Summary

Brian Pellegrini focused his presentation on the US Election; Is the Election over? What is the current economic situation? Expected policy changes and a 2021 outlook?

Brian states that the election was a lot closer than the media show; at a state level the Republican’s actually expanded and the election was more a referendum on the Presidency. The current fight is the Senate in Georgia. COVID policy (including lockdowns) is controlled by state governors, with very little involvement by the federal government. The demographics for election voting changed drastically, negatively from a democrat’s point of view, because high confidence voters seemed to move towards Republicans, winning back some voters that Trump had pulled away. Non-white demographics all shifted towards Republican voting when compared to 2016, including a 6% increase in the black vote. In terms of the different issues that each party won a significant number of votes on, Trump won relatively big on the Economy, whereas Biden had large support for his Health care policies as well as COVID outbreak responses. Brian speculates that without the Coronavirus pandemic, Trump would not have lost; both from his response and inability to campaign as he is used to. Brian went on to discuss media outlets and the differing propaganda that comes, and how different demographics of the US population feel the media does or doesn’t represent them.

Brian discusses the economic situation in the US. Brian believes the US economy will recover as fast as the political establishment allow it, and as fast as the freight infrastructure is able to. Brian uses Real Final Sales to Domestic Purchasers as an accurate way of measuring growth. In the 3rd quarter it came a lot of the way back, and probably will follow trend in the 4th quarter. COVID’s biggest shock was the drawdown in inventory followed by distribution freezing up and panic buying. People lost jobs but household income has increased with the transfer payments. COVID has become a very politicized issue, with states run by Democrats always having a stronger response, often by strongly disagreeing with Trump and therefore having increased unemployment numbers. A labour market outlook shows that part-timers were hardest hit by COVID however with state unemployment and federal bailouts, their pay actually increased drastically, whereas full-timers had their hours cut but were kept on the payroll and involuntary part-timers has gone back to its pre-COVID levels.

Lastly, Brian moved on to Policy changes and his 2021 outlook. Brian predicts little change since Biden’s win was minimal and a lot of his policy change will depend on how much Biden is persuaded by the leftist crowd. The biggest changes will come from Foreign Policy; Biden will most likely stop selling weapons to the Gulf Arab states without asking any questions, greatly improving the bargaining position of Russia. Brian doesn’t believe the Green New Deal is going to happen. Biden’s threats to end fracking will be unlikely to have any real impact besides from fracking on federal land, however this has been an area of relatively little growth in the last 10 years. In 2021, Brian predicts the manufacturing and consumer economies will get back on track, with a bounce back in demand and most likely another stimulus package giving people and states more money. Inflation expectations have increased; however it is unclear how expectations will react to shortages.

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