No major economics news from President-elect Trump - back to monitoring Twitter

Danske Research Team Danske Bank A/S

President-elect Donald Trump provided us with little new information on the future economic policy at his first press conference (including a Q&A session with journalists) since his victory speech.

Thus we are back to monitoring his Twitter account for any tweets on economic policy ahead of the inauguration.Otherwise, we (hopefully) get more information in his inauguration speech (or perhaps in an updated plan for the first 100 days).

Interestingly, House speaker Paul Ryan just tweeted we 'can learn more about Republican priorities for 2017' tomorrow in an interview on CNN (09:30 ET/15:30 CET).

Market sentiment rebounded somewhat in the last few US trading hours after the initial moderate risk-off reaction. At the time of writing, the USD has weakened, US yields are slightly down, gold is slightly higher but S&P500 closed marginally higher than yesterday. Still, it seems that investors were left disappointed, as they had hoped for more clarification on Trump's economic policy but instead got more of the same. Political uncertainty in the US is one of the explanations for the cautious markets in recent days. Markets are likely to still have the Trump theme in mind in the next one and a half week until inauguration day, as we do not know how Trump will act as President and what his actual policies look like.

Trump said that companies will no longer move production out of the US (to Mexico) firing US workers in the process -'the word is now out [&] it is not going to happen that way anymore' . He welcomed the car producers who have chosen to invest in the US following his victory and said that companies in other sectors need to follow suit. If not, the companies will face a high border tax trying to export goods into the US. Especially, he lashed out at the medical and pharmaceutical firms, as he wants lower drug prices and more drug production in the US. This led to a decline in health care stocks.

Trump admitted for the first time that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee but he said that countries like China are also hacking the US, thus adding to the tensions between the US and China. Trump said he will present a plan to increase protection against cyber-attacks.

Trump will nominate a judge to the Supreme Court within two weeks after his inauguration.

Trump repeated that Obamacare will be repealed and replaced. We still do not know what the Republicans want instead.

Trump's two sons will control his businesses during his Presidency and will not do business abroad to avoid conflicts of interest. Trump still refused to publish his tax returns.

Trump denied the CNN story (and BuzzFeed) that Russia has compromising personal and financial information on him. He refused to answer questions from the CNN journalist present at the press conference.

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Author

Danske Research Team

Danske Bank A/S

Research is part of Danske Bank Markets and operate as Danske Bank's research department. The department monitors financial markets and economic trends of relevance to Danske Bank Markets and its clients.

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