The people of the United States elected business tycoon Donald Trump as the country’s next president, as he scored a convincing win on Tuesday, 8 November over former U.S. Secretary of State and U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton.
Initial economic reports published Wednesday morning focused on Trump's platform of opposing free trade, including the North America Free Trade Agreement and the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership.
“His victory may begin an era of U.S. combativeness with trade partners such as China and Mexico, which Mr. Trump says benefit in a global system that cost America jobs. If implemented, Mr. Trump’s promises could bring trade wars, drive up the price of imports and rattle a global economy that has relied on the expansion of international trade to drive growth,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
Trump has vowed to place a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports and declare China a currency manipulator on his first day in office, and has threatened to void the United States’ participation in NAFTA, which connects Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. China, Canada and Mexico are the United States’ three largest partners, and imposing trade barriers with those countries could slow the economy by reducing markets for U.S. exports, make imports more costly and cause banks to restrict lending, The New York Times reported.
“First and foremost the election result implies more uncertainty, on policies, and politics and therefore on the global economy,” said Louis Kuijs, a former International Monetary Fund official and current senior economist at Oxford Economics in Hong Kong, told the WSJ.
Global markets wavered on the news of Trump’s election, with Mexico’s peso dropping to its lowest level ever in trading against the U.S. dollar and Japan’s Nikkei stock index falling around 5 percent. While pre-trading had the Dow Jones industrial index down as much as 800 points, U.S. markets opened flat early Wednesday morning and and have suffered only limited losses through 11 a.m. today.
“The markets appear to be sanguine about a Trump presidency, which dramatically increases global economic uncertainty,” Kathleen Brooks of trading firm City Index told the Guardian.
Trump’s stance against global free trade goes against more than 30 years of American policy under both Republican and Democratic presidents, according to the WSJ. Enacting such a large shift in U.S. trade policy will be a tough task, though the president does have wide powers when it comes to negotiating or reneging on trade deals.
If Trump does implement protectionist policies, it could tip the economy into a recession, Megan Greene, chief economist with Manulife Asset Management, told Fortune. Other economists wondered how far Trump will actually push on renegotiating or voiding trade deals as he moves from campaigning to governing.
“It still remains to be seen how much of his remarks would be made into actual policies,” said Junichi Sugawara, a senior research officer at the Mizuho Research Institute in Japan, also in the WSJ.
The effect of Trump's election on domestic fisheries in the U.S. is still to be determined. Trump's campaign slogan of "America first" and his stated dislike for "overregulation" of U.S. industries due to environmental concerns may have an impact on his administration's stance on fishing in the United States.
However, Ray Hilborn, a University of Washington professor and global fisheries expert, told SeafoodSource on Election Day that he didn’t foresee any major changes for U.S. fisheries.
“My suspicion is no real impact, no matter who wins,” he said.
