Latest news with #AndrewJackson
CNBC
2 hours ago
- Business
- CNBC
10 ways the 'Trump discount' is hurting the stock market
We keep getting thrown off, and the lack of predictability is driving investors elsewhere. Do we really think the economies in Europe are doing that well? Is Italy on fire? Spain soaring? No. But what they do have is consistency , even if it is the consistency of mediocrity. We, on the other hand, have no stability whatsoever because of the incredible, mind-boggling power of the White House. It's so pervasive, frightening even if you care about the U.S. Constitution, that I think the rank-and-file of both parties in the House and the Senate are shocked to their core. We have never seen anything like it. To think, you have to go back to the time of Andrew Jackson's presidency to worry about what happens if the judiciary is disobeyed is a statement for the ages. So, it throws us off. We sit here, agog, as Europe goes higher when we have companies in our stock indexes that are doing much, much better than any of theirs. But it doesn't matter because ours can be taken away with a stroke of President Donald Trump's pen — and don't we know it. 1. Nvidia The fact that Club name Nvidia last Wednesday evening could blow away numbers without China is incredible. The stock showed it Thursday but gave back most of the gains Friday. That's the power of the Trump discount. 2. Retail stocks We have whole swaths of the stock landscape getting held back by the Trump discount. We all were hoping to see that retailers would try to extract discounts from suppliers and then split the tariff pain with the customer. But the president attacks Walmart , perhaps the only company besides Club name Costco , to actually do Trump's bidding. Or what we thought was the president's bidding. Makes me wonder, if something were made in America, could you jack up the price without consequences? Most likely. It's no wonder that Costco's stock shot higher last week. It's the only retailer that's not yet having to raise prices. I don't picture the president being a Costco customer. If he were a member, I bet he would crow about it. The dollar stores may be right in the crosshairs next week. The Street worships them right now. But retail is mighty hard to trust. Thank heavens for Club name TJX , the company behind T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods, which really is cutting prices. The stock is still too low as far as I am concerned. 3. Drugs stocks The drug companies have a huge Trump discount. I didn't pay much attention to the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) this year because I figured that no experimental cancer drug would come to the fore. Who would want to trumpet that? We know the president is adopting a position that's been antithetical to the Republicans, who have fought for years to not allow Medicare to negotiate prices. Now we have little-to-no understanding of what awaits us with pricing — so the price to earnings (PE) multiples keep shrinking. That's the Trump discount. Oh, and heaven forbid, you make vaccines. You are experiencing the wrath of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Glaxo's managed to avoid it, but there's that European halo again. 4. Food stocks On Monday, you will see how hobbled another group has become when Campbell's reports its quarterly results. We don't know what's happening behind the scenes of the soup company, which also owns brands including Prego and Rao's pasta sauces, Goldfish snacks, and V8 drinks. We do know that other food companies have been called in — don't know the names —and told by RFK Jr. to get the coloring out of their foods. 5. Apple Of course, Nvidia isn't the only tech company that's under fire. The Trump discount is crushing fellow Club name Apple . It's bad enough that people believe that Apple has "missed" artificial intelligence even as we know AI is going to go on forever, and Apple will catch up. To be sure, though, it has been slower than everyone would like, so far. But it's the incredibly shocking switch that Apple has endured that's so painful. Did anyone believe that the only goal for the president was to make all iPhones in America? We all got confused. We thought that Trump's goal was to get manufacturing out of China to anywhere. (So many retailers thought that, too.) It turns out that getting out of China to go to another jurisdiction, say India in Apple's case, might have been as bad or worse than staying in China because at least you had a better shot at selling things in China. That's probably no longer the case given the Chinese government's subtle antipathy for those who are pulling out or trying to minimize China. 6. Software stocks So far, software has dodged a bullet, or I should say DOGE'd a bullet because it looks like the federal agencies that were supposed to cut back on vendors saw their havoc wreaked on Booz Allen and not many others. That Club name Salesforce went down, at least, had nothing to do with the Department of Government Efficiency advisory group. It's an alleged sales slowdown from "old" Salesforce that's driving things lower. 