SKEPTIC’S GUIDE TO INVESTING
Straight Talk for All, Nonsense for None
About - Our podcast looks to help improve investing IQ. We share 15-30 minutes on finance, market and investment ideas. We bring experience and empathy to the complex process of financial wellness. Every journey is unique, so we look for ways our insights can help listeners. Also, we want to have fun😎
Your Hosts - Meet Steve Davenport, CFA and Clem Miller, CFA as they discus the latest in news, markets and investments. They each bring over 25 years in the investment industry to their discussions. Steve brings a domestic stock and quantitative emphasis, Clem has a more fundamental and international perspective. They hope to bring experience, honesty and humility to these podcasts. There are a lot of acronyms and financial terms which confuse more than they help. There are many entertainers versus analysts promoting get rich quick ideas. Let’s cut through the nonsense with straight talk!
Disclaimer - These podcasts are not intended as investment advice. Individuals please consult your own investment, tax and legal advisors. They provide these insights for educational purposes only.
SKEPTIC’S GUIDE TO INVESTING
Trump’s Transactional Foreign Policy
Please text and tell us what you like
Clem Miller and Steve Davenport discuss President-Elect Trump’s transactional approach to resolving thorny international conflicts, such as with the Russia-Ukraine conflict, in the Middle East conflict, or with China-Taiwan.
Will Trump abandon or downgrade long-standing relationships with NATO or other allies as he makes foreign policy deals?
Is Trump likely to be successful in bringing regional adversaries like Russia and Ukraine, or Israel and Iran, to the negotiating table? If there are agreements reached, what is the likelihood they will stick?
Should we look at proposed U.S. tariffs on Chinese products as an economic issue or as more of a tool for gaining foreign policy leverage on the Taiwan issue? Will China ever promise to refrain from attacking Taiwan?
Will the U.S. be drawn into conflict with Russia or North Korea through increased Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory or North Korean troops?
We discuss these and more foreign policy issues as Inauguration Day approaches. What are our takeaways for investment portfolios?
Straight Talk for All - Nonsense for None
Please check out our other podcasts:
https://skepticsguidetoinvesting.buzzsprout.com
Welcome everyone to Skeptic's Guide to Investing. I'm Steve Davenport and I'm here with Clem Miller and today we're going to talk to you about the international implications of a Trump administration in 2025. For most of the election, we've really been focused on the domestic and the issues of taxes and tariffs and how immigration is going to influence our economy, but we're starting to see a turnover, or an escalation, in the areas outside of the US. So, clem, if I was to ask you what's the area that is going to, in your mind, create the most disruption or volatility for the US economy? That it might be the Ukraine and Russia. But what do you feel about Ukraine and Russia and the other characters on the list of international areas of understanding and potentially misunderstanding?
Speaker 2:So let me give you a framework that I'm using to try to understand how our new president-elect, trump, is going to look at these matters, and really we have Trump 1.0 as a basis for being able to make these judgments.
Speaker 1:But isn't he older?
Speaker 2:and wiser. Well, he's older, we know that, and a bit more, or at least his people are a bit more experienced, although, you know, perhaps not as institutional as the prior ones. Now, my framework is for looking at this is the following first of all, sort of a two-part framework. Part one is that the people uh, on the foreign policy side that he's surrounding himself with uh, are not necessarily uh as institutional oriented. Uh, as you know, some of the uh, some of the people he had under Trump 1.0. The reason for that, you know, is, I know from his perspective, that he thought that the people he had, you know, the generals and whatnot he had under 1.0, uh, were, um, trying to undermine him and okay, fair enough. Uh, but you know, you have to wonder about whether the people around him right now are just going to do what he thinks uh, or what he says, and not, you know, do some pushback, which I think we can all say. That you know, having people who question you know who ultimately will do what you want, but who will question you and raise issues, I think is a good thing. Right. So I think you know, the institutional framework is an important thing.
