MAGAnomics – The first round of economic results from 2017 holiday sales are coming in and the results are incredible. Total holiday sales from November and December increased 5.5% over the prior year, that’s a massive jump.
Keep in mind, two-thirds of