7. Google What about the internet? Can you believe how hated Google-parent Alphabet is that the Trump administration has embraced the single most leftwing case brought by the Justice Department against the search giant? The fact that a case that I thought was confiscatory and punitive is being pursued as aggressively as it was under former President Joe Biden is shocking to me. 8. Bank stocks We even have a Trump discount in banking. We've seen almost no let-up in regulation except when it comes to bitcoin , which is rapidly becoming the only entity in this market that has a Trump premium. It is true that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent makes some sense — and is, bizarrely for this administration, consistent — but he's more of a fire fighter than a deregulator. I can only imagine the role he is going to have to play if we get a weaker employment number but a spike in inflation. I don't envy him. 9. M & A I do expect more mergers and acquisitions, and I know that there have been a few already that would have been shot down by the Federal Trade Commission under Biden. But that's a low bar. How can you do deals in a world where nobody can predict cash flow because of how unpredictable the White House is? Call that a huge discount. The stocks reflect it. 10. Energy stocks It's particularly galling when there's no lift in a group that had been hated under Biden: the oil and natural gas industry. I know the Trump administration wants more pipe, but nothing is happening. Trump wants to open up federal lands to drilling, oblivious to the fact that the oil companies haven't been calling for it because it is too expensive. No energy source is getting a break. The president is permitting all sorts of nuclear power, or he says he is. But his Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is the gating factor, and I see no change there. Bottom line The takeaway from all of this is pretty sickening. Take tomorrow. We were going down pretty consistently Friday — and when we got to down 1% on the S & P 500 , the president let it be known that there could be a call soon with Chinese President Xi Jinping . Nevermind, that hours before, he accused China of violating the terms of the trade deal it made with the United States last month. Over the weekend, there was no call with Xi, so I have to figure we just resume Friday's decline from the get-go, barring something positive from the president about American business. Although it's hard to predict what that could be. The funny thing is, I feel very alone writing this stuff, given how rarely it is talked about. But that's part of the overall mystique of the White House. What will happen to you if you speak up? How long will it take to produce a level of retribution to make you the Harvard of the S & P 500? Suffice it to say, there's no let-up in the derision of business and the uncertainty of it all. Sometimes, I pine for the previous administration as Biden knew so little about business that he didn't know who to hate, so he just hated everyone. Nevertheless, unlike Trump, he had ineffectual hatred. No premium. But no discount either. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
Malay Mail
2 days ago
- Business
- Malay Mail
Trump's hubris will deliver the hammer blow to the US and the world — Phar Kim Beng
MAY 31 — In a recent and poignant Time article, economist Richard S Grossman reminds us that when political leaders ignore economists and elevate personal pride over empirical analysis, economic catastrophe is not a possibility — it is a pattern. Grossman draws sharp historical comparisons: President Andrew Jackson's assault on America's nascent central bank and Winston Churchill's ill-fated return to the gold standard. Both decisions were rooted in ideological conviction and personal pride, not evidence or consensus. Now, in the second term of Donald J Trump, history threatens to repeat itself — only this time, on a global scale. Trump's self-referential style of governance risks destabilising not just the US economy but the very foundations of global economic interdependence. His actions echo Jackson and Churchill — but they are also amplified by a kind of hubris unique to this media-saturated age, where policy is shaped more by image than substance, by ego rather than expertise. Jackson's Bank War: Populism at the expense of stability In the early 1830s, President Andrew Jackson waged war against the Second Bank of the United States. Chartered in 1816, the Bank had functioned as a quasi-central institution, restraining inflation and regulating credit. Jackson, however, viewed it as a tool of elite corruption and vetoed its recharter in 1832, allowing it to collapse by 1836. His Specie Circular of 1836, which mandated payment for government land in gold or silver, drained the economy of liquidity and triggered the Panic of 1837. As chronicled by economic historian Peter Temin, this crisis caused GDP to contract by up to 30 per cent, and unemployment skyrocketed. It took nearly a decade for the economy to recover. Jackson's decision, made in defiance of economic logic, delivered a populist victory — and a national calamity. US President Donald Trump speaks with the media after a trip to Pennsylvania, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, US May 30, 2025. — Reuters pic Churchill's gold standard gambit: Pride in decline Fast forward to 1925. Winston Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, committed Britain to