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How Trump 2.0 is undoing Trump 1.0
How Trump 2.0 is undoing Trump 1.0

Yahoo

time8 hours ago

  • Business
  • Yahoo

How Trump 2.0 is undoing Trump 1.0

A version of this story appeared in CNN's What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here. The 47th president is in many ways a different man than the 45th president, even though they are both Donald J. Trump. He's unafraid to swear in public or on social media and he's more emboldened, willing to directly challenge the Constitution and the courts and capable of demanding more loyalty from Republicans. But Trump 2.0 is also in direct competition with his former self in several important ways, starting with the fact that he can't seem to remember appointing people he now loathes. Opposing his own appointees Trump's aides are looking at ways to oust Jay Powell, the Fed chairman Trump nominated to the role during his first term. Trump told House Republicans he had drafted a letter to take the unprecedented step of firing the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Markets beware. At the White House Wednesday, Trump seemed to forget that he had nominated Powell. 'I was surprised he was appointed,' Trump said. 'I was surprised, frankly, that Biden put him in and extended him, but they did.' Biden renominated Powell. Either Trump can't remember or he is willing himself to forget his role in the process. If Trump ultimately tests the Fed's independence and tries to fire Powell, he'll point to a building renovation that got underway during Trump's own first term. Before Trump took office for the second time, the FBI director appointed during his first term, Christopher Wray, quit early rather than wait to be fired. On the Supreme Court, CNN has reported on Trump's gripes behind closed doors about his nominee Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in particular. Undoing his own trade deal When Trump today threatens burdensome tariffs on Canada and Mexico, who he accuses of 'taking advantage' of previous US presidents, he's also talking about his prior self. Trump's first-term administration negotiated the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement — a reboot of NAFTA. Back then, it was hailed as the major accomplishment of his trade policy. Evolutions on crypto and social media He has also evolved on issues including bitcoin and cryptocurrency, although that could have something to do with his family's business interests. And Trump used to support banning TikTok in the US, but now, after making inroads with young men in the last election, he very much wants a US-based company to step up and buy the platform. 'He's undoing himself with a vengeance,' the CNN presidential historian Tim Naftali told me. The relatively moderate mainstream policy hands who marked the first Trump term are on the outs. Outsiders and MAGA figureheads are in. 'Donald Trump clearly is angry about what his advisers forced him to do in the first term,' Naftali said, pointing specifically to trade policy. 'His approach to Canada and Mexico is inexplicable given his first term, unless you realize that he wasn't happy with what he ended up doing in the first term,' he said. Vaccines are another Trump 2.0 correction Naftali said Trump deserves credit for Operation Warp Speed, the effort to quickly develop a Covid-19 vaccine at a time when the country was largely shut down by the pandemic. But rather than build on that legacy, Trump selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his Health and Human Services director, elevating a vaccine skeptic to a top policy role. Kennedy fired all the members of a CDC vaccine advisory panel and brought in vaccine skeptics to review the vaccine schedule. I put the idea of Trump 2.0 correcting Trump 1.0 to a number of CNN reporters and anchors who pay close attention to foreign affairs, the economy and the environment. On world affairs, he's more erratic and is taking less advice CNN's Jim Sciutto, who wrote a book, The Madman Theory, about Trump's first-term foreign policy, notes that Trump is more aggressive this time, and appears to be more inclined to listen to his own gut. On trade, he's contradicting himself Allison Morrow, who writes the Nightcap newsletter for CNN Business, agrees there's a difference to this president, but he remains the same in one very important way. Cutting Medicaid rather than repealing Obamacare Trump and his aides also clearly learned from his first term. Instead of trying repeatedly to repeal Obamacare, they cut future spending from Medicaid, which will have a similar effect by pushing millions of lower-income Americans off their health insurance in the years to come. Turning words into actions CNN's Chief Media Analyst Brian Stelter noted that in this term, Trump is acting more forcefully against news outlets. This is what four years of prep looks like CNN's Senior White House Correspondent Kristen Holmes isn't sure Trump is undoing his first term as much as he is better prepared this time. Holmes' point carries over to immigration, Trump's signature issue. He is more effectively carrying through with mass deportations than he did in his first term. With a more pliant Congress, he has money for his border wall, the go-ahead to turn ICE into the nation's largest and best-funded police force, and the help of Republican governors to create new detention centers to hold undocumented immigrants — not just violent criminals — he wants to deport. When he leaves office, the country will look a lot different after his second term than it did after his first.

