Would Trump impeachment crash stocks?
Wall Street not so sure any decisive action taken against president would trigger market decline
President Donald Trump, who has taken a lot of credit for the stock market boom since he took office, says a “crash” would happen if he were impeached.
But Wall Street begs to differ, arguing that the forces driving the nearly $30 trillion U.S. stock market are far bigger and stronger than the influence of one person, even one as powerful as the nation’s commander in chief.
“One man does not move the market over the long term,” said Thorne Perkin, president of Papamarkou Wellner Asset Management in New York.
Trump, who raised the specter of his removal from office Thursday in an interview with “Fox & Friends,” went as far as saying a bust would occur if he were to be forced out.
“I’ll tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash,” he said, adding that without his kind of “thinking,” economic results would get worse. “You would see numbers that you wouldn’t believe, in reverse.”
Perkin and other Wall Street pros don’t dispute that the president’s growth-friendly policies, like lower taxes and fewer business regulations, have provided a lift to the economy and stock market since he entered the White House.
The broad Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index has climbed 25 percent since Trump took office, and the nation’s economy grew 4.1 percent last quarter, its fastest pace since 2014.
But money managers stress that the stock market’s longer-term direction and health are less about political drama and more about the overall strength of America’s economy and other factors, such as the level of interest rates, oil prices, corporate profits and consumer spending.
The economy is so juiced on stimulus from tax cuts and low borrowing costs that investors can expect solid growth despite political shakeups, analysts say.
“Conversations (about crashes) may be driven by the headlines, but stock prices are driven by the bottom line,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA, a New Yorkbased investment research firm.
Still, news of an impending push to impeach Trump could cause short-term market turbulence. Uncertainty would spike – something investors abhor.
“It would be unfair to dismiss the influence of politics altogether,” Oliver Jones, a markets economist at Capital Economics, a London-based firm, wrote in a report.
Trump’s strong support from Republicans makes it unlikely, even if Democrats begin impeachment proceedings, that the Senate will be able to come up with the two-thirds vote to convict him, analysts say.
The real causes of stock market crashes are things like stock prices getting overly inflated like they did in 1929 and in early 2000 during the internet stock boom, or when an unexpected financial crisis strikes like it did in 2008. Market routs most often occur when they are hit with a shock.
Wall Street has been warily eyeing the president’s troubles for months, so a possible impeachment proceeding wouldn’t come as a surprise – nor would it be enough to lead to an economic downturn, said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG, a Tokyo-based global bank with offices in New York.
At the moment, “the only outcomes that could cause a crash would be extreme (interest rate) tightening by the Fed, which is unlikely, signs of a recession, which is not imminent, (or) a major trade war, which is possible but not likely,” said Greg Valliere, chief global strategist and Washington policy expert at Horizon Investments.
Another risk for the market is if Trump’s political woes hurt Republicans in November’s midterm elections, allowing Democrats to regain control of the House of Representatives, as political gridlock could make it harder for Trump to push through his agenda.