Are there any winners in Trump 2?

“THE golden age of America begins right now,” intoned US President Donald Trump at the start of his inaugural address on Jan 20. The business world bought the glittering talk, in anticipation of lower taxes, less red tape and buoyant American consumers. Between election day in November and the swearing-in, the Russell 3000 Index, which covers most of America’s public companies, rose by 5 per cent. The resulting US$2.4 trillion in new shareholder value was equivalent to the entire Indian stock market with two Mexican bourses thrown in. America was first. No one came remotely close.

A month into Trump’s second-term America was even firster. By Feb 19, the Russell 3000 had added another US$1.4 trillion in market capitalisation, reaching a record US$63 trillion. Scott Bessent, a comfortingly buttoned-down hedge-fund billionaire, was in charge of the Treasury. Another financier, Howard Lutnick, was installed as commerce secretary. Elon Musk’s engineering genius would make the gummed-up bureaucracy run as efficiently as his Tesla assembly lines. Could things get any sparklier?

It turns out they couldn’t. In the past six weeks the sheen has come right off the Trump economy. Instead of tax cuts, America is getting a hike in the form of sweeping tariffs against all the country’s trading partners, the details of which Trump unveiled on Apr 2. Musk’s efficiency drive is gutting the federal workforce willy-nilly. In February alone more than 62,000 government employees got the sack, according to a monthly tally by Challenger, a recruitment firm. Private-sector employers, among them household names such as Meta and John Deere, announced 110,000 cuts, compared with 82,000 the year before. Consumer sentiment is collapsing. Wall Street is on recession watch.