Posted by The other day I had a dream that I was working for Donald Trump and was trying to ask for his opinion on something. I think it was the result of hearing all of the crazy things that come out of his mouth in the news since the election. In my working career I’ve had the opportunity to talk to some well-known CEO’s and ask them for an opinion. Two that come to mind are John Menard Sr. and Seymore Cray. I’ve listened to countless quarterly reports from CEO’s and have always had admiration for those who can stand up in front of a large group of employees and give a speech. But the things that Trump has been saying lately are truly starting to worry a lot of people. You simply can’t make this stuff up.
Elon Musk seems to enjoy his DOGE role and bringing unvalidated information to Trump. Trump then repeats the information as if it was fact. The story about millions of dead people getting social security checks is one example. The rate at which government workers are getting fired will surely cause unforeseen problems. The rate of change is hard to keep up with. When a company decides that they need to reduce expenses, it usually results in the reduction of headcount. I’ve seen this before. After workers are let go, the workers who are left have to do the same work with less people. The disruption can take months to resolve and often leads to more staffing changes. Having gone through at least a dozen restructures, the things being done now remind me of that. Since Trump and Musk are both CEO’s, it is no surprise that they would use this tactic.
Investors are now afraid of what the future holds with all of the Trump tariffs in the works. It is hard to imagine that inflation will not go up with increased tariffs. It will be hard to find a company that won’t be impacted. Increased import prices will ultimately be passed on to American consumers. It will take years to bring manufacturing back to the US, not to mention the cost of doing so. For now, I am happy to collect 4% interest on 40% of my IRA. Did Trump give me the advice I was seeking in my dream? No, it was the typical CEO response; “Do what you think is right, if it doesn’t work, we’ll fix it later.”