Speaker 2:The other aspect of the other framework through which I look at foreign policy is the one of Trump being more transactional rather than relationship oriented. And you know, in that, in that perspective, you know he's not going to give as much emphasis to longstanding relationships like NATO as, as he does, sort of transactional you know, what have you done for me lately Kinds of questions. That doesn't mean he totally supplants the relationships of the transactional, but it means that he leans in the direction of transactional. So now, when you use those two frameworks and apply them to say the uh, the Russia, ukraine thing, uh, I think he looks at that issue, uh, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the, the ongoing war uh between the two, uh, I think he looks at that as a uh, you know in, in terms of a transactional framework. I think he looks at that as a, you know, in terms of a transactional framework. I think he doesn't really care one whit about whether Ukraine is going to end up being part of the NATO alliance eventually, you know, even a junior member, so to speak. I don't think he cares about that.
Speaker 2:Uh, I think what he uh, I think what he's is, you know what he's looking for is he's looking for a sort of a near term result. Uh, that works uh somehow, uh to the benefit of the US, even if it means reducing the amount of weaponry that goes to Ukraine. And I think he takes an approach which sort of puts Ukraine and Russia sort of on the same level, russia sort of on the same level. You know the fact that you know there there's a positive relationship over the last few years with Ukraine and a negative one with with Russia over the last few years. I think that that matters less to Trump than the fact that he's got two individuals, putin and Zelensky, that he's dealing with and wants to try to reach some kind of transactional outcome with the two of them.
Speaker 1:There's nothing more than he's just going to make a call, isn't he what? He's just going to call Putin and after that call it'll be settled.
Speaker 2:Well, he did have a call. He asked Putin to to stop escalating. And what did Putin do? He escalated. And you know what you know.
Speaker 2:I'm sure the way Trump interprets that is, you know, is not that Putin is trying to spit in his face. I think the way Trump would interpret that is this is all part of a negotiation and you know he thought the same way with, uh, you know, with uh, north korea and kim kim jong-un, right, he, you know, he, uh, you know they had this battle of words, right, little rocket man and all this, and it ended up being uh, you know he thought about it as parts of a negotiation and thought of it as transactional, the art of the deal, and that's that's how he looks at foreign policy, that's the framework. And you know institutional relationships are much for him, are much less important than than transactionals. But that's, you know, it can't work that way in international affairs, because NATO is something that's been built up since the late 40s and you know you just can't throw it away without creating conditions for, you know, a lot more warfare in Europe. I mean, it's been NATO and it's been the EU that has kept.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think what NATO did with Finland is an example of how they realized what is going to bother Russia, and having that extra border to try to manage is a problem for Russia as the population in the army declines. I think the fact that 100,000 troops from North Korea are getting involved tells me that this is no longer just a squabble for territory between the Ukraine and Russia. This is becoming, I hate to say it, but a much wider problem, disruption and a much wider battle for good and bad in the territories next to Russia. I don't believe that we're going to see this go away quickly or quietly, and I think what I would say is this is one of those other disruptors that, while we saw it kind of moving along and battling for the two years that this has been happening, I don't see that there's a clear and easy way for this to get resolved by a few phone calls. I think that you've got very, very different interests here, and I also believe that what we're seeing with an escalation from other parties is not going to be good. If we use long range missiles and we take out some of the bases that North Korea is training with Russia, I'd see that North Korea would then look to do something against one of our allies, and I think that you know I worry about North Korea and South Korea, and North Korea and Japan.
Speaker 1:I think those two issues in two areas now become on the paper as something that we have to be concerned about, and I just see more and more of these potential areas that, instead of being ameliorated or lessened, are going to be accelerated as potential risks. So if we have more risks, we have more chance for failure, and that's the way I would view what's happening with this expansion going on in the Ukraine. And then I look at Israel and say is it expanding or contracting? And I would say it seems to be expanding. We've gone from we must eliminate Hamas to we must eliminate Hamas, we must eliminate Hezbollah, we must eliminate Houthis. I think that Israel is trying to get back a lot of the past injustices, which will make it much more difficult to come to a resolution. I thought we were close to a ceasefire and it ends up that there's more injustices that need to be overcome and Israel is not going quietly. And therefore, what is your?
