US: T Minus 2 for Trump - ANZ

In view of the Sharon Zollner, Senior Economist at ANZ, with two days until Donald Trump is inaugurated as US President, markets remain highly attuned to any hints of policy in the initial stages of the presidency.

Key Quotes

“Overnight, Wilbur Ross, the nominee for Commerce Secretary, said NAFTA would be the first trade relationship he would address and noted that he sees a useful role for tariffs. The Mexican peso took another hit. A piece on Bloomberg points out that Trump is well behind in appointing key roles in the executive branch.”

“The Partnership for Public Service suggests a president should have 100 Senate-confirmed appointees in place around Inauguration Day, but Trump has come up with only 28. This could limit the new president’s ability to action his policy agenda in the traditional honeymoon period, and it certainly suggests that the market is right to reassess its euphoric Trump reflation trade. There is little detail regarding how exactly Trump intends to stimulate the economy and bring back rust belt jobs in significant numbers – it has been estimated that the vast majority of these jobs were lost to robots (in the US or overseas), not workers in other countries.”