Kopi Time E140 - US Elections with Angela Mancini

to be a close contested race. But even in the mornings as the polls were opening, were we going to see voter intimidation, you know, who was going to come out to help watch the election, et cetera. Very few things happened. So that's a good thing. So my main takeaway is for the optimists in the group would definitely be the system worked. Very quiet. Election. In fact, some of the news coverage that I was doing was cut back because there just wasn't that much to say.

That's a good thing, right? System worked. So the other thing I'd say, what didn't work is the polls, right? So there was an infinite amount of data in the, in the weeks and days leading up of slicing all kinds of voter groups, right? From obviously gender education class race also who moved from blue states to red states with COVID. What's happening with inflation, the impact of A I and the professional class, all of it.

And at the end of the day, it didn't really matter what we saw as you've seen is the electorate shifted, it shifted right word. So there wasn't, you know, there's not a lot of pursing left to do. I think uh if, if you're aware of the name Alan Lichtman, he's a famous historian and he's called nine out of the 10. Now, now that the last 11 presidential races correctly and he's got these 13 keys that he looks at,

they didn't work. He was quite confident be hear us his take away as I was mentioning was, you know, at some point, the math doesn't math anymore. And what I take from that is the electorate shifted. The zeitgeist has shifted. The main issues we saw voters coming out with exit polls was clearly the economy, inflation. And that's something people feel every day, even though the rate of inflation has uh slowed down, the cost of

living stays high. So when you go to the grocery store every other day, when you go to the gas station every other day, you see that. So that's another issue. One thing to say, the other thing I'd point out that I haven't seen a lot of press on is job security increasingly in the professional class.

I know people, lawyers, accountants, bankers, what have you maybe not bankers but you know, working in the marketing people that they're starting to have job loss, there's layoffs that are still going on in the corporate world and the impact of A I on that professional class, especially those in their forties and fifties in the States is, is concerning. So I think there's a, a couple of trends there.

The last thing I'd say on the trends is a lot of people said they're worried about democracy, but I think the mainstream media uh got confused of what that meant because people can mean different things by that, right? So a a democrat voter would say rule of law, you know, policy basically, right? What it means for, you know, women and minorities and things. But Republican voters, I think, felt like freedom to be free in their view to um

go back to the way things were to do. Not have the government telling me what to do and all the kind of culture war issues. So when some, I'd say a big message, I think the Democratic Party has a lot to think about. Uh I think the Republican Party has also got a lot to think about because that will shift as well.

Republican Party about how much one should support Ukraine. Some say we should, you know, stop passing the money, we need to spend that money at home. Others would say Russia since the Cold beginning of the Cold War has been uh you know, a geopolitical enemy. How could we ever just let them take it? You know, there would be an, um, uh, foreign policy disaster akin to withdrawing from Afghanistan. Right. So there's fractions there. But I don't think that really

came into play. I do think the issue in Gaza was more significant. What was interesting though is if you look at the Michigan vote, so Michigan Dearborn, Michigan has a lot of, uh, I think 200,000 or so Arab American voters and they went Republican. So that's an interesting statistic. So I think there's at play the issue of, are you voting? Because you're, you're unhappy with how the

Biden administration has prosecuted the war. Are you also voting in your pocket because you're, you know, working for a union. How do these things go? There's, there's multiple layers per voter is, I guess what I would take away from that

Highly contested. She won it by a hair, I think she won by like 5000 votes or something. So, what I take from that is indeed, there's been a shift in the electorate in what the values are potentially in the States and what people worried about, really worried about their jobs and inflation. But if you look at a um uh a candidate like Alyssa, she's out every day, all day doing the

policy work. So the user experience of her is very different from maybe some politicians who, you know, quote data and the the famous uh criticism of the Democratic Party is, you know, I don't want, you know, you tell us about how the statistics are looking good in a certain place, but our lived experience is different, right? So I think in some, I'd say he did pull

the voting right word, but it was going there anyway. And, you know, if you go anywhere outside the urban cities, you could kind of feel things were changing.

So from a trend perspective, that's not gonna happen. I mean, the statistic that I took away from the election morning, I was heading in to do an interview uh early in the morning and I heard on the radio that Georgia, which is a big swing state, 30% of that electorate is independent. And when Biden and Trump ran last time, it was plus eight for Biden this time, it was trending plus 11 for Trump. So

to me, I thought, ok, well, that's it. So again, I think there's underlying trends there to look at, but with the House for sure, it'll go Republican. So we'll have a clean sweep on the Republican side.

there's a lot of kind of data within there. But I think, you know, and some might say we're seeing the electorate shift. I don't know that it's values so much that are shifting again as people's just pain in the pocket. I mean, it's interesting listening to your optimistic presentation about the States because it'll, I'm now watching. Uh I hate to be the person that says that elections over. Let's turn to

the next one the same day. But I do think it's interesting to watch what will happen with the midterms because if you look at the from the policy making perspective now republicans have everything. So it's like, ok, you wanted it, you have it, let's see what you do. And I don't think we have a Trump now that's coming into power, furious. We don't have a Trump that's coming into power wanting to break a lot of things because he just barely got there and he had to, you know, rally the

troops to get there. He is kind of an open field. He's quite jubilant is the words that we're hearing described. So what, what is that policy making look like in that regard? And then what's the impact of that? What are the outcomes as we go into the next couple of years?