Speaker 2:view.
Speaker 1:Are things expanding in terms of the Middle East conflict? Are they staying the same or are they declining?
Speaker 2:decline. Well, it's. It's interesting that iran has not uh come back with, uh with a response yet to the latest uh israeli attack. And I think that's because in the latest attack by israel there was a pretty effective destruction of some of the air defenses uh in, and it turns out there was a bomb attack on one of the nuclear facilities which I guess everybody thought was an old one that had been no longer in use. But I think that suspect the Israelis might have had some intelligence that there was at least some use of that for their nuclear program. So I think that this proxy war is slowly being eroded between israel and iran. You know the, you know hamas, obviously, uh, hezbollah, um, you know the houthis have become very powerful in terms of being able to develop their missiles, which is kind of surprising. You think you know yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world, certainly in the middle east, and uh, it's got this very advanced.
Speaker 1:You know weapon system Do you think there might be anybody helping them?
Speaker 2:Clem Well, yeah, but you know they, you know it's not, they didn't develop.
Speaker 1:I don't think the Houthis are necessarily in the labs working on nuclear technology. I think they might have an ally who's giving them that technology. So I don't know if we could say that this is a new emerging market in Yemen for weapons, as much as it is just an application of weapons that exist in another one of its partners.
Speaker 2:You know, it depends. I mean, certainly North Korea was able to build a nuclear you know a lot of weapon systems from scratch. So I think that it's quite possible to do that. We even see, I mean there's even some talk about Ukraine developing a nuclear weapon to be used in the event that you know that there is some kind of reduced support from the West for, you know, for the war, for Ukraine's defenses in the war against Russia. There's some talk about that. I don't know. You know Ukraine. There used to be Soviet nuclear weapons in Ukraine and then Ukraine gave them up after the Soviet Union fell. But you know, maybe there's some capability left in Ukraine that can be leveraged up to create a, you know a nuclear weapon. Who knows?
Speaker 1:right. Well, I see the end of the Ukraine conflict coming down to agreeing for everyone to just stay where they are and instead of the territory of Crimea being Russian, we now have some of the territory in the other regions going off that are Russian. It is a spoken language and they have a Russian tradition in these areas of Ukraine.
Speaker 1:And ultimately, you can see that that's the avenue that Trump's going to go down and say all right, let's just agree that these two territories, which were previously Russian, are now going to become Russian again, and let's have a ceasefire and agree that we're not going to burn a lot of resources and we need to rebuild.
Speaker 2:So. So, Steve, there's a couple of problems with that. One problem is that Russia is not fully in control of those provinces. And so what do you do, right, Do you? Is the Ukraine fully in control? Yeah, Of of parts of those? Do right, Do you Is the Ukraine fully in control? Yeah, of parts of those provinces? Right, So-?
Speaker 1:But you know what I'm talking about, clint. There's parts of those provinces that have been fighting the Ukraine government for years and it's just been a battlefield.
Speaker 2:It's not been controlled Well, 2014, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's 10 years.
Speaker 2:Some of those provinces are occupied by Russia and some of those provinces are occupied by Ukraine, and so if you were to freeze the front lines right now, some of those provinces would remain in Ukraine and others would be absorbed into into Russia as Russia.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm saying is that there's probably I mean, they're probably very much along the lines of where they've been battling for this 10 year period. So the question is is if the lines have pretty much stayed the same, what are we really benefiting from this continued battle? How much?
