Why Trump's immigration policy is designed to be inflationary
Jefferies global head of sustainability and transition strategy Aniket Shah joins Market Domination to discuss how former President Donald Trump's immigration agenda will impact employment trends.
"The general consensus is that the increase in undocumented workers over the past year and couple of years has actually brought down inflation. And so if you think about the inverse of that, if we decrease the growth of undocumented workers, that will be inflationary," Shah explains. However, he notes the goal of the policy is inflation: "One of the things we all have to realize is that the Trump-Vance ticket is a pro-US worker ticket. It is a protectionist ticket. And that means that wages in this country should go up. That is actually a feature of the policy, it's not a bug in the policy."
He notes that this policy will have huge implications for companies all across the country as wages remain their single biggest cost.
"So this is one of these interesting debates that is happening, I think, in the Republican Party right now, that especially with the pick of JD Vance as the vice president, you're seeing a Republican Party emerge that is not the Republican Party of our parents or our grandparents," Shah explains. "This is a protectionist party. This is [an] isolationist party, not necessarily a pro-big business party. And that means we have to change our priors when we think about the investment implications."
For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Market Domination.
This post was written by Melanie Riehl