In the factless and amoral era that President Trump has ushered in, it seemed certain last night that Roy Moore, the evolution denier who is haunted by pedophilia allegations, would sail into the Senate decrying that "fake news" had lost again. Surely Alabama — the most reliably conservative state where the ghost of segregationist George Wallace still pollutes the air — wouldn't reject any candidate who President Trump had touted. But the monolithic wall of GOP support cracked and Alabama sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate for the first time in 25 years.
While this was a huge victory for progressives, the suddenly very real prospect of Trump losing Congress in 2018 is causing anxiety amongst business leaders about what might happen to the economy. As an entrepreneur who has spent the last 20 years building and selling companies, I am here to tell you that not only will America be fine if Trump loses congress in 2018, but it would be a complete positive.
Here's why:
It's the economy, stupid.
My company GMM Nonstick Coatings is a good proxy for the U.S. middle class because every day 40 million Americans use GMM's products in their kitchens. Despite all of the positive news about the stock market and deregulation from our tweeter-in-chief, GMM had a slightly down year in 2017 because the American middle class was not purchasing with the strength it used to.
This is the case with many of GMM's multi-billion dollar American clients like Newell Rubbermaid and Spectrum Brands: Their stocks (and sales) are down significantly in 2017 because consumers are burdened by record household debt, not to mention huge downward pricing pressure from online retailer Amazon.
Despite Trump's rhetoric about jobs and the economy, he is only focused on the richest Americans, and a flip in Congress will ensure compromise legislation which will help the middle class who have been stagnating for decades. History shows that the economy does best with a split congress and President (just ask Bill Clinton, who worked with neocon Newt Gingrich throughout the late 1990's boom).
Who doesn't like low taxes?
Under the current tax reform proposal from Trump that is very likely to become law, I will save a ton of money in taxes in 2018. The utter fiction of "supply side economics" is that entrepreneurs like me will take these tax savings and reinvest them in our businesses, creating new jobs. But the reality is that I (and most of my Democrat and Republican friends who run large businesses) usually take our additional savings and invest it in the stock market or in real estate, which create no jobs and only enhances our wealth further.
For this reason, while I will never complain about low taxes (and I fully support middle class tax reform), it's intellectually dishonest to say that lower corporate taxes are going to help the middle class one bit. For many business leaders and entrepreneurs like myself, we are willing to pay slightly more taxes if it helps the middle class of America (just ask Warren Buffett).
