US President Donald Trump has stated four priorities for his time in the White House:
- Strong GDP growth
- Lower fiscal deficits
- Better trade deficits
- Higher stock market
The problem is you can't have all of these things. One way Scott Bessant could be mulling through a weaker dollar is but that doesn't look like it's coming anytime soon.
So you have to decide which one Trump prioritizes.
Since election night, that's been an easy call for almost everyone: The stock market. The sense was that Trump couldn't inflict the pain of a real fiscal or trade fight on what he would do to stocks.
So the feeling was that deficits would stay high or maybe go even higher with a corporate tax cut and that stocks would continue to rise.
That may not be true. All the blame for Wednesday's market decline is being directed at the Federal Reserve but I think that is a mistake. The other big event of the day was the collapse of the Congressional stop gap funding bill.
Elon Musk, who has been Trump's right-hand man since election night, led the charge to kill him.
So while the stock market may be Trump's priority, it seems that Musk truly believes that he can kill government spending and is leading an all-out push to buy Twitter for $44 billion. attack
If Musk retains control of Congress, he may control the fiscal hawks.
Now ultimately, I think Trump is tired of falling in stocks and dumping Musk but it will be important to watch what happens next in the spending portfolio and see how which Republicans will handle their slim majority in Congress. If the stock market No Trump's top priority then there will be great pain to come.
