Politics and business: is America on track to being great again?

After the first wave of shock in response to the EU referendum result, a question that was on many peoples' minds was "what ON EARTH is going to happen to the UK?" The uncertainty and uncommitted government responses meant we, the British people, were basically suspended in a state of "what now?" Nearly 7 months since the EU referendum result, it is good to hear that merchant banks in the UK are reporting growth and showing resilience even throughout the period of uncertainty. Private banks also increased available jobs, showing that the UK has shown a great attempt to pull through and survive, even with such a dark cloud hanging above. Having gone through such a weird period in our lives and in our country, especially as a 22 year old with dual nationality who wondered what possibly could happen to my family members, I feel I can now share sympathy with Americans wondering what on earth can possibly happen to their country with the inauguration of their 45th president, Mr Donald J Trump. 

I can appreciate that the picture above does not exactly instil a great feeling of trust and happiness in people, especially myself. However, if I wanted to see his impact on American business, particularly investments and business success, I had to push my biased opinion to the side. His promise and campaign slogan "Make America Great Again!" should be one that promotes positivity and growth of the United States as exactly that, a great united country. 

With his election, companies all around America can either breathe a sigh of relief or hold their head in their hands. Making America great again could mean some companies, favoured by Trump, could benefit from his policies and actions whereas others in his bad books, like Amazon and Apple, could suffer as a result. Since Trump's first day as President, share prices have already been affected. After publicly criticising Amazon (on Twitter of course) for not paying fair taxes, their share price decreased by 2%.  Apple also has potential problems on the horizon. With his outrage against Apple using factories in China to make their products, rather than giving the jobs to American citizens, he has pledged to establish immigration controls as a result. His criticism of Apple comes from his desire to increase American manufacturing jobs. To his credit, Tim Cook has responded that the US lacks the skills to build sophisticated Apple products but there is still a threat of high tariffs of around 45% on products imported from China. This could have a huge impact on Apple, who depend largely on countries like China through their Taiwanese manufacturer Wistron - the majority of their supply chain is located in China. As well as this, they depend on a large amount of entrepreneurs and designers from around the world - again impacted by Trump's travel ban. Not only this, they are looking to expand their design and factories into India who's government are trying to encourage foreign investment in the country's manufacturing sector. It will be interesting to see how this will work in line with Trump's proposed policies regarding manufacturing and employment in foreign countries. 

I do have my doubts about President Trump from his sexist and racist comments to his actual lack of business knowledge (hello, does anyone remember four of his businesses filed for bankruptcy?!). HOWEVER... as a neutral future businesswoman, I want to focus on the potential growth for America and see how the country can adapt to change and hopefully use it as a time to grow. For investors and shareholders, it will be interesting to see how well businesses can function within Trump's regime and policies. 

For now, I leave you with a quote from the man himself - "Anyone who thinks my story is anywhere near over is sadly mistaken." Slightly ominous and frankly quite a scary thought, but hopefully in the future we will look back and see this time as one of great change and business success. Hey, it's good to be positive, right? 

....right?