Trump 2.0 is correcting Trump 1.0
Trump 2.0 is correcting Trump 1.0

CNN

timea day ago

  • Business
  • CNN

Trump 2.0 is correcting Trump 1.0

The 47th president is in many ways a different man than the 45th president, even though they are both Donald J. Trump. He's unafraid to swear in public or on social media and he's more emboldened, willing to directly challenge the Constitution and the courts and capable of demanding more loyalty from Republicans. But Trump 2.0 is also in direct competition with his former self in several important ways, starting with the fact that he can't seem to remember appointing people he now loathes. Trump's aides are looking at ways to oust Jay Powell, the Fed chairman Trump nominated to the role during his first term. Trump told House Republicans he had drafted a letter to take the unprecedented step of firing the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Markets beware. At the White House Wednesday, Trump seemed to forget that he had nominated Powell. 'I was surprised he was appointed,' Trump said. 'I was surprised, frankly, that Biden put him in and extended him, but they did.' Biden renominated Powell. Either Trump can't remember or he is willing himself to forget his role in the process. If Trump ultimately tests the Fed's independence and tries to fire Powell, he'll point to a building renovation that got underway during Trump's own first term. Before Trump took office for the second time, the FBI director appointed during his first term, Christopher Wray, quit early rather than wait to be fired. On the Supreme Court, CNN has reported on Trump's gripes behind closed doors about his nominee Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in particular. When Trump today threatens burdensome tariffs on Canada and Mexico, who he accuses of 'taking advantage' of previous US presidents, he's also talking about his prior self. Trump's first-term administration negotiated the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement — a reboot of NAFTA. Back then, it was hailed as the major accomplishment of his trade policy. He has also evolved on issues including bitcoin and cryptocurrency, although that could have something to do with his family's business interests. And Trump used to support banning TikTok in the US, but now, after making inroads with young men in the last election, he very much wants a US-based company to step up and buy the platform. 'He's undoing himself with a vengeance,' the CNN presidential historian Tim Naftali told me. The relatively moderate mainstream policy hands who marked the first Trump term are on the outs. Outsiders and MAGA figureheads are in. 'Donald Trump clearly is angry about what his advisers forced him to do in the first term,' Naftali said, pointing specifically to trade policy. 'His approach to Canada and Mexico is inexplicable given his first term, unless you realize that he wasn't happy with what he ended up doing in the first term,' he said. Naftali said Trump deserves credit for Operation Warp Speed, the effort to quickly develop a Covid-19 vaccine at a time when the country was largely shut down by the pandemic. But rather than build on that legacy, Trump selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his Health and Human Services director, elevating a vaccine skeptic to a top policy role. Kennedy fired all the members of a CDC vaccine advisory panel and brought in vaccine skeptics to review the vaccine schedule. I put the idea of Trump 2.0 correcting Trump 1.0 to a number of CNN reporters and anchors who pay close attention to foreign affairs, the economy and the environment. CNN's Jim Sciutto, who wrote a book, The Madman Theory, about Trump's first-term foreign policy, notes that Trump is more aggressive this time, and appears to be more inclined to listen to his own gut. SCIUTTO: In his second term, President Trump is proving less likely to be deterred by advisers or advice against his more aggressive moves in international affairs. And, so for instance, while (former White House Chief of Staff) Gen. John Kelly and (former national security adviser) John Bolton were able to counsel him away from summarily withdrawing from NATO in 2018, many — including those who served in his first administration — fear his current advisers won't stand in the way. From foreign officials, the concern I hear most often is one of uncertainty. From tariffs to military support for Ukraine, they express doubts that what the president says