What Does the Trump Presidency Mean for the Economy?

The upset presidential election victory of Donald J. Trump and the Republican party’s victory in races for the House of Representatives and the Senate signal major changes ahead in both the federal government’s approach to growth and the Federal Reserve’s approach to monetary policy. Most evident among forthcoming policy changes will be a return of supply-side tax cuts, large operating fiscal deficits, and a move back toward more traditional monetary policies that, over time, should lead to higher short and long-term interest rates.

Below is an outline of my views on the implications of a Trump presidency for economic growth, taxes and infrastructure, central bank policy, and interest rates and trade.

Economic Growth

My firm anticipates that the Trump administration will attempt to achieve the economic equivalence of a strategic breakout with respect to the pace of economic growth. In other words, with the economy mired in a long-term sluggish growth path below 2 percent, the administration will turn to deficit spending, infrastructure, and fiscal stimulus to achieve stronger economic growth. The administration will also seek to reform Dodd-Frank in a significant way, which would be a boost for Wall Street, and will also move to inject private competition into the health care system.

While there will likely be a faster pace of growth in the near term, uncertainty about the role and status of the U.S. in the global economy may combine to create longer-term issues, particularly involving free trade that, ironically, act as a drag on growth.

Taxes and infrastructure

From a purely economic point of view, it will be difficult to lift the long-term growth trend much above 1.5 percent without significant tax reform and productivity-enhancing changes related to tax investments and improving national infrastructure. Given the major demographic challenges associated with the aging of the Baby Boomer generation, and the gradual entry of the Millennial generation into the workforce, the underlying conditions of the post-Great Recession economy are not conducive to a quicker pace of growth unless there is major tax and entitlement reform.

In our estimation, based on visits to policymakers in Washington, the order of operations for the first two years of the Trump Administration will likely proceed in the following fashion.

• A move to engage on comprehensive tax reform will likely be one of the primary orders of business in January 2017. We expect the Trump administration to work with Congress to craft a deal that would revolve around lower individual and business tax rates along with an end to corporate tax inversions. Under these conditions, an attempt to lower individual tax rates based on the framework set out in the House Republican blueprint released in June of this year of 12, 25, and 33 percent, would be the most significant tax reform since 1986.At the heart of Trump’s tax plan is the intention to reduce taxes on pass-through entities (eg, sole proprietorships, limited liability companies, S Corps., and so on) to 15 percent, which would decisively favor the middle market, which accounts for 40 percent of GDP and employs one-third of the labor force.

• The probability that a bipartisan bill on a multi-year infrastructure project will pass is high. The glue that would hold this together would likely be parallel legislation that would seek to tax the $2.6 trillion in corporate profits being held abroad. There is growing realization in both political parties that the infrastructure around the country has been allowed to slip into such disrepair that it has become something of a national embarrassment.

It is important to note that a robust infrastructure is not an economic panacea. It is a long-run productivity-enhancing policy that is more of a legacy issue, as opposed to something that will jump start economic activity in the near-term. If there is no tax reform, then growth will remain decisively in the sub 2 percent range.

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Joseph Brusuelas is chief economist of RSM US.