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In the spirit of Brexit where recently the UK surprisingly voted to withdraw from the controls of the European Union, the American people by a slim majority have elected to withdraw from liberal political elite doctrines of recent executive administrations of the United States government.
In an obvious reaction to the USA government's swing to liberal globalism and what many see as its obsession with global affairs versus attention to the many problems at home, the majority of voters have handed President-elect Trump the opportunity to work out his plan for "making America great again".
We see this as basically a slap in the face to the "ho-hum" liberalism of the last eight years by the Obama administration where generally the "yes we can" motto has turned into "no we can't" on a majority of Obama's platform initiatives. The focus on "Black lives matter" over the demand for law and order in our society and the continued push to include Islam into the fabric of American society and culture has obviously backfired in a big way. While many of us had great hopes for America's first "black" president, we now believe his 8 years in office will go down as one of the least effective administrations of the past 40 years. This is another case where, like the election of Jimmy Carter, another decent but inexperienced man in politics was ineffectual in uniting Americans behind their objectives. Carter nor Obama ever really got their own party behind them in a unified way and they were ineffectual in reaching across the political aisle to gain momentum behind their political objectives. Whether Hillary Clinton would have been any better at this with the Democrats, we now will never know. Her political life is basically over.
Like the narrow majority who voted for the UK to withdraw from an international foreign governance over their country's sovereignty, President-elect Trump now has the challenge of realigning American politics both at home and abroad. There will surely be conflict and pushback at home if he continues his racial profiling of Latinos and Islamists. In this regard we hope he will find a softer, more inclusive rhetoric than he expressed from the extremes of his race against Clinton. We think there needs to be a middle ground between the two positions for there to be peaceful progress within the borders of the USA.
When it comes to foreign affairs, this is probably the biggest question mark as to what effect Trump will have on the tremendous insecurity currently felt around the world regarding USA foreign policy. Will Trump be able to curb the Pentagon and corporate elite's appetite for war and meddling in the middle east and elsewhere? Will he be able to restore strength and respect for American foreign policy including a realignment of relations with other superpowers such as Russia and China that has obviously been weakened during the Obama administration? Will he have the power and support at home to renegotiate or even obliterate global trade agreements that he has called unfair and imbalanced? Maybe more importantly, will he be bound by the constitutional limits to his authority and acknowledge the roles of congress and the judiciary to advise him as to what he can and cannot do in his position?
It is interesting to note today how financial and currency markets have reacted to his surprise election. Overnight futures markets were down between 3-5% almost across the board, and it will be interesting to see where the DOW and other local financial barometers end up at the end of this first post-election day. One would think that markets would be encouraged to have a "business man" finally at the helm of the executive office. Yet, it is obvious that many of Donald Trump's statements and close examinations of his past business dealings have shown him to be less steady in business than his books might suggest.
Along with the age-old saying that "a house divided cannot stand", the biggest challenge we see for Donald Trump is pulling together a leadership team around him that can help him unite the various political and military-industrial complex entities behind his leadership. He will not have the autonomy in leadership that he has espoused during his campaign. Even though it appears he has a Republican controlled house and senate in congress at least for the next two years, it remains to be seen whether he can get enough of his own party behind him to get changes made legitimately and legally in the legislature. It will actually be up to the American people to pressure their representatives to work together in hammering out progressive and unified legislation. Nobody will get everything they want in today's political environment...including the President-elect.
We predict that the new Trump era of independent politics will be met with some fierce realities of pushback. The courts and congress are still chock-full of tainted, career politicians who know more than Trump about how to hold up political progress. Just like the UK and Europe, new agreements and alignments are going to take time and there are going to be many forces behind the scenes that want to make worse of the situation in order to foment chaos and failure for their own political gains. As usual, the liberal media will be there kicking and screaming about change like a spoiled child used to getting its own way for so long. It will be most interesting to see if and how Trump can get some media behind him that has for so long completely hounded his person and his ideas.
As in Europe, it will be interesting to see if a return to independent sovereignty over the economy and government programs can be accomplished by a Trump administration. We predict that like the Obama win 8 years ago, Mr. Trump will have 100 days to show us what he has got. If he does not succeed in getting the federal government behind his plans and positions...he could just as easily be relegated to an immediate "lame duck" presidency where Washington DC remains in total gridlock and the strings continue to be pulled by the dark forces in our Pentagon and Federal Reserve.