Speaker 2:is one gaining over the other. I guess what I'm saying is that Russia has continuously said that its bottom line is that the entire territory of those four provinces should be a part of Russia, when in fact there are significant parts of those four provinces that are still held by Ukraine. So Russia wants Ukraine to give up the remainder of. Even if Ukraine, you know it, controls a lot of territory, they still want Ukraine to give up the parts of those provinces that Russia, uh, that Russia Russia has not taken over as yet. So, um, and then the other. The other issue I wanted to mention was if you go by the principle that Russian speaking areas should be part of Russia, uh, then you know half of Latvia is, uh, is, russian speaking. You've got significant Russian speakers in northern Kazakhstan. It's just not going to work because you're creating the precedent for Russia to take over significant parts of other countries.
Speaker 1:Right. I'm not saying this is a worldwide policy that we're going to implement. All I'm saying is Russia would like to have all of the province. If they have to have half of the province instead of all of it and we create a wall, like we did in Berlin, I think the Russians would be unhappy. I think the Ukrainians would be unhappy, and isn't that what most agreements end up? Everybody has to be a little bit unhappy, or else we're not really moving things to a degree that, if it satisfies everyone, then it would have already been agreed to MICHAEL.
Speaker 2:KRIGSMAN? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Yeah, okay, so I think there's a difference between an agreement between parties that sort of found themselves on opposite sides of an issue and of a geographic issue, and I think there are. I think there's a, you know, a different situation where you're talking about, uh, a an attack on one side, right, and a defense on the other side.
Speaker 2:So I think you can make arguments that you know in, in Korea and in Vietnam, for example, you know there were, you know it's't have this outright kind of you know one side is evil and the other side is not evil, right, as you have a perspective like that in Russia, ukraine, right, I mean the Ukrainians think of the Russian empire, so to speak, as being evil and the Russians think of the Ukrainians as being Nazis, or at least Putin does, and so it's more of an evil versus good thing, and it's hard to.
Speaker 2:I think it's hard to come at a stable settlement when you're talking about that kind of situation. Or take, you know, you mentioned Berlin Wall and East and West Germany. You know the Soviets and the Americans and the French and the British, they were all allies during World War II, and so all that was was a question of how do you divide up the spoils, and Even that brought about, you know, sort of wartime or a potential for war. But I think Russia, ukraine, is different. Russia Invaded a sovereign country Whose borders it had already acknowledged that and I don't think it acknowledged that it controlled.
Speaker 1:Crimea, so it wasn't this.
Speaker 2:This has been going on for 10 years, right Well, since 2014. But before 2014,. Russia acknowledged all the borders, including that Ukraine and Ukraine, and even in controlled Crimea they recognize that as well. Controlled uh, crimea they recognized that as well. So you know, this is uh, this was a sudden change uh that putin implemented in order to try to create conflict around its borders that it could exploit. Right uh, and they did the same thing with azerbaijan they did it with georgia.
Speaker 1:I'm not arguing with him being the aggressor. What I'm saying is that there would seem to be suddenly a little more impetus on Trump's part to find a resolution, and the resolution, we know, is going to be somewhat about the borders and it's going to be somewhat about territory that's already been very hard to take back. The Ukrainians have had trouble for that 10-year period maintaining the absolute and accurate border with where the Russian has troops and support going in to Russian-speaking Ukrainians. So this has been a problem for centuries, not for days, months or years. I think that we know this problem is probably going to persist. The question is whether we keep fighting for a resolution or we come to some other resolution that is going to make some people unhappy. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You're assuming that you can actually result in a resolution, right, if there is a? So there were. Prior to 2014,. There were two agreements made between Russia and Ukraine, with with the U S, germany and some other countries being so-called guarantors, and they were called Minsk one and Minsk two, and in it there was international recognition of Ukraine's borders, and Ukraine has said there will not be a Minsk three because Minsk two uh, russia completely ignored. So if there's any agreement now, who's to say that Russia is going to abide by that? They could take 10 years. We build their forces.
Speaker 1:I think we know that Russia is a wild card. Yeah, all I'm saying is we're talking about Trump 2025. We're not talking about Russian history or Ukrainian history. My question is is Trump going to be able to pick up the phone? And maybe it takes three conversations or four conversations, but there is some type of a ceasefire and everybody economically is better off If we stop sending $20 billion allocations of weapons to the Ukraine. Maybe that $20 billion can be used for something here the Ukraine.
