This column was written on President Donald Trump’s 100th day in office. There isn’t enough space to cover all the changes that have taken place in these 100 days. President Trump celebrated with a lively rally in Michigan. At this milestone, I sense that most Americans would like to see a less freewheeling approach to policies by the Republican Party in power. However, they also appear to remain unimpressed with the Democrats, given that Congress is seemingly missing in action as the Trump rollercoaster moves on and shows no sign of slowing down.
I did note in an earlier column that the pace of change in Trump 47 was likely to be much faster than in Trump 45, because the activists had by then attached themselves to Trump as a vehicle for the advancement of their own interests and policies. We are seeing the results of this intersection of interests play out across the American economy, military, and social sphere. Nevertheless, an awful lot of Americans seem unimpressed, or even disappointed, with the performance of their government.
Trump did after all win the election
That said, Trump did win a free and fair election, and he did tell people (voters and non-voters alike) what he was going to do (in broad terms anyway) if he did win. While his plans didn’t fill one half of the US population with joy, they did make the other half very happy. I read the US newspapers which tell me that a large minority of American voters are disappointed with their government.
That’s not atypical of incumbent governments in the current cycle – you only have to read the newspapers in any country to see the changing opinions about PM Keir Starmer, Justin Trudeau of Canada, Emmanuel Macron of France and Olaf Scholz of Germany, to name a few (Vladimir Putin’s ratings might be looking good at the moment of course). But at present, incumbency is a burden across democracies.
Still a high level of voter dissatisfaction
People often “vote with their wallets” and we see that here. While America “might be great again”, the latest polls have suggested that 55% of US voters are unhappy with Trump’s performance (although 24% think he’s doing a good job). More worrying for him is that only 54% of Republican voters think he is doing a good job. How does a poll of the faithful affect geopolitics? If you are a president backed by your nation, you have political capital to effect change – foreign and domestic – which, at other times, would be more difficult to achieve. 55% might be seen by many as too low a level of support for the sort of upheavals that we have seen recently in the American political environment.
Tariffs appear less popular than expected…
Voters and investors focus on concerns that, while populist slogans are being deployed, wealth is not trickling down through the economy. The imposition of tariffs is seen as a particular error of judgment – although it plays well with the base (not all of whom can defend it adequately when put on the spot, as we have seen with previous televised encounters). Bill Clinton’s 1992 slogan of “it’s the economy, stupid” was probably right – sloganeering and bombast seem able to carry things only so far before reality intrudes.
…with just 11% of Americans feeling better off
Some of the most recent polls published by newspapers like the London Times suggests that just 11% of Americans feel better off under Trump – even more concerning for the party managers is that only 14% of Republican voters actually feel better off. Donald Trump received votes on trust from investors in advance for his plans to improve the economy – many of those same investors may now be wondering where that improvement is.
As I noted earlier, Candidate Trump did tell us what he planned to do were he to be elected. Having been duly elected, he has been putting his plans into action – with far-reaching consequences for America and the world. I researched opinions on Trump’s successes and failures to date to see how the scorecard for Trump 47’s performance is looking.
Domestic security, the economy, social change facing detailed scrutiny
Trump’s agenda included dealing with domestic security challenges, the economy, and social change in the United States. Of course, many other policies (and policy shifts) have emerged as the first 100 days have passed.
Donald Trump has laid claim to Canada (to make it the 51st US state – and incidentally powered Canada’s Liberal Party to victory on a platform opposing the US policy), to controlling ports at each end of the Panama Canal (which are currently managed by a Hong Kong-based company), and to Greenland, which itself has given a push for Greenlandic independence that, without Trump, probably would have sunk without trace.
Migrants at the southern border and in the US are certainly under pressure from a newly invigorated Trump administration with an agenda and mandate for social change. Even institutions like Harvard are under fire for being too “woke” in their approach to society.
No end to the Ukraine/Russia war (yet)
What has failed is the frequently stated and very high-profile policy of ending the Ukraine-Russia war “within 24 hours”. What has not changed is Trump’s seeming inability to differentiate between Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the freely elected president of the nation of Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin, the elected leader of the country that invaded and now occupies around 20% of Ukraine.
Trump has now acknowledged that his 24-hour timescale was representative of his plan rather than a statement of intent to be held to. Trump has even occasionally used his Truth Social platform to ask Putin to stop bombing Ukraine. That is an improvement, many would say, but in reality little appears to have changed on the ground and more pressure seemed until recently to be being exerted on Ukraine to sign away its mineral rights, while there appeared to be no similar pressure from Trump on Vladimir Putin to end his attacks on Ukraine’s territory or at least scale back the ferocity of the attacks.