I think it's gonna be volatile. But what I take from it, which is interesting is imagine if he had run a bit more of a conventional campaign which he was doing until the end towards the end when he started making comments about Kamala and he had the comic on stage that said the racist things about Puerto Rico, which we heard him say, maybe he did that because

he thought things were too kind of stale. But if he had run a more conventional campaign and if he dialed down that rhetoric, imagine the gap that it would have been right? And Kamala had record breaking money, record breaking, get out the vote efforts, very, very professional and organized best we've ever seen. And we still had this shift. So imagine if she hadn't been quite so organized and

he had been a little calmer. It tells me the electorate has shifted but then it starts looking at, to me it becomes shifting to what, in terms of policy and, and what's actually fixable and what's not. But it will definitely, I think, be more volatile from a domestic side and a foreign policy side.

actually to be fair, I think Biden did. But that feels like things on paper. I think what they need to do is have the connection with a broader voter base and understand some of the cultural issues a bit better and really tap into that a bit better. The message. Absolutely. As we saw, fell flat, what I am seeing unfortunately, at least in these first day or so is a lot of, uh you know, you did it. No, you did it. No, you did. It.

We're blaming Biden. We're blaming, blaming his wife. We're blaming, um K Kamala. We're blaming her advisers. When actually it's, to me it's too big of a gap to be a flaw in the actual campaign prosecution or the, even the candidate. I just think the values have shifted the issues that matter to voters are different than they thought they were.

We may see some things around immigration on day one. Like, you know, we saw some quite striking things before, but I do still think it's early days. There's a lot of jockeys. So first of all, they had, they don't know even with the Senate how big that majority is going to be. There's still some Senate races to call. So the question, you know, once we have all the numbers around the races, we'll understand how big is your

Senate majority? How big is your house majority? They're starting to think about who's gonna be the senate majority leader Mitch mcconnell's retiring. I was reading this morning there was a kind of a jockeying between the three people that should have that and are close to Trump and want that, you know, who is that and who starts getting on those really powerful house committees like the Appropriations Committee, the

Ways and Means Committee. So it really matters. I think, not just who he's putting in his cabinet and as advisers, but how those the workings of government shape up and I've done a bit of dusting off of education around. How, how does the law actually work. So if you look at something like NATO, there's been legislation passed recently last December to more um formalize the US, uh you know, uh any interaction with or, or, or, you know, belonging

to NATO. So you can't just walk in and do an executive order and rip it up, so to speak. It's different for Ukraine, you know, there's funding that we give but the Americans give but that can be stopped.

So I think it's gonna be really interesting to see what the workings of government actually allow in a situation where you have a completely dominant party and what they don't because it's gonna be different, you know, they kind of, they put some things in place to stop uh to, to reduce the ability for one person to come in and change everything overnight. Risking takes some time to figure out.

the party of big corporations. We see a bit of a bifurcation Now we see some tech bros, Elon Musk, the Winklevoss brothers, Peter Theo, they have been big funders of Trump, but the rest of the corporate world still seems to be either mainstream Republican or Democrat. So, is the Republican party a party of big corporations no more?

watching finance in this room. I'm really watching for, ok, he's got the stage now. He's got everything he has nothing to prove in terms of the election. He won it by a large margin. He's a lame duck president. No more elections to be had. So he can kind of like rest for a second and say, what do I actually want to accomplish? He does have an agenda. It's called Agenda 47. It's 14 pages. It's not long. Um So there's not a lot of policy detail there,

but what's he gonna actually do? And at some point, does he take the ear more of the more um bombastic advisor he's had before on trade and economic policy or does he start talking to more traditional economists that are, you know, we've seen the statistics that say if everything he said he wanted to do, the high tariffs went into place very damaging for the US economy, very damaging for the global economy. Is he

going to actually do it? I mean, let's see if he gets some advisers around him that can um maybe help him moderate some of that policy. So in some, I'd say the Republican Party still is uh supporting, you know, representing big business, but even something like the business leaders round table has come out and said they, you know, have had big concerns. So in some, I'd say it's a mix but it's not just he's got the tech and the crypto people and none of big business it's really overlapped.

we're seeing in the States is actually not that different. Also, if you look at the countries with the 10 biggest populations, almost all of them have leaders that are well north of 75 Russia, you can name them all off. So does he step down in two years? What's his health like? What's his mental ability? Like, I mean, one thing is stepping down another might be just a step kind of a little bit back like Reagan did, I don't know that he'd be keen to relinquish it, but also I

don't think he's that keen to govern. He was keen to prove a point and get in. He feels passionate about tariffs, he feels passionate about China and he feels, I think passionate about, you know, domestic policy that might um push back a vengeance as they say right on some of the people that he thought blocked him before. I don't think he, you know, this isn't, uh, a Joe Biden or Bill Clinton.