Speaker 2:Maybe that $20 billion can be used for something here.
Speaker 1:And my answer to that is, there will not be a settlement between Russia and Ukraine.
Speaker 2:You're not a fan of Trump's negotiation power, the power of the deal. No, I think the only thing you can point to were in terms of Trump's ability to negotiate. I think the only thing you can really point to were these deals between Israel and UAE and some of the other, the so-called Abraham Accords, UAE and Bahrain. I mean, these were countries that you know it was relatively easy to make those accords. It's not like an Israeli-Palestinian accord or an Israeli. They couldn't even do an Israeli-Saudi Arabia accord, which would have been actually really significant for the Middle East.
Speaker 2:I don't think that Trump really has the understanding of the regions and the motivations to be able to reach an agreement. I think he thinks that others are just as transactional as he is. Are more are just as transactional? Uh, as he is right that there's there's always a deal to be had and everybody has to give a little bit in order to reach a deal. That's his transactional perspective on foreign policy, and I think that you know he ignores the fact that most other people think in terms of long-term history, think in terms of relationships, and won't necessarily agree to just oh yeah, let's reach a deal, right, they're just not going to do that. That's not how it works in foreign policy.
Speaker 1:So let's go away from Ukraine, ukraine, and go towards israel and gaza. Um, is there going to be a deal with trump in 2025 on a ceasefire with gaza and the hamas?
Speaker 2:no, I think I think the only thing, uh, that's going to happen, I think, I think I think everything with Israel, iran, and remember this is all about, about a conflict between Israel and Iran. You know, what's happening with Hamas and the Houthis, and and Hezbollah, you know, are all elements of an Israeli conflict with Iran. They're proxy proxies for for Iran. And if you look at Israeli foreign policy, israeli military policy, it all flows from the position of Netanyahu within the Israeli government, and Netanyahu has been trying to stay out of jail, uh, and he can do so as long as he's prime minister. He has a government that, uh, where he depends on the support of, you know, pretty extreme right-wingers.
Speaker 2:You know extreme even to the effect, even to the extent that they would like to expel Palestinians from the, you know, from the occupied territories, west Bank and Gaza. They just want to expel them, right, some of these folks. Netanyahu doesn't go that far, but you know they're in his coalition, so he has to humor them to some extent. You know, I think that if there were ever, and there were ever, a new israeli election, I don't think netanyahu and his lakud party and and and the right-wing coalition, I don't think they would win. Uh, I think I think you would have a more moderate coalition, perhaps something led by Benny Gantz, who's a more centrist or center-right politician, and I think that there would be some effort to try to wind down these wars, but without allowing a reemergence of some of the more extremist elements.
Speaker 1:Right, I think that we're going down. We've got two strikes now against the administration. They're probably not going to get a deal in Ukraine, they're probably not going to get a deal in Gaza, and now we'll go to strike number three. Will the US and China agree that Taiwan is independent and will remain so and will have its own forces and will not be tried to be reincorporated into the Chinese nation, as Xi has talked about in the past? Will Trump negotiate freedom and independence for Taiwan?
Speaker 2:I don't think there's any deal to be had with regard to China and Taiwan. Trump negotiate freedom and independence for Taiwan. I don't think there's any deal to be had with regard to China and Taiwan. I think the Chinese position to.
Speaker 1:I don't think the tariffs will be so, so overwhelming and so negative that China will come to the negotiating table.
Speaker 2:Well, that's forgiveness from the U? S and ask the tariffs have nothing to do with the situation with Taiwan. It's not a negotiating play for Taiwan, definitely not. I don't think Trump cares that much about Taiwan. To be honest with you, I think he views Taiwan as more of a again, more of a transactional issue, more of a more of a you know, transactional with with China as well. I'm not sure that you know you're not going to have a situation where Trump says you know, if you do this for us, we're just going to hand you over Taiwan. But I think that has something more to do with how valuable Taiwan is to the US and Western economies. It would take an awful lot for Trump to hand over Taiwan, so I don't think he's going to do that.
