"We need a President with business experience."
Republican Iowa Voter, 2016
According to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the stock market has sky rocketed by an additional $4 Trillion since the election, less than a year ago. He said the Dow is up 16%, Standard and Poors 13% and the Nasdaq 18%. Those are all records as President Trump would say, "never seen before."
And that record has been achieved without Trump passing a single major piece of legislation.
Add to that Trump and our country is in the middle of three wars and near conflict with North Korea and Venezuela. The business community is largely fighting Trump on his attempted repeal of NAFTA, restricting foreign labor visas into America, and has gotten nothing done of the critical infrastructure needs of the country.
You might say, none of that makes sense. So why is the Market in love with Trump? The answer is deregulation. According to the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, Trump has issued 29 Executive Orders to reduce or eliminate regulations. Perhaps more significant is that his agencies have issued another 100 directives to reduce regulations. The Chamber says that Trump's election has resulted in the Republican Congress introducing over 50 bills that have deregulation as the heart of the legislation. These actions have largely gone underneath media scrutiny, but they have been totally embraced by the anticipatory Market. The big hammer came last week when Congress repealed the high profile right of consumers to sue financial institutions over disputes.
The Democrats are trying to bring to the public's attention the safety and environmental threat of deregulation, but it is largely falling on deaf ears since retirement accounts are swelling like never before. The daily attacks on Trump and Russia are becoming old news, but the market appears to heading for a peak at the heart of the 2018 elections.
As that Iowa voter said in 2016, "We need a President with business experience.' The Stock Market seems to agree.