On Monday night we witnessed the first debate between both 2016 presidential nominees: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Honestly, I didn’t have any high expectations for either candidate, and I knew I wasn’t going to hear any new information that would make me completely change my feelings on either one of the candidates.
I was mostly going into the debate knowing that it would be a good source of entertainment and further prove the circus that has become the presidential elections.
Throughout the debate, Clinton and Trump continued to reiterate their plans for presidency, while both nominees threw in some jabs in order to dehumanize each other.
At this point in the election, Clinton and Trump really need to be seen as human beings.
Trump focused on his plan of shifting America back to the past so we can regain the “American Dream” mentality, while Clinton’s plan focuses on staying complacent, otherwise known as following in Obama’s footsteps.
Regardless of whoever takes over the White House in 2017, they’ll have an obvious effect on America’s economy…
Trade & Taxes
Trump remains a strong advocate for bringing everything back to America. He plans on lowering corporate taxes, so companies won’t move their operations overseas in order to have a tax base in a country with lower taxes.
Essentially, he’d like to tariff any company that chooses to move its businesses to other countries. That way companies will have an incentive to keep their businesses in America.
However, this would significantly increase how much Americans pay for ordinary goods and would result in a slowdown in the economy.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says that Trump’s policies would cause a recession even sooner than the 2018–2020 time frame that Moody’s Analytics is predicting.
Trump went further on to attack Clinton about how her husband (while President in 1993) signed NAFTA, which Trump believes to be the “single worst trade deal ever approved in this country.”
Clinton doesn’t believe that we should shut out the rest of the world. Having a balance of imports and exports is what makes up a healthy economy. And we should be open to trading with the other 95% of the world.
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that under a Trump tax plan, the national debt would increase to 105% of GDP in 2026, while Clinton’s plan would cause GDP to rise to 86%.
Jobs
The stability of the economy is a huge concern for every American. Slowly but surely, the economy has been regaining its strength from its previous recession.
Achieving a healthy economy relies deeply on jobs. If people are employed and earning respectable wages, then they’ll contribute to economic growth.
Clinton’s plan is realistic for the most part. A lot of her plan is very similar to the past eight years of Obama’s presidency.
Her plan includes building roads, more government benefits, raising taxes on the wealthy, increasing the number of small business, and shifting us towards becoming a clean energy superpower.
Unfortunately, Hillary will have a hard time getting these types of programs approved by Congress. For the past eight years, Obama has been working towards getting these types of programs approved by Congress, and they’ve yet to budge.
Throughout the debate, Trump continually stressed that we need to bring manufacturing jobs back to America, and in order to do that, we need to bring the top businesses back to America.
It’s true: manufacturing was once the backbone of this country, and I’m not saying it can’t be the backbone again, but there’s a lot more to this country than manufacturing jobs.
We’ve been evolving into a technological society — we need to start emphasizing those and other prevalent skills in our school systems.
Relying on manufacturing jobs to bring life back into the country is a heavy load to carry.
As to Be Expected
And of course, both candidates needed to portray the other as a liar who has their own selfish motives ahead of anything else.
There were a few low blows from each nominee. Clinton brought up the fact that Trump is holding back on making his tax returns public. She hopes to remind the public that he’s hiding something.
Trump rebutted by saying he’ll turn over his tax returns when Hillary turns over the 33,000 emails that she deleted while she was Secretary of State. Again, jabbing the knife a little deeper… reminding voters that Hillary was careless with national security and shouldn’t be trusted.
A Clinton presidency would most likely result in an economy that slowly improves but still verges on decline.
Throughout the debate, Trump tried to sell the American public on his ability to be the president because he’s a businessman — that he knows money and knows how to get the country out of debt… that he’s not a politician, and that’s what America needs.
All in all, both of these candidates make it nearly impossible to feel optimistic about the economy and its ability to grow in the way we need it to right now.
If Hillary wins, we can look forward to economic complacency, and if Trump wins, we can look forward to more debt.
Until next time,
Jennifer Clark
Pro Trader Today