK or EU one maywell conclude they create more harm than good and thus it's only sensible for an economy to keep regualtions to the absolute minimum rather than what most of the western world has been doing, just look at all the progress Milei has been making in Argentina for his people and their economy.
I think if Trump sticks to his plans and China tariff's the US will boom, the thing that amazes me is the delusional EU leaders, China has been wiping them out for decades too, Germany the once manufacturing powerhouse just cannot compete with China, the sensible thing for them to do is tariff China more like Trump is but not as high levels, China is well known to be the most unbalanced economy in the world and a bloc like the EU should want a more level playing field to support it's economy and main street workers.
When you look at all Trumps policies as a whole they are good for the blue collar or mainstreet, the lower end of town, yeh it gives a few headaches to the billionaires and top 25% but one doesn't have to worry about the top 25% as they are quite capable of looking after themselves without governments helping them, legislating for them, financing them or bailing them out, they are like sailors, when the wind changes they change tack, money moves, only the weak fail.
Gold been moving too.
It's not all bad Dex and Powell should be cutting, Tariff impacts, if any are once off and everything else like energy etc has been falling in price, Powell cut before the election when inflation was higher, he's not cutting now because he's guessing or being political about tariff impacts even though it's most likely they are a once off hit.
