For those who think the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States in November will shake up the economy one way or the other, Chris Kuehl has news for you: it’s not happening.
That doesn’t mean the policies Trump and his administration enact during his four years in the Oval Office won’t have any effect on the U.S. or global economy, but any shifts you’re feeling today came about because of conversations and policy changes put in place in 2016—or even earlier.
Kuehl, managing director of Armada Corporate Intelligence and former professor of economics and finance, will talk about the true timeline of economic changes during his economic outlook session at NSCA’s Business and Leadership Conference, “Connecting the Dots.”
“A lot of the things we’re dealing with now started in 2016—interest rates started heading up at that point, inflation started to rise and the dollar began to get stronger,” says Kuehl. “Things have definitely changed and are continuing to change, but a lot less than people think. [related]
“The economy has a way of ignoring what happens in politics. Excitement about the idea of changes can stimulate the economy. That can make businesses more confident, because they’re expecting things to change,” he says.
Kuehl knows predicting anything as volatile as economic shifts is an inexact science, in some ways a lot like predicting the weather. While meteorologists can say with confidence the weather will be warm in the summer, it gets tougher to give an exact forecast for a particular day the closer it gets to that day.
“We know certain trends will continue in the short term—the next six months to a year—in terms of trade patterns and in particular sectors of the economy,” he says. “Integrators may only have a few months or weeks to react to changes in technology, but some of the higher-level principles can take months or years to show any true difference.
“Part of the fun challenge in talking to integrators is they’re highly dependent on the industries they serve. They’re constantly trying to figure out how their customers are responding to those changes and determining what they need to do to make sure they’re doing what their customers need,” says Kuehl.
