Investors are putting their money on the "Trump trade." Here's what that means.
CBSN
As former President Donald Trump stretches his lead at the polls over President Joe Biden, investors are already laying bets on what Trump's return to power could mean for the U.S. economy, stock prices, and individual industries and companies. Wall Street has dubbed such market moves the "Trump trade."
A Trump presidency would bring "important macro and market implications, with the key impacts likely revolving around trade policy and tariffs," Goldman Sachs analysts said in a report. For example, Trump's plan to impose universal tariffs on U.S. imports would likely benefit companies that mostly do business here at home, as opposed to global players, according to the investment bank.
The so-called Trump trade "has to do with those companies viewed as being the primary beneficiaries of a Trump presidency and the agenda he has laid out so far," JJ Kinahan, CEO of IG North America, told CBS MoneyWatch. "This is speculation — as we both know, what's said and what ends up happening can be two different things."
More employees of the Environmental Protection Agency were informed Wednesday that their jobs appear in doubt. Senior leadership at the EPA held an all-staff meeting to tell individuals that President Trump's executive order, "Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing," which was responsible for the closure of the agency's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office, will likely lead to the shuttering of the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights as well.
In her first hours as attorney general, Pam Bondi issued a broad slate of directives that included a Justice Department review of the prosecutions of President Trump, a reorientation of department work to focus on harsher punishments, actions punishing so-called "sanctuary" cities and an end to diversity initiatives at the department.
The quick-fire volley of tariffs between the U.S. and China in recent days has heightened global fears of a new trade war between the world's two largest economies. Yet while experts think the battle is likely to escalate, they also say the early skirmishes offer hope for an agreement on trade and other key issues that could head off a larger conflict.