returning to the gold standard at its pre-World War I parity — despite explicit warnings from economists like John Maynard Keynes. The move drastically overvalued the pound, making British exports uncompetitive and forcing deflationary wage cuts across industry. The economic damage was severe. Between 1921 and 1929, while the United States and France saw GDP gains of 40–50 per cent, Britain lagged behind with under 20 per cent. The North of England sank into chronic unemployment. The General Strike of 1926 and other labour uprisings signalled deep unrest. Churchill, clinging to imperial nostalgia and fiscal orthodoxy, stayed the course until 1931 — when a full-blown crisis forced Britain off the gold standard. Trump's economic nationalism: Narcissism over institutions Trump's second term is shaping up to be a repetition of these self-inflicted traumas. But while Jackson and Churchill made costly decisions for their nations, Trump's impact is transnational. His economic worldview is transactional, driven by an obsession with trade deficits and a conviction that tariffs will restore American greatness. This belief contradicts decades of economic research. Trade deficits are not inherently harmful, nor do tariffs reduce them. They tend to raise prices for consumers and provoke retaliatory measures from trading partners. Yet Trump persists, seemingly convinced that personal instincts are superior to expert counsel. He routinely undermines institutions like the Federal Reserve, publicly attacks international economic bodies such as the WTO, and treats trade as a zero-sum game. His policies, lacking in consistency and long-term logic, have already begun to erode global trust in American reliability — both as a trade partner and as a steward of global finance. From trade policy to global shockwave The world's largest economy cannot afford this kind of unpredictability. In contrast to Jackson and Churchill — whose economic errors had localised effects — Trump's decisions ripple through complex global supply chains, rattle markets, and stoke geopolitical tensions. His tariff wars have hit not just China but also traditional allies like the European Union, Canada, and Japan. The result? A deeply fragmented global trade environment. Allies no longer assume continuity in American policy. Investment flows hesitate. Emerging markets, many of them reliant on exports, suffer. Trump's economic strategy — fuelled by bravado and nostalgia — is incompatible with the integrated global system the US itself helped create. The theatre of strength, the reality of retreat Richard S Grossman rightly points out that Trump's view of tariffs is rooted in a misunderstanding of history. He romanticises the 19th-century Gilded Age, a time of high tariffs, while overlooking its accompanying instability, monopolism, and deep inequality. Trump's policies risk bringing back that era — not as triumph, but as cautionary tale. What truly binds Jackson, Churchill, and Trump is not simply error, but ego — the conviction that personal willpower can override economic complexity. But in Trump's case, this ego is magnified by media spectacle and a disdain for dissent. His economic policy is crafted not through consultation or deliberation, but through impulse. The coming hammer blow The most dangerous consequence of Trump's economic hubris is not just stagflation or market volatility — it is the collapse of global trust. Trust is the glue of the international economic system. When nations can no longer rely on US commitments, the temptation grows to seek alternatives — whether in digital currencies, alternative trade blocs, or parallel security arrangements. This erosion of trust could mark the twilight of US economic leadership. While the dollar remains dominant and American markets deep, overreach can accelerate decline. The American century — once built on openness, innovation, and stable leadership — now risks ending in retreat, with tariffs not as tools of power but as symbols of decline. Trump's economic nationalism, then, is not just policy. It is performance. And like all performances, it ends. The question is whether the final curtain will fall on American economic primacy — or whether institutions, allies, and economists can intervene in time to prevent the hammer blow from becoming permanent. * Phar Kim Beng, PhD, is professor of Asean studies at the International Islamic University Malaysia. ** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
On This Day, May 30: Donald Trump guilty of 34 felony counts in Stormy Daniels case
