Donald Trump
U.S. voters with investments in stocks and mutual funds have lost considerable confidence in Donald Trump when it comes to their portfolios, with a growing share saying they would alter their asset mix if he’s elected president.
A Bloomberg Politics/Morning Consult poll found registered voters with money in the market narrowly pick the Republican over Democrat Hillary Clinton, 42 per cent to 40 per cent, as the candidate who would be better for their holdings. That’s down from Mr. Trump’s advantage of 50 per cent to 33 per cent when a similar survey was taken in June.
Those with more than $50,000 (U.S.) invested are more likely to view Ms. Clinton as better for their portfolios than Mr. Trump, 46 per cent to 36 per cent. Investors with smaller accounts are more likely to view Mr. Trump as better for their assets, 47 per cent to 31 per cent.
On who would better handle an economic recession as president, Mr. Trump has also lost ground to Ms. Clinton since the June survey. Among registered voters, he beats her on the question by just 2 percentage points, 41 per cent to 39 per cent, compared to 9 points in the previous poll. Almost half of voters say such a downturn is likely in the next four years.
“The dramatic shift in investor confidence away from Trump coincides with his declining poll and favourability ratings since the national conventions ended a few weeks ago,” said Kyle Dropp, co-founder and chief research officer at Morning Consult, a Washington-based media and technology company. “What remains to be seen, though, is if Clinton is able to surpass Trump among this elite group, as he continues to highlight his business acumen as a pillar of his campaign.”
The online survey was conducted Aug. 11-14 using a nationally representative opt-in panel of 2,001 registered voters, including 880 with money in the stock market and mutual funds. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.2 percentage points on the full sample and plus or minus 3.3 percentage points for investors.
Six in 10 voters say they support the so-called Buffett Rule, named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett and backed by Clinton and President Barack Obama, that would tax incomes exceeding $1-million at a minimum rate of 30 per cent.
About the same share, 63 per cent, say they support limits on pay for corporate executives.
Among several other tax and economic proposals from candidates tested in the poll, two-thirds support Clinton’s suggestion to apply a 4 per cent income-tax “surcharge” on earnings above $5-million, which would affect .02 per cent of taxpayers, according to the Democrat’s campaign.
A majority of voters, 54 per cent, oppose Trump’s proposal to lower the top income-tax rate to 33 per cent from 39.6 per cent. A plurality of voters, 44 per cent, disapprove of his call to reduce the corporate tax rate to 15 per cent from 35 per cent.
Voters’ views on the estate tax, which Republicans sometimes call the “death tax,” are mixed, suggesting that many don’t know that it applies only to estates worth more than $5.45-million. Almost half, 49 per cent, say they oppose raising the tax, as Clinton advocates. Trump has proposed doing away with the tax all together.
Yet in response to a subsequent question about whether the tax should be applied to estates worth more than $3.5-million – a bigger share than the law currently covers – as Clinton has proposed, 53 per cent say they support the idea.
Clinton plans to contrast her tax plan with Trump’s at a stop in Cleveland on Wednesday, according to her campaign, which says Trump’s family could get a $4-billion tax break if the estate tax is eliminated and if Trump’s claim of a $10-billion net worth is true. (The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates his wealth at $3-billion.)
Market Outlook
With U.S. stocks touching record highs in recent days, voters are divided on whether they agree with Mr. Trump’s recent assessment that the market is a “big bubble.” More than a third agree with him, while 31 per cent disagree and another 30 per cent are unsure.
Voters are equally divided on where they think the stock market will be a year from now. Thirty per cent say they expect equities to be somewhat or much higher, while 29 per cent say about the same and 14 per cent say somewhat or much lower.
In the eyes of market participants, Mr. Trump’s candidacy may be creating a greater sense of uncertainty as the November election gets closer. Almost a third of voters who invest, 32 per cent, say they would alter their investments if he were elected president, up from 26 per cent in June. If Ms. Clinton were elected, 27 per cent of voters who invest say they would change their mix, down 1 percentage point from the last survey.
Cash and gold are the top choices for those who say they would alter their investments based on the outcome of the election – a small subset of the poll’s participants. Both assets are traditionally viewed as a place of safety at times of uncertainty.
Half who would make changes following a Trump election say they would invest less in the U.S. stock market, while 54 per cent say so among those who would make a change following a Clinton win.
On questions that touch on the issue of income inequality, almost two-thirds of voters say they support an income-tax system that taxes higher incomes at higher rates. Almost half, 45 per cent, support the idea of the government providing everyone with a guaranteed minimum income.
By a 69-to-21-per cent margin, voters strongly back raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour. The current federal wage floor is $7.25 an hour.
Asked to review seven issues being debated in the campaign and pick the one most important to them as they vote for federal offices including their congressional representatives, a third of voters selected economic issues. That was followed by security issues (24 per cent), seniors’ issues (14 per cent), health care (11 per cent), education (5 per cent), and women’s issues and energy (4 per cent each).
Almost half of voters, 49 per cent, say they’d support former President Bill Clinton advising his wife on economic policy, should she win the White House, while 34 per cent oppose that idea.
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A $46-billion Finnish fund manager is very worried about Trump
There’s at least one fund manager who’s very worried about the possibility of Donald Trump becoming the next U.S. president.
Risto Murto, the chief executive officer of Finland’s Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Co., which oversees €41-billion ($59.5-billion Canadian), says any conventional assumptions on monetary policy, the size of the U.S. budget deficit and the geopolitical landscape go out the window if Mr. Trump wins. He warns that the surprise outcome of Britain’s June vote to leave the European Union should be a lesson to those who say it won’t happen.
“If Trump wins the U.S. presidential elections, it will definitely have an impact on monetary policy. With Hillary Clinton, it would be business as usual. With Trump, it’s totally different,” Mr. Murto said in an interview in Helsinki.
“It’s very hard to predict what will happen if he wins. If we take his proposals at face value, then that means the U.S. will suddenly have a deficit the size of Greece’s,” he said. “How things will go with Trump remains an open question and the risk is that we get something similar to what happened with Brexit, namely that we’re underestimating things.”
A key concern is how a President Trump would tackle the Federal Reserve, Mr. Murto said. The self-described billionaire has said he would probably replace Fed chair Janet Yellen when her term ends in 2018.
“That’s already quite drastic,” Mr. Murto said.
Trump has accused Yellen of having political motives for waiting with interest rate increases. Her plan is to ensure “the next guy or person who takes over as president could have a real problem,” Trump told Bloomberg Politics in October.
Then there’s fiscal policy. “If one assumes that Trump is actually able to execute his policy, that means that fiscal policy will become extremely expansionary, which would imply a need for a more restrictive monetary policy. That’s not something the market is pricing in at this point, and I hope they end up being right,” Murto said.
The real estate mogul and reality television personality has referred to his package of proposals as an opportunity for America to go through an “economic renewal.” He wants to cut taxes more than his Democratic opponent and to impose a moratorium on new agency regulations, measures his advisers estimate will help boost U.S. economic growth to 4 per cent annually. An expansion rate at that level will help limit the revenue cost of Trump’s tax plan, they say.
The Republican nominee also plans to impose curbs on trade, including extracting the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Clinton has also said she can’t support the TPP, in part because it doesn’t do enough to support American workers.
“The biggest geopolitical risk as I see it is the risk of populism,” Murto said. “If the U.S. chooses to elect a populist president, the implications can be even more concrete than with Brexit. It means that the golden era of globalization and the free flow of capital and trade are now in danger.”
Murto says he ultimately expects the U.S. system of checks and balances to ensure that economic policy doesn’t end in chaos. “We still have a great deal of trust in the U.S. private sector,” he said. “We still believe that they have enough checks and balances in place.”
But the prospect of some form of global monetary policy normalization may ultimately be a distant one.
“One market that was giving us a little bit of hope was the U.S., but now even that is a question mark,” Murto said.
JOHN MCCORMICK
Bloomberg News
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