Speaker 1:I don't think he's going to hand over. He's going to want China to step back on Taiwan, and I think that he's going to use the tariffs as a potential lever to try to get China to behave better.
Speaker 2:China's not going to step back from Taiwan, absolutely not. I agree, and that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:Whether the third strike where he's going to have problems, and this is, in my mind, the biggest strike, because, in my mind, if you look at the last two years, they've been about AI, they've been about chips and semiconductors, and the main semiconductor supplier in the world is on the island of Taiwan, as well as United Micro, and so I see this being the hotspot, while the other two may have hotter activity in terms of military going on. Right now, I see the biggest problem for Trump being that China and these tariffs don't have the desired effect. They create a more militaristic China and a China that's going to take things instead of try to work their way along and do you know and do things in a more cooperative, internationally focused way. I think they're going to be focused on doing what's good for China yeah, it's good, so it's ultimately control of those chips.
Speaker 2:So, my you know I don't see the tariffs, us tariffs, as being a foreign policy issue. Honestly, I don't see it as being related to foreign policy because I just don't see the tariffs on uh, on China, chinese exports to the US as having that much of a significant impact on the Chinese economy. Chinese economy is largely domestic focused now, not export focused Uh and uh, and they have a lot of ties now with a lot of other countries, not just the U? S, and a lot of that is uh, is high tech, uh, that can absorb tariffs, uh. So I just I don't see tariffs as being a foreign policy lever with China. It's just not. It's not a foreign policy lever. It wasn't under Trump, one Uh and um, and it's not under. It's not going to be so under Trump too. I just I just see those as being two separate questions.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, we've got a question from a mailbag.
Speaker 2:Well, and let me just say, let me just say another thing right about that China and the U S. While tariffs I don't think are a foreign policy issue, I think export controls, you know controls on the export of U S high technologies to China, that is a foreign policy issue. I'll just say that.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm not sure that Trump is going to be successful with China. I think China is a much more patient negotiator. I think China takes a longer term view and I think Trump, like you said, is very transactional and shorter term. So I think that the longer term view of China will frustrate Trump always and I think it will be a very difficult situation between the two countries.
Speaker 1:Ultimately, in my mind, I think there will be some form of aggression in the next four years by China towards Taiwan and I 100%, 100% agree with you on that, that aggression will cause serious implications for people's portfolios and the overall economy of the world, because the dependence on semiconductors has only increased and therefore, if we have a disruption, it's going to be a larger disruption than what we're used to.
Speaker 2:So now, when I go to the mail, and let me just add to that and Trump has indicated that he wants to get rid of the CHIPS Act, which was intended to bring some of the advanced semiconductor production back into the US.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the onshoring, which we haven't talked about, is probably something that we, you know, start to deal with. The idea and the concept of onshoring, which we haven't talked about, is probably something that we start to deal with, the idea and the concept of onshoring. I think it's overdue and I think we should be more independent. After what's happened with COVID and we realized how we depended upon other people that we shouldn't need to depend on. I think that onshoring will be the issue that's not talked about right now. That will be talked about as we go forward in this administration. Now, can I do the mailbag? Yeah, let's do mailbag. All right, mailbag has a question and it says where will be the greatest impact of the Trump administration? Where will be the greatest impact of the Trump administration? Will it be domestically, on our economy, or will it be internationally, on our relationship with some of the hot spots around the world? What will be the biggest impact? I'll go first.
