The Sunny Side of Trump

The second-biggest surprise of November, after the election of Donald Trump, has been the warm reception the president-elect has gotten from businesses and investors. Before Nov. 8 the consensus was that a Trump victory would tank the stock market. Instead, stocks have risen. The dollar is up. Several economists have raised their projections for economic growth in 2017 and 2018. On Nov. 15 one of the most heeded figures in the investing world tiptoed up to the edge of saying something nice about the makeup of the embryonic Trump administration. “There’s a good chance that the ‘craziness’ factor will be smaller and play a lesser role in driving outcomes than many had feared,” Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s biggest hedge fund, wrote on LinkedIn. “Our very preliminary assessment is that on the economic front, the developments are broadly positive—the straws in the wind suggest that many of the people under consideration … probably won’t recklessly and stupidly drive the economy into a ditch.”

Even some of Trump’s fiercest opponents are backing down from the equation that Trump equals calamity. In a Nov. 14 New York Times op-ed, Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate economist, wrote that while he continues to believe electing Trump was a grave error, “don’t be surprised if economic growth actually accelerates for a couple of years.” Businesspeople who are weary of Washington gridlock are optimistic something might actually get done. This is the first time since Dwight Eisenhower was elected in 1952 that a Republican president will enter office with GOP majorities in both the House and the Senate. “It has been roses and sunshine,” Tom Cole, a Republican representative from Oklahoma, told reporters.