Trump 2.0 – the program

Presidential election: Trump is now the clear front-runner

For the betting markets, the situation is clear: Donald Trump is given a 65% chance of winning the election in November, while Joe Biden has fallen to below 20%. As recently as April, the two were tied. Trump is also extending his lead in the polls, although Biden's weak performance in the first TV duel and the assassination attempt on Trump have probably not yet been fully taken into account. This means that Trump's election victory should now be the baseline scenario for US analyses.

According to the latest polls, the Republicans also have a good chance of winning a majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. This would enable a second Trump administration to implement many of its projects.

Election platform for Trump 2.0

What can we expect from Trump 2.0? The Republican Party's election platform (“GOP Platform 2024 – Make America Great Again”) published on the occasion of this week's party convention provides clues to this. As with some of Trump's public statements, the effort to move to the center on important issues can be seen here. The Republicans adjusted their position on Social Security and Medicare, the public health insurance for senior citizens. The platform makes it “absolutely clear” that there will be no cuts here. Previous Republican administrations had repeatedly brought privatization of Social Security into play, which did not pay off at the ballot box.

"Build the greatest economy in history", ...

In the following, we will focus on the economically relevant points of the election platform. Like every election platform, the Republicans promise to strengthen the economy. To this end, the income tax cuts introduced by Trump in 2018 are not to expire next year as currently planned, but are to be extended without limit. In addition, regulations are to be abolished and industries with a promising future are to receive special support, which the party strategists understand to include crypto currencies. The right of Americans to “mine” bitcoins is explicitly mentioned; strict regulation of this area is clearly rejected. However, crypto should primarily be a private business; the election program rejects plans for digital central bank money (the Federal Reserve is not very enthusiastic here anyway).

Artificial intelligence and the space industry also appear to be worthy of support. However, the question is why AI, for example, should be promoted in particular. Even without government intervention, more and more data centers geared towards AI are currently being created, and the American IT sector is already a leader in this field. The same applies to the space industry (which currently employs around 300 thousand people and has a value added of 130 billion dollars, corresponding to 0.5% of the US economy).

... also by boosting oil and gas production ...

In addition, American energy production is to be supported, particularly in the case of fossil fuels. However, this is already underway; under President Biden, the production of oil, gas and coal has increased even more than during Trump's first term in office. Obviously, technical and economic circumstances are more important here than political decisions. Although Biden strongly promoted renewable energies, he also pursued a rather pragmatic policy overall. It remains to be seen whether Trump will radically cut back support for renewables, even if the program promises to end the “socialist Green Deal”. After all, Republican-governed states such as Texas are major beneficiaries of this policy.

For full text see attached PDF-Version.