Final Acts
Bloomberg has an interesting article worth discussing: Lame-Duck Trump Has Potential to Upset Markets With Final Acts
After President-elect Joe Biden’s win is certified, Trump will enter the so-called lame duck phase of his presidency with a capacity for disruption that is formidable. Any number of executive decisions might leave investors on tenterhooks. Already, he’s ousted his defense chief and remade the leadership at the Pentagon.
Disputes with China spanning commerce, technology and human rights, the trade spat with Europe, and the upcoming deadline on U.S. government funding in December all offer the potential for market-moving action. The current Congress remains in place through the end of the year. Earlier this week, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said the Trump administration is “not finished yet” with getting tough on China.
“An aggrieved and outgoing President Trump may not be in a very cooperative mood, resulting in a shutdown-standoff that could bruise an already ailing U.S. economy burdened with an ongoing pandemic,” wrote Gabrielle Debinski of GZERO Media, a subsidiary of the Eurasia Group political risk consultancy. “The upcoming lame-duck session could be more tumultuous than ever.”
Domestic political maneuvers and presidential pardons are a traditional feature of lame-duck periods of departing American leaders, and one that on the face of it shouldn’t have much market impact.
But Mark Tinker, a former Axa SA strategist and founder of Market Thinking Ltd., raises the possibility that an attempt to settle scores with political insiders might lead to some disruption.
“One intriguing suggestion is that between now and inauguration, Trump, with little to lose, could simply de-classify large amounts of documents pertaining to the activities of what he has always referred to as ‘The Swamp,’” Tinker wrote in a note Tuesday. “Whether the markets are prepared for that remains to be seen.”
The Threats
- China: Ho hum. Trump has escalated threats against China for years.
- Pardons: Every president has a barrage of poor pardons and a few good ones they should have made earlier. Snowden deserves a pardon but won’t get one.
- Declassification: Please do! The more the better.
- Covid package: If a bipartisan package emerges, Trump will either sign it or risk being overridden.
- War: That is the key thing the article did not discuss but should have. Who really knows what Trump might try in Iran?
Biden can and hopefully will reverse the Iran embargo but he cannot reverse bombings.
Declassification would be welcome and most of the other threats, except war, Biden can easily reverse.
Mish
Georgia will certify their vote on the 20th….one week from today. I expect Trump to concede by then, because the only Trump with marginal good sense (Ivanka) is encouraging him to bow out. The sons are holding out to be made official Crown Princes of Trumplandia.
reading the headlines. republican resistance to declaring biden the president elect has really begun to crack. it started with karl rove, but now lindsey graham and others are chiming in. its only going to grow. trump’s position is not tenable
Mish hits the bullseye with #5. Whether covert or overt, I’d say it is pretty likely that Trump does something to Iran in late Dec/early Jan and leaves it to Biden to clean up the mess, if that is even possible. Good way to derail whatever Biden’s 100 day agenda is.
I am all for declassification, but you have to do it in a way the protects the sources, if you reveal sources people die and no one wants to help you get intelligence the next time you need it.
And then there was that Trump quote about leaving the country…
Maybe he can a lead a mission to Mars.
Prepare the presidential trebuchet!
If Trump goes true scorched Earth, any chance his cabinet will A25 him asap, giving Pence 60 days in charge so that Biden can get a true transition without chaos?
They’re all kooks, and will applaud as their world burns around them, blaming the ebil demobcrats for anything that gets singed.
At some point (I think we’re already there), the behind-the-scenes GOP is looking for a way to flush Trump and salvage the Senate this January and 2022 midterms.
What if tRump imprisons Biden for some fabricated reason? After all tRump is still the president and Barr would do anything for tRump.
Josh Marshall (TPM) on Trump…
…Trump is doing everything he can to maintain dominance over the Republican party. If that helps him throw out the results of the election and remain in power, great. But if not, creating a bloody shirt narrative and holding out the possibility of another run in 2024 makes anyone who tries to rise to leadership something close to a traitor. We’re back to Will Saletan’s line from 2016: the GOP is a failed state and Donald Trump is its warlord. Maintaining dominance of the party means he keeps all the power, has all the access to money and ups the stakes for any effort to hold him or his family liable for crimes committed in office.
If he keeps this crap up he’s going to hand the Dems 2 Senate seats.
And probably turn me into a Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz supporter. Ick.