today will hold tomorrow. Trade deals become fleeting agreements subject to where the financial markets are on any given day or how the White House reads domestic politics. And support for Ukraine — which European officials see as central to the security of the whole continent — rises and falls based on Trump's current interpretation of where Putin stands on peace talks. Trump has proven his willingness to make hard decisions his predecessors avoided — the US strikes on Iran stand out. What observers at home and abroad are waiting for is a consistent and predictable worldview. Allison Morrow, who writes the Nightcap newsletter for CNN Business, agrees there's a difference to this president, but he remains the same in one very important way. MORROW: I agree with Tim Naftali, though I wonder how conscious Trump is of his attempts to undo USMCA, which itself was just a reshuffling of NAFTA. The Trump 2.0 tariff strategy, such as it is, doesn't make any sense in practice. If you really want to use tariffs to bring back US manufacturing, you can't be cutting deals, because then there's no incentive for companies to invest in domestic production. We've written about the contradictions at the heart of his tariff ideology dozens of times at this point, and there's just no response from the White House about how they think they can make tariffs do everything they claim, all at once. I think the thing that jumps out at me between Trump 1.0 and 2.0 is what hasn't changed. Fundamentally, I think Trump wants to avoid accountability. And that's why he has sort of slow-walked the tariffs into the market's collective consciousness, and backed off when the bond markets shuddered. He's testing to see what he can get away with without causing a financial or economic catastrophe. Trump and his aides also clearly learned from his first term. Instead of trying repeatedly to repeal Obamacare, they cut future spending from Medicaid, which will have a similar effect by pushing millions of lower-income Americans off their health insurance in the years to come. CNN's Chief Media Analyst Brian Stelter noted that in this term, Trump is acting more forcefully against news outlets. STELTER: Instead of merely tweeting insults at independent media outlets, he is taking concrete actions to penalize those outlets, while at the same time promoting and empowering MAGA commentators. Take the media story in the news right now: the imminent defunding of PBS and NPR. In Trump's first term, he harshly criticized public media, but those were just words, not actions. His administration also proposed annual budgets that would have zeroed out the funding, but didn't successfully pressure Congress to follow through. In Trump's second term, he seemingly knows which buttons to press. He (or, probably more accurately, his aides) targeted the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in several different ways and sold Republican lawmakers on a DOGE-branded rescission that passed both the House and Senate. CNN's Senior White House Correspondent Kristen Holmes isn't sure Trump is undoing his first term as much as he is better prepared this time. HOLMES: Trump and his allies had four years to prepare for him to be president again. His allies used that time to create a framework for a second term agenda, as well as brainstorm potential roadblocks and work-arounds to those roadblocks, to ensure that they could start enacting his agenda on Day 1. The first time around, even members of Trump's own campaign were surprised he won. They had almost no real transition and Trump had to rely on Washington Republicans, many of whom did not have the same ideas as him, to help fill out the cabinet and guide him. And while he knew what he wanted to do, he had no real understanding of how to get it done. Now, he is working in unison with almost every inch of his administration to get what he wants done — and it's working. Holmes' point carries over to immigration, Trump's signature issue. He is more effectively carrying through with mass deportations than he did in his first term. With a more pliant Congress, he has money for his border wall, the go-ahead to turn ICE into the nation's largest and best-funded police force, and the help of Republican governors to create new detention centers to hold undocumented immigrants — not just violent criminals — he wants to deport. When he leaves office, the country will look a lot different after his second term than it did after his first.