Positive news from Ukraine on a minerals and mining deal with the US
The latest news out of Ukraine is that the country has just now signed a major natural resources deal, with the creation of a “reconstruction” investment fund with the US. As part of the deal, the US will gain access to strategic minerals and natural resources in Ukraine. The devil will be in the detail, of course, but the Ukrainian side appear content that Ukraine’s sovereignty will not be violated by these new agreements. The practical import will only become obvious if we see some moves by Russian forces to disengage from Ukraine.
Personnel changes can often reinvigorate an institution. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is under fire for what looks like a second unauthorised Signal chat, but maintains that he is secure in his role, although not everyone in the administration seems to share that confidence. It seems that Hegseth has Donald Trump’s support – until he doesn’t. But it is an important role. The US is the largest and best funded military in the world. How it is led and managed is of critical importance to the United States and, probably, depending on further developments, to Europe as well.
Concerns about the future of the Fed Chair Jerome Powell
On the negative side, President Trump has been musing out loud about another personnel change – replacing the Fed Chairman Jerome Powell with a more malleable figure (although there is no agreement on whether the President has the power to do that) who would do Trump’s bidding to bring interest rates down with the aim of improving the economy.
Were Powell to be replaced by a Trump appointee, it was clear that investors would not be happy. Every time it was raised publicly both stocks and the Dollar took a tumble, with investor flight driven by concerns over both Fed independence and the lack of progress on trade deals. Powell appears to be one of the grown-ups in the room.
An early departure
At this point I need to sign off, as I have to head from Hong Kong to Omaha to attend the Berkshire Hathaway meeting and hear the voice of wisdom and sensible long-term investing – otherwise known as Warren Buffett – explain how Berkshire Hathaway has beaten the S&P over the last 12-months by 22% and by 24% YTD. That is part of a longer-term trend of consistent outperformance by Mr. Buffett – 191% over five years against 97% by the S&P. That is a good performance by any standard – and one that most investors fail to replicate.
This article has been approved by Tideway Investment Partners LLP; however, the views and opinions expressed in the article are not necessarily the views and opinions of Tideway.
The content of this document is for information purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice. We always recommend that you seek professional regulated financial advice before investing.
About the Author
Stephen O’Sullivan was an ‘anchor’ client at the founding of Tideway and has been a client of James Baxter since 1999.
Stephen studied economics at university and then joined the oil industry – working for BP in their refining and marketing business as an oil trader and then with Total in the corporate planning team for their upstream business. In 1989 he joined Coopers & Lybrand’s strategy practice for oil and gas and, with the end of the Cold War, he worked extensively as a consultant across the oil and gas industry in Eastern Europe, Russia and the other post-Soviet states as well as China, the Middle East and Southern Africa.
In 1995 he joined a start-up investment bank, MC Securities, specialising in Eastern Europe and Russia where he was the Head of Research and the Head of Oil & Gas Research. His team was ranked the #1 oil & gas research team across EMEA and the #1 overall research team for Emerging Europe and Russia for the next three years. They sold the bank to JP Morgan in 1998 and Stephen relocated to Moscow to become Head of Research and a partner in UFG, the leading independent investment bank in Russia. His team were ranked the number one oil & gas research team and the number one Russia country team for nine years in a row.
After the sale of UFG to Deutsche Bank in 2005, Stephen became Head of EMEA and Latin American research for DB where the team was ranked #1 across all industry sectors, in both strategy and in economics, in country research for Russia and South Africa and across the entire EMEA region in 2006 and 2007. In 2007 he left Moscow and moved to Hong Kong as Head of Asian Research for Australia’s Macquarie Bank. In 2009 he joined Barclays Capital in Hong Kong to lead the buildout of the bank’s Asia ex-Japan research business.
Since 2013 he has been an investor in a range of businesses in technology, real estate, retail and materials while living in Hong Kong. His major interests include China’s gas sector reform, China’s nuclear renaissance and the country’s global impact on energy markets. While based in Hong Kong he has also been a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, the world’s #1 ranked energy think-tank where he published several major studies of the Chinese energy sector. He is a contributing author to several international think tanks on global energy issues and has advised international law firms on the oil and gas sector globally.