Whether this is his master plan or not, this is exactly the effect. My sowing confusion and taking advantage of the rachet effect he is maintaining power of the GOP for the foreseeable future, the warlord analogy is perfect. He is actually looking at further atomizing the GOP to a super committed base of supporters, he will actually only further speed up the irrelevance of the GOP as a national party, in other words he is causing real damage to the party in order to gain for himself.
big opening here for driverless trucks from Amazon and tesla. Oil economy may die a quick death.
Yeah – truckers and coalminers…. Dems need a plan to address americans displaced and disenfranchised by technology change. Letting the free market address is a recipe for disaster – Austrian economics is a failure in this regard, and is a significant contributing factor to Trumpism.
That strike is plain stupid… Why would you try to hold commerce hostage just because your cult leader lost the election? Again, it is stupid. Self driving trucks will not strike just because Biden or the Big Looser is president…We all know that self driving is here to stay…Heck, self driving will definitely cut the deaths on the road. So, fighting against such technology is also stupid.
As long as they remember they can’t collect unemployment benefits any ‘strike’ will be short lived.
Yeah, get your low-skilled ass fired in THIS economy. There are millions that want your job.
Once Trump accepts that he lost, there are three priorities:
The desire to take back the white house in 2024 should lessen the risk of Trump purposefully doing anything that is really harmful. Thus, I am more concerned about total disfunction in Washington over the next 2 months than anything he specifically does.
Sealed indictment at SDNY waiting for him on January 20th at 12a.m.
“Sealed indictment at SDNY”
Is this a fact or partisan hope?
We’ve had way too much of the latter “on both sides” lately.
Biden already accomplished every good thing he’s likely to accomplish…and that’s only one thing….beat Trump.
But I wouldn’t look for him to give the far left of his party too much….other than optics and lip service.
He will have the most “diverse and inclusive” cabinet of all time, no doubt. He will take the knee and talk about racial justice….but I don’t look for hime to get behind defunding the police…which is madness. I doubt we see any real push for reparations for slavery. I doubt he will condone Antifa violence and call it “mostly peaceful protest”.
He is going to change the anti-imm
igration agenda…but hopefully not a blanket return to open borders…we’ll have to see how far that goes. That’s where the mostly radical changes might occur….and that would just be a return to Obama policies.
Trump blocked the progress that was occurring on drug decriminalization….hopefully Biden changes that back to the way Obama was headed, because it was good policy.
The very interesting thing I heard..which probably won’t happen because it makes too much sense…is that Biden could bring in Mitt Romney to address healthcare reform. I think that would be genius….so I don’t expect it.
I don’t think Trump cares about #3.
In fact I think those GA Senate seats are his hostages to keep the GOP in line. They’d otherwise be telling him good riddance and giving their congrats to Biden by now.
He’ll let the hostages die unless there’s something in it for him.
You might be right….though I think senate control is key to his ability to win in 2024. Republican strategy is dependent on ability to block as much of Dems initiatives as possible to make them look ineffective. If people don’t see benefits to electing Biden, they will be more disenfranchised, which will help trump. Also, republicans in Georgia are very pro trump from what I understand, so a win win be symbolic of the strength of his base.
Beyond the “honeymoon,” I don’t see how the voting coalition that put Biden in the WH holds. That’s because it wasn’t people voting for him, it was people voting against Trump.
From the left (AOC’s Squad, BLM, Antifa, Bernie Bros) to the Dem base (teacher’s unions, other unions) to the center/right (Lincoln Repubs, independents who lean conservative, suburban white women who care about school choice and crime), I just see can’t see a path for Biden/Harris to not piss off the people who put them there.
You can’t defund police, enforce laws, and win back the police unions. You can’t keep schools closed, pay teachers, introduce a BLM/social-equity curriculum and keep mom happy.
Biden has an impossible task. I think between the dumpster fire he’s inheriting and the pandemic, the country and press will give him lots of grace in 2021. By 2022 that’ll start falling apart.
1a – avoid embarrassing details of personal life and finances being disclosed to the public.
back home
full service hooray
Great Trip to Zion but headed back tomorrow night
Was in Zion and Bryce over Christmas/New Years a couple years back after 12 inches of snow. Amazing!
I enjoy the updates on your hikes. I’m a great fan of the late Ed Abbey…but I’ve never spent much time in southern Utah myself….One of my kids has…the rock climber….the one I call ‘adventurer daughter’…….
