Why markets won't care about a potential healthcare bill failure

Markets like President Donald Trump, plain and simple.

And for months now, the market’s positive reception to the Trump administration has been out of step with the seeming chaos happening in political circles.

The House of Representatives was set to vote on the American Health Care Act, Thursday, the GOP-proposed replacement for Obamacare, on Thursday evening. However, the House delayed the vote because Republicans had not yet drummed up enough support for the measure.

And while, if you squint, it looks like stocks got a bit jittery following some of these headlines, ultimately markets finished the day little changed.

Earlier this week, markets sold off on vague concerns over the ability for this bill to pass which, by extension, cast into doubt the whole of the Trump economic agenda.

However, some analysts saw the sell-off as rooted in more technical factors than any individual headline. And this also falls broadly in-line with the idea that markets and politics are viewing the Trump administration through completely different lenses.

Cutting taxes, spending on infrastructure, and cutting regulations were the three pillars markets — as well as businesses and consumers — had gotten so excited about since the election. House leadership, however, began with healthcare. And the market’s logic says that if the first part of the agenda fails, the whole thing is in trouble.

But as we wrote last month ahead of Trump’s address to Congress — after which markets rallied sharply — “in the case of U.S. stocks and President Trump, investors as much see a President who wants to cut taxes as they see someone who values what they do.”

This week’s AHCA drama, then, is completely in-line with what we’ve seen so far and are likely to see going forward. Ahead on Thursday when the AHCA vote was still expected, stocks were rallying.

Why markets care

“Market participants have become focused on the House vote for two reasons,” writes Alec Phillips, an economist at Goldman Sachs.

Phillips writes that markets believe, “Clearing the health legislation from the agenda is necessary to move to tax reform, which we expect to have a greater effect on corporate earnings and the real economy than the healthcare issue; and politically, the outcome of this first debate sends a signal regarding the viability of the rest of the policy agenda and the Republican majority’s ability to enact it.”

This view, overall, is “generally correct” in Phillips’ interpretation. But with Senate passage of this bill an even higher hurdle than jamming it through the House, the timeline for passing healthcare reform — and as a result turning to taxes — was always likely to be delayed, potentially into the summer months.