Trump 2.0 is correcting Trump 1.0
Trump 2.0 is correcting Trump 1.0

CNN

timea day ago

  • Business
  • CNN

Trump 2.0 is correcting Trump 1.0

The 47th president is in many ways a different man than the 45th president, even though they are both Donald J. Trump. He's unafraid to swear in public or on social media and he's more emboldened, willing to directly challenge the Constitution and the courts and capable of demanding more loyalty from Republicans. But Trump 2.0 is also in direct competition with his former self in several important ways, starting with the fact that he can't seem to remember appointing people he now loathes. Trump's aides are looking at ways to oust Jay Powell, the Fed chairman Trump nominated to the role during his first term. Trump told House Republicans he had drafted a letter to take the unprecedented step of firing the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Markets beware. At the White House Wednesday, Trump seemed to forget that he had nominated Powell. 'I was surprised he was appointed,' Trump said. 'I was surprised, frankly, that Biden put him in and extended him, but they did.' Biden renominated Powell. Either Trump can't remember or he is willing himself to forget his role in the process. If Trump ultimately tests the Fed's independence and tries to fire Powell, he'll point to a building renovation that got underway during Trump's own first term. Before Trump took office for the second time, the FBI director appointed during his first term, Christopher Wray, quit early rather than wait to be fired. On the Supreme Court, CNN has reported on Trump's gripes behind closed doors about his nominee Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in particular. When Trump today threatens burdensome tariffs on Canada and Mexico, who he accuses of 'taking advantage' of previous US presidents, he's also talking about his prior self. Trump's first-term administration negotiated the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement — a reboot of NAFTA. Back then, it was hailed as the major accomplishment of his trade policy. He has also evolved on issues including bitcoin and cryptocurrency, although that could have something to do with his family's business interests. And Trump used to support banning TikTok in the US, but now, after making inroads with young men in the last election, he very much wants a US-based company to step up and buy the platform. 'He's undoing himself with a vengeance,' the CNN presidential historian Tim Naftali told me. The relatively moderate mainstream policy hands who marked the first Trump term are on the outs. Outsiders and MAGA figureheads are in. 'Donald Trump clearly is angry about what his advisers forced him to do in the first term,' Naftali said, pointing specifically to trade policy. 'His approach to Canada and Mexico is inexplicable given his first term, unless you realize that he wasn't happy with what he ended up doing in the first term,' he said. Naftali said Trump deserves credit for Operation Warp Speed, the effort to quickly develop a Covid-19 vaccine at a time when the country was largely shut down by the pandemic. But rather than build on that legacy, Trump selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his Health and Human Services director, elevating a vaccine skeptic to a top policy role. Kennedy fired all the members of a CDC vaccine advisory panel and brought in vaccine skeptics to review the vaccine schedule. I put the idea of Trump 2.0 correcting Trump 1.0 to a number of CNN reporters and anchors who pay close attention to foreign affairs, the economy and the environment. CNN's Jim Sciutto, who wrote a book, The Madman Theory, about Trump's first-term foreign policy, notes that Trump is more aggressive this time, and appears to be more inclined to listen to his own gut. SCIUTTO: In his second term, President Trump is proving less likely to be deterred by advisers or advice against his more aggressive moves in international affairs. And, so for instance, while (former White House Chief of Staff) Gen. John Kelly and (former national security adviser) John Bolton were able to counsel him away from summarily withdrawing from NATO in 2018, many — including those who served in his first administration — fear his current advisers won't stand in the way. From foreign officials, the concern I hear most often is one of uncertainty. From tariffs to military support for Ukraine, they express doubts that what the president says