Based on the odd personnel changes at the Pentagon I expect a declassification and dump of sensitive intelligence. Trump is consumed by proving he’s been maligned by the Russia investigation and impeachment. Pardons is the next obvious item. Other than that I expect him to do even less than he’s done the last 3.5 years. He’ll tweet and play golf. I expect he’ll set up a PAC and plan his after life
Yeah, I kinda think you’re exactly right: Golf as much as possible, tweet stupid stuff about how the election was stolen, go home to Florida for Christmas and maybe never return to DC, sign a bunch of pardons (including a veiled one for himself), and call it a wrap.
Hasn’t spoken in front of a camera in a week. I get the sense that the fraud narrative isn’t playing out, and he may be coming to terms that nothing will save him now.
I pulled up Trump’s calendar. It’s been empty since November 3rd. Basically golf and nothing. Today was an exception where he showed up at a veterans day event. Unless he’s spending all his time plotting he’s lame duck now
Trump’s a coward. He won’t do anything but sulk for the next 9 weeks, except for maybe tweeting insults to his detractors and letting his countrymen die of Covid.
He won’t be too crazy as he’s been grooming his kids and son in law Jared for the job. If he goes out with really bad behavior then those kids never get to take over the empire.
He only cares about the kids for what they can do to protect him.
I’m not sure what Trump might do….but I sure don’t trust him…mostly I think he’d like to cheat and steal the election.
But once that string plays out, he might do something really stupid. He is a very delusional man….or just extremely dishonest. One or the other ( or both) and neither is great.
And not sure how I feel about a “retired” President Trump. And I’m not sure even the Secret Service can completely protect him from novichock and polonium.
lots of premature wishful thinking here
The political focus during the lame duck session will be on the run-off elections in Georgia for 2 Senate seats.
Trump’s best bet is to say nothing so as not to destroy Republicans’ chances at winning at least one of those seats.
Congress (Pelosi) will propose a big, vote getting, COVID stimulus package. The Republican controlled Senate will have to be clever in how they deal with it; such as offering more individual support as long as there is no money going directly to states for bailouts.
I’m sure the overturning of the election is top of his mind.
He’s convinced it was stolen and is trying to set the stage for no turnover of power. After all, he is the favorite of the people.
He’s just working on replacements of the doubters and lily-livered.
There are way too many old, obsolete (some/many of them), anti-democratic laws on the books. Who the fuck knows what Fat Donnie from Queens will try?
FDR interned a whole class of people for no good reason.
Lincoln did some nasty stuff during the War of Northern Aggression.
Wilson. Duh.
Donnie Fatso is desparate. Letitia James is chomping at the bit.
The Russians will want their loans repaid.
Trump will be bankrupt soon after January 20th and Deustch Bank will seize his properties where they can. He has been making interest only payments for nearly a decade. Additionally SDNY has a case sitting on their desk ready to file for tax fraud on the entire Trump organization and individuals and they will owe back taxes, penalties and interest.
martial law
I’m not really worried about Trump’s final months, at least not domestically. He can issue pardons, declassify whatever, or take as many shots at the blue team as he wants.
The only concern is that he might do something stupid to further antagonize Iran. The Saudis are already publicly calling for this and we all know Israel would be thrilled too.
If Trump goes down this road to goad Iran, I hope his followers recognize how useless he looks. Both the Israelis and Saudis welcomed Biden quickly (especially Israel) so if Trump still treats them like his best friends it would look more pathetic than ever.
Iran seems pretty capable of goading right back… easy when your adversary is a thin skinned toddler.
iran very surprisingly chose not to retaliate for Soleimani. they could of easily of detonated half of saudi arabias oil production in a matter of weeks. It proves that Iran is more rationale and composed than president diapers. any war he wants to escalate with iran will be met with HARSH backlash from the american electorate including people who voted for him. Only sick weirdos like Flynn and Bolton want that carnage.
We don’t know if Iran will or won’t retaliate because of Soleimani’s assassination. It took them five months to retaliate for the US Navy shooting down an Iranian passenger flight in 1988. It takes time and patience to retaliate.
I’m less worried about Trump starting a new war than I am about Biden, since there was a new war or “regime change” very often when he was VP. I expect him to make a second attempt to ruin Syria.
Trump unfollowed Netanyahu on Twitter after he congratulated Biden.
Ooooh, that’ll show him! Yet Trump would still bend over backwards for Israel and Netanyahu will keep doing whatever he wants with impunity.
Someone needs to tell Don that there’s more to life than social media, sanctions, and Wall St cheerleading.