On this date in history: In 1431, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen, France, at age 19. She had been convicted of wearing men's clothing. In 1783, the Pennsylvania Evening Post became the first daily newspaper published in the United States. In 1806, future U.S. President Andrew Jackson took part in a duel, killing Charles Dickinson, a Kentucky lawyer who had called Jackson's wife a bigamist. In 1868, the first major Memorial Day observance was held to honor those killed during the Civil War. It was originally known to some as Decoration Day. In 1911, Ray Harroun won the first Indianapolis 500 with an average speed of 74.6 mph. In 1922, the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in Washington. In 1934, the House of Representatives voted to create the Everglades National Park to preserve lands in Florida. President Harry Truman officially dedicated the park in 1947. In 1971, the unmanned U.S. space probe Mariner 9 was launched on a mission to gather scientific data on Mars. It was the first spacecraft to orbit a planet other than Earth. In 1972, three Japanese terrorists used automatic weapons to kill 24 people at the airport in Tel Aviv, Israel. In 2002, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the FBI would have expanded powers to monitor religious, political and other organizations as well as the Internet as a guard against terrorist attacks. In 2012, former Liberian President Charles Taylor, convicted of aiding war crimes, was sentenced to 50 years in prison. In 2021, Hélio Castroneves won the 105th Indy 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It was his record-tying fourth win. Other four-time winners include A.J. Foyt, Al Unser and Rick Mears. In 2024, former President Donald Trump was found guilty on all 34 felony counts against him in his New York hush-money trial involving actor Stormy Daniels. After winning the 2024 presidential election, Trump was sentenced in January 2025 to an unconditional discharge in the case.
Hamilton Spectator
4 days ago
- Business
- Hamilton Spectator
Program gives students some hands-on experience with food systems
From student-run markets to a seed stewardship program, an environmental group is helping kids connect with their community via food. Youth in Food Systems (YFS) started back in 2017 as Waterloo Region School Gardens with the initial focus of building gardens around the region. They have multiple gardens in and around the township, including at John Mahood and Riverside public schools in Elmira. YFS is a program offered by Seeds of Diversity, a seed stewardship organization. Following the success of the garden program, the organization realized there were other efforts they could also be supporting. 'What caused us to switch from building gardens to having several programs we run that are focused on getting youth into learning about and building skills in food systems and exploring careers related to food and food systems,' said YFS program manager Andrew Jackson. In 2021, YFS ran some of its first programs, including its first youth-run market in July. Jackson told The Observer that these markets allow young participants to run all aspects of a farmers' market. They are holding 21 market days across Waterloo Region this year, which sells fresh produce using a pay-what-you-choose model. The produce is grown by youth teams at six school garden spaces and farm partners. 'During the summer, we run three markets where the youth, again, do everything. They talk with the farmers. They think about how to display and price produce, and interact with the customers. We help guide them through that process,' said Jackson. YFS not only expanded the programs it offered, but was also able to expand across Ontario through virtual activities, including their Food Leader Interview Series. They are entering their fifth season of the program in which students across Ontario sit down and interview industry professionals. 'It challenges youth to work on and build their interview skills, think about what it takes to interview and ask good questions. Allowing them to build confidence, they get to interview a food leader somewhere in Canada.' YFS hopes to expand past just Ontario this year by getting six of the 12 interviewers from different provinces and territories for this program season, added Jackson. One program that Jackson is excited about is YFS's Seed Stewardship Program, which allows students to learn about seed stewardship and provide seeds for the following years. It currently provides seed for schools in the Waterloo Region, but they're looking to expand. 'One hope we have for the seed stewards program is that next year we're able to open it up so that schools and educators and youth outside of Waterloo Region can request seeds and get seeds from it, that we can just support a lot more schools in being able to access these resources,' he said. They have created an inter-school seed library with seeds available to school communities and youth in Waterloo Region. 'We hope that next year we can hopefully double it again, or at least be able to continue to expand the number of schools that see this,' said Jackson. 'We want to give them as much support in making that accessible so they can have the biggest impact on their youth.' All these programs have in common that they emphasize teaching youth hands-on skills and communication, added Jackson. 'Skill-building is 100 per cent a key focus in every program. Some of the programs require more of the staff, jumping in and making sure that they meet their goals if they need to. But the ultimate goal is to have youth take on and lead with them as much as we can.' Jackson added that one of the major goals of the program is for the youth involved to take these skills into the future, no matter what they do. 'Our hope is really that youth build skills, build knowledge that then benefits them in the long run, past when they go to university or when they go into the trades or when they get a job after school.' More information can be found online at .
Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Opinion - Keeping terrorists off Airbnb shouldn't undermine Americans' privacy
There's a certain irony in completing the financial surveillance procedures the government requires Airbnb to impose on its hosts. Right along with snapping and submitting a selfie for automatic verification against the required government-issued identification, Airbnb occasionally asks for a guest's country of citizenship, too. It is literally the United States, but is it really the United States? In so many ways, we have become a banal pseudo-security state that betrays our founding ideals. Sure, 'the land of the free and the home of the brave' has always been self-flattering and aspirational. The line was lent to our national anthem from Francis Scott Key's poem, 'Defence of Fort M'Henry,' recalling the War of 1812. That war involved actual death, destruction and threats to the territorial integrity of the United States. The English captured Washington and burned the Capitol before American victories at Baltimore and Plattsburgh set the British back. Andrew Jackson led American forces in repelling a British attack on New Orleans. If you could transport the minds and collective spirit of those Americans to this day, would they have meekly submitted their data to administrative security systems that treat them as prospective suspects in relatively pitiable crimes and wrongs? There is a lot packed into such a broad question. Let's sharpen it through the language of risk management. In true wars, the nation-state suffers existential risk, literal threats to control of its territory. How we scope conflicts has a lot to say about such things, but arguably there has not been a threat of that direct significance to the U.S. since, well, the War of 1812. The two World Wars triggered an expansive sense of our national interest, which is now on the outs. Perhaps the threat of nuclear war counted as an existential threat — global annihilation, in that case, until the Soviet Union fell. When terrorism brought itself into sharp focus a quarter century ago, we figuratively declared a figurative war on it, which, for all the incoherence of fighting a strategy, has been a substantial success. Witness the implicit downgrade terrorism has suffered through the addition of drug cartels to the ranks of 'terrorists.' Doing so keeps the category alive. Many meanings can be poured into the recently declassified word salad called the 'Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Domestic Terrorism.' Mine is that the domestic terrorism threat is low enough that we can use it to push AmeriCorps. Financial surveillance under the Bank Secrecy Act came into existence out of concern for tax evasion through Swiss bank accounts. Because Congress delegated broad authority in that statute, bureaucratic hands have molded financial surveillance to meet every moment, including making it a part of the counterterrorism arsenal when our politics called for that. The title of this post is a risk manager's absurdity. Terrorists don't use Airbnb to gain an advantage over our society, not to an extent worth spending time and compromising America's privacy and digital security. But Airbnb is every bit a part of the financial surveillance infrastructure. Our security state has become utterly banal. With security benefits vanishingly small, the threats are somewhat sizable. Up front might be the identity fraud risk bestowed on every Airbnb host now that they have submitted key identity documents digitally to yet another database. There is the remote but plausible risk that mass financial surveillance will be turned over to the use of government control in our uncertain future. We have only to look to China's 'social credit' system to see what that looks like. There are many ways to think about all this. One is that our society has not matured into its media environment. Access to imagery from every big auto accident is available nationwide. Any urban explosion we can now see from six different angles. Those dynamics make us white-knuckled exaggerators of security risk. Our politicians and bureaucrats have every reason to indulge us and try to drive risk, impossibly, to zero. In their media environment, there is essentially no incentive to man up and put security threats in perspective. I say 'man up' in the non-gender-specific sense, of course, because it could as easily be a leading woman who calls out the absurdities and tells our nation to grow a pair. But I look forward to the day when we put aside false machismo addressed to inflated threats, cancel misdirected domestic surveillance programs and stand tall, the soil under our feet again constituting a land of the free and home of the brave. Jim Harper is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, focusing on privacy issues. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