Speaker 1:I think the biggest impact is going to be on regulation. I think regulation domestically has become more intrusive for companies, more difficult for small business, and I think that we have a huge opportunity to try to change that. I would love to see an immigration bill where we help some of the people who have graduate degrees stay in this country and that, along with supporting small business whether it's small business, tax relief or other, I think that onshoring will offer us a huge potential for growth in our economy. Hopefully, we resolve our immigration policy to some degree. I don't think any bill is going to be comprehensive or complete, but I think there will be some point that that becomes the moment for the administration. I hope they don't have other distractions which prevent them from doing this, but, as Steve the optimist today versus Steve the skeptic, that's where I see potentially the greatest impact. How about you Trump? Where do you see Trump having the biggest impact?
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's going to be a negative impact in terms of rising unemployment and higher inflation as a result of immigration policies and as a result of tariffs. I think that, with regard to, I think it all depends on the scale of both. It all depends on the scale of both. But, with regard to unemployment, if you send back, if you remove 8 million employed, gainfully employed illegal immigrants, if you remove them from the US economy, your unemployment rate goes up by 5%. I think, by any measure, that's a recession. Now, whether it's going to be 8 million or more, like 1 million or 500,000, I think you know obviously scales back that 5% number. On tariffs, I think if you have tariffs that are broadly based not just China, but broadly based across multiple regions, including Europe, and even some negation of NAFTA I think that you're going to have very serious impacts on consumer spending in this country, spending in this country, and I think that's going to um, to also, uh, uh, make a recession more likely. And um, and you know, whenever you increase costs like that, uh, it also uh, you know, adds to, uh, to inflation. And then the. The third thing I would say, just on top of that, is, you know if, if there are additional tax decreases on top of just extending the prior ones from Trump 1.0, I think that will lead to a widening government deficit, which is also not good for, you know, for the economy.
Speaker 2:I'll just add on that one that you know some some might say well, clem, what about? What about Doji Right and Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, what do you? What about their efforts? Aren't they going to like slash government? And my answer to that would be there's so many institutional impediments in the U S, uh, to slashing spending, uh, that I don't. I just don't see that that is ever going to happen. I mean, for one thing, you're going to have all these Congress, you know Congress people saying, well, don't cut the spending in my district, you can cut this other guy's district, but don't cut my district. Well, that's an obstacle by itself to any sweeping reductions in government spending. Any reductions in government spending are all going to be on the edges.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I believe that if we can't agree on eliminating Saturday delivery of the post office, significant cuts in government would have already been made if they could have been made easily, if they could have been clearly done. So again, I think that I would characterize in summary that the international challenges to the Trump administration are going to be large. I think they're going to be difficult to overcome and I think, because they involve negotiating and working cohesively and patiently with other countries, that neither of those two things look to be present in this administration. So I would say they're going to be, impetuous.
Speaker 1:They're going to be in a rush to get things done. And guess what? I think most of their opponents will know that they need to get these things done and they'll extract too large a price in the negotiation for them to go forward. So they will point the finger at why things don't get done, which is politics 101. I think that we're going to revert back to that.
Speaker 1:I think Trump's going to have a very short window in the first six months and if he wastes any of that time, I think those midterm elections are going to come and all of a sudden, the circus is going to come and all of a sudden the circus is going to come to town and we're going to see the normal election day. I don't want to make a decision, I don't want to do anything. I don't want anything to sacrifice my house seat. So in my mind, the answer is that we will have a hard time finding impact, because unless they can really bear down and try to get something done early on, before people start thinking about the midterm. So that's my two cents, or half half, two and a half cents, anything else you want to add, clem?
Speaker 2:No, I would just say that I think that you know a lot of these domestic. I know we're talking mainly about international, but I think a lot of these domestic issues, which are more at the forefront, are going to create a lot of volatility on the economic front and on the investment front, and I would just recommend that people take a more defensive position with respect to their portfolios.
Speaker 1:I agree, let's do it.
Speaker 2:So thanks everybody the listener.
Speaker 1:And please share and follow and try to let others know about our podcast and we look forward to helping you in 2025. As we get ready, we've got some new ideas and we look forward to our next episode. Thanks, everybody, and have a great Thanksgiving.
People on this episode
Podcasts we love
Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.