That's like I just want to get into that policy and really tweak what, you know, what we're actually doing from a legislative point of view. So he may, it was a scenario if he gets tired and, or bored or, and, or, and, or unhealthy, but I think it would take a lot for him to formally step down, but I could see him stepping back and then others would jump in. But I would say on JD Vance doesn't have a lot of friends, right? I mean, there

was a phenomenal podcast. David Remnick from the New Yorker did with Newt Gingrich who if you remember was the Republican from way back, who first orchestrated, you know, the tea party and this what became the mega movement and it is scathing things to say about JDF and all the how young he is and how much his policy positions have shifted just with the wind. So I think there's a long list of people right around JD Vance said, if there's an opening, he wouldn't step down.

But in terms of having power, I don't know that it's going to go straight to him.

who he's bringing in, which then impacts policy. I still think we're going to see some of the same old faces, Robert Lighthizer, maybe Peter Navarro as an adviser in some way and definitely what we're advising clients is the US China tensions will continue and probably escalate in the trade area. But there's, he's also if you want to be optimistic, I mean, he is a deal maker and so is Xi Jinping. So there is a scenario where they kind of um look at what is on offer and figure out some ways to,

to focus very specifically on things. I mean, the Biden administration with Jake Sullivan had the um approach with China of as you know, narrow yard, high fence Trump is more blunt policy tools, you know, 60% tariffs and everything. I don't know what he was going to actually do though.

In the end, I think we have to see, I will say on the China side, they have not retaliated in kind, they've done bits but it has never e equal to nor exceeded what the US has done in terms of um trade restrictions. So I, so I would say two things. Number one, China has put together the architecture to retaliate quite well in these past years, unreliable entities list anti foreign sanctions law. So they have it there, they haven't really used it.

Um But then I would say let's look at third countries because if you've got, you know, if the US really were to want to tighten trade restrictions with China, you know, you're asking Japan and the Netherlands and others to stop exporting their semiconductor manufacturing equipment. But even Biden can get that to happen at some point. Allies say there's only so far we can help you.

What does that look like? If you have a more bombastic unilateralist President Biden will probably, I don't know that Trump's gonna have as strong relationships with the countries. He's trying to keep on side as, as Biden would do.

of course about actual trade flows and whatnot. But look also at the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips Act in the States that was giving, you know, that legislation that Biden put in is giving a lot of credits to companies in Korea, Taiwan and other Japan to put investments of, you know, tech, tech manufacturing equipment in, especially in, you know, kind of southern states. So what

happens to that? Ira? That's gonna be interesting. Just, you know, Trump has said, I'm going to rip all that, those things up, which would make white elephants out of these investments in the States. But what if they are red states? Maybe that's not such a good idea, they're bringing jobs to the States. So there's, there's this very interesting trade investment component.

Uh I did see last night on TV that Japan thinks by the end of the year now it's going to be able to have to take the acquisition of us steel, which was a big question, right? Because how again, how can the US ask Japan to help them so much on trade when they're pushing them and saying, but you can't invest in us steel? That's been a tricky tricky one. But then obviously, I'd say this

security component, right? So the uh the US of course, has been providing security support to Korea and Japan under Trump one point. Oh, he was asking for or pressing for more uh payment to be made by Japan and Korea, you know, increase your own defense spending. Take on this burden yourself. Where does that go out of the gate? One could say that's gonna be back on the table.

But again, maybe it's not because it's a different world and there's, maybe there's, um, I guess in some I'd say I'm watching to see if his approach. Now, if it's a learned approach that you can't ask for a trade, something on, on this side and then push someone hard on security for this side. It's got, it's a complex, it's a, it's a multi, you know, phrase sentence, so to speak. And, and what did his advisers say on that? What does he do?

Singapore or even Southeast Asia. Some of the tensions that we see potentially spiking are things around Vietnam or Malaysia that have big trade deficits with the US. And what does that mean also for China to invest in a third country to then export to the States? Is that fair? What does the US think about that? That's I think the interest with Southeast Asia, I think Singapore continues to balance. Well, um there is a scenario where us China tensions

don't necessarily get all that much worse. And uh Singapore, you know, keep on keeping on, I would say and uh it has a, it has a great obviously team in place to do that,

Googling DPS research Library. Have a great day.