today will hold tomorrow. Trade deals become fleeting agreements subject to where the financial markets are on any given day or how the White House reads domestic politics. And support for Ukraine — which European officials see as central to the security of the whole continent — rises and falls based on Trump's current interpretation of where Putin stands on peace talks. Trump has proven his willingness to make hard decisions his predecessors avoided — the US strikes on Iran stand out. What observers at home and abroad are waiting for is a consistent and predictable worldview. Allison Morrow, who writes the Nightcap newsletter for CNN Business, agrees there's a difference to this president, but he remains the same in one very important way. MORROW: I agree with Tim Naftali, though I wonder how conscious Trump is of his attempts to undo USMCA, which itself was just a reshuffling of NAFTA. The Trump 2.0 tariff strategy, such as it is, doesn't make any sense in practice. If you really want to use tariffs to bring back US manufacturing, you can't be cutting deals, because then there's no incentive for companies to invest in domestic production. We've written about the contradictions at the heart of his tariff ideology dozens of times at this point, and there's just no response from the White House about how they think they can make tariffs do everything they claim, all at once. I think the thing that jumps out at me between Trump 1.0 and 2.0 is what hasn't changed. Fundamentally, I think Trump wants to avoid accountability. And that's why he has sort of slow-walked the tariffs into the market's collective consciousness, and backed off when the bond markets shuddered. He's testing to see what he can get away with without causing a financial or economic catastrophe. Trump and his aides also clearly learned from his first term. Instead of trying repeatedly to repeal Obamacare, they cut future spending from Medicaid, which will have a similar effect by pushing millions of lower-income Americans off their health insurance in the years to come. CNN's Chief Media Analyst Brian Stelter noted that in this term, Trump is acting more forcefully against news outlets. STELTER: Instead of merely tweeting insults at independent media outlets, he is taking concrete actions to penalize those outlets, while at the same time promoting and empowering MAGA commentators. Take the media story in the news right now: the imminent defunding of PBS and NPR. In Trump's first term, he harshly criticized public media, but those were just words, not actions. His administration also proposed annual budgets that would have zeroed out the funding, but didn't successfully pressure Congress to follow through. In Trump's second term, he seemingly knows which buttons to press. He (or, probably more accurately, his aides) targeted the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in several different ways and sold Republican lawmakers on a DOGE-branded rescission that passed both the House and Senate. CNN's Senior White House Correspondent Kristen Holmes isn't sure Trump is undoing his first term as much as he is better prepared this time. HOLMES: Trump and his allies had four years to prepare for him to be president again. His allies used that time to create a framework for a second term agenda, as well as brainstorm potential roadblocks and work-arounds to those roadblocks, to ensure that they could start enacting his agenda on Day 1. The first time around, even members of Trump's own campaign were surprised he won. They had almost no real transition and Trump had to rely on Washington Republicans, many of whom did not have the same ideas as him, to help fill out the cabinet and guide him. And while he knew what he wanted to do, he had no real understanding of how to get it done. Now, he is working in unison with almost every inch of his administration to get what he wants done — and it's working. Holmes' point carries over to immigration, Trump's signature issue. He is more effectively carrying through with mass deportations than he did in his first term. With a more pliant Congress, he has money for his border wall, the go-ahead to turn ICE into the nation's largest and best-funded police force, and the help of Republican governors to create new detention centers to hold undocumented immigrants — not just violent criminals — he wants to deport. When he leaves office, the country will look a lot different after his second term than it did after his first.

The worst performer in billionaires' portfolios? Trophy art.
The worst performer in billionaires' portfolios? Trophy art.

Mint

time2 days ago

  • Business
  • Mint

The worst performer in billionaires' portfolios? Trophy art.

It turns out Andy Warhol is no match for Jay Powell. Expensive paintings are proving to be more sensitive to interest-rate hikes than even sophisticated investors expected. A bubble at the top of the art market has burst. Auction sales of paintings that cost more than $10 million fell 44% last year, and continue to be depressed in 2025, data from ArtTactic shows. The shift in the market was clear at Sotheby's New York auction in May, when a sculpture by Alberto Giacometti with a $70 million asking price didn't attract a single bid and had to be pulled from sale. This is odd. In 1993 and again in 2010, Yale professor William Goetzmann analyzed more than two centuries of art-auction results, finding that painting prices are correlated with the stock market and act as a good inflation hedge. So based on history, the high end of the art market should be doing OK with the S&P 500 bobbing around record highs, but the correlation appears to have frayed. Is weakness at the top of the art market a sign that very wealthy collectors are growing concerned about the future? Tariffs and uncertainty about the economy may be making them wary of tying up millions of dollars in illiquid assets like paintings. But billionaire collectors are hardly down on their luck. At the start of 2025, they controlled $15.6 trillion of wealth, according to the Art Basel & UBS Art Market report—a record high and up 80% from 2019 levels. A possible explanation is that a vogue for treating art as an asset class that took hold after the 2008-09 global financial crisis has made the market more sensitive to interest rates. When money was cheap between 2009 and 2022, the ultrawealthy pumped cash into rare paintings. Specialist databases that compile decades of auction results also made it easier to quantify the risk of investing in paintings, and to identify hot artists that could be flipped for profit. Sales of high-end art exploded over this period: The value of art sold at auction for $10 million or more increased by 700% between 2009 and 2022 versus 12% for works priced below $50,000, the UBS report shows. Art attracted a new, financially minded buyer. 'Think about the big collectors today. They are wealth creators like hedge-fund founders and private-equity managers. These people understand how to deploy capital and manage their liquidity," says Drew Watson, head of art services with Bank of America Private Bank. Wall Street collectors, including Daniel Loeb and Steven Cohen, bought works by post-war and contemporary artists like Warhol, Willem de Kooning and Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose paintings soared in value. These collectors manage their art acquisitions strategically. The private-banking arms of JP Morgan, Citi and Bank of America offer art-backed loans to clients. Before 2022, collectors could borrow about 50% of the appraised value of their blue-chip art collections at a sub-3% rate. Cash that would otherwise be tied up on the walls of penthouse apartments could instead be put to work in higher-yielding investments like the stock market or real estate. The arbitrage worked until higher interest rates pushed the cost of an art-backed loan close to 8%. Finding an investment that can deliver a return acceptably above this rate is harder today, which has damped the appeal of buying art. While dedicated collectors are still spending, speculators are gone. The wealthy can now find better returns on their money elsewhere. European equities are up 21% this year, and private infrastructure funds have gained 13%, according to BlackRock's investment-return map. Art doesn't reprice daily like stocks and bonds, but the value of some art is down anywhere from 20% to 40% from peaks, especially works by very contemporary artists that speculators were flipping for profit. The ultrarich are allocating less of their wealth to art as a result: 15% in 2024 compared with a peak of 24% in 2022, UBS notes. Ironically, banks that offer art-backed loans are doing fine. The size of Bank of America's overall art-lending book is up 12% this year compared with the same period of 2024. This isn't necessarily a bullish sign for the art market. Borrowing against an existing collection can be preferable to selling it into a down market, even though a credit line is costly these days. High interest rates have made the pitfalls of investing in art obvious again. Paintings are illiquid, they generate no income and are expensive to insure and store safely. They also cost money to sell. Top auction houses like Christie's take at least 10% of the final hammer price in commission and other fees. And art is vulnerable to shifts in taste. Baby boomers who favor abstract expressionists and pop art may find it hard to offload their collections to younger buyers. Millennial and Gen Z collectors aren't showing interest in the same artists. Cultural signals have moved on: Warhol's screen prints of Jacqueline Kennedy or Marilyn Monroe may not carry the same potency for coming buyers. Impressive art collections have brought the ultrawealthy cultural clout and bragging rights. As for investment returns? Don't expect them to tout their success anytime soon.

The Worst Performer in Billionaires' Portfolios? Trophy Art.
The Worst Performer in Billionaires' Portfolios? Trophy Art.

Wall Street Journal

time2 days ago

  • Business
  • Wall Street Journal

The Worst Performer in Billionaires' Portfolios? Trophy Art.

It turns out Andy Warhol is no match for Jay Powell. Expensive paintings are proving to be more sensitive to interest-rate hikes than even sophisticated investors expected. A bubble at the top of the art market has burst. Auction sales of paintings that cost more than $10 million fell 44% last year, and continue to be depressed in 2025, data from ArtTactic shows. The shift in the market was clear at Sotheby's New York auction in May, when a sculpture by Alberto Giacometti with a $70 million asking price didn't attract a single bid and had to be pulled from sale.

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