This Week in The Lens
The Lens is FrontierView’s weekly newsletter published by our Global Economics and Scenarios team. Each week, The Lens features easily digestible content that dives into the business implications of macroeconomics on the market today.
Economic and geopolitical trends and insights from FrontierView’s Global Economics and Research team
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Three weeks into Trump’s second term, amid the deluge of news and announcements, a picture is starting to emerge of how his presidency will play out.
For one, the man has not lost his knack for unpredictability. From his comments on the mass displacement of Gazans to his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to that of America, Trump really does continue to surprise and wrongfoot observers.
From a policy perspective, it has been a mixed bag. His mission to slash government spending is off to a fast and furious start, and Trump has shown that he is willing to test the limits of his authority. On tariffs, on the other hand, it has been a different story: despite all the noise and headlines, Trump has been more restrained in his implementation of tariffs than his campaign rhetoric suggested: he has held off, for example, on applying tariffs on all of the US’s trading partners. This is something we expected, and are encouraged about.
Beyond Trump, Republican infighting is also emerging as a theme: while House and Senate leaders continue to express optimism about implementing Trump’s policies, there exist some fundamental disagreements within the GOP, from how exactly to pass the agenda through Congress, to the scale of tax cuts, and the fate of politically sensitive programs like Medicaid.
While it is helpful to draw early lessons, it is also worth remembering the first point: Trump is fundamentally unpredictable, and with three years and eleven months to go, what is certain is that many more surprises await us.
Read our insights from this week:
The Author
Antoine Bradley
Senior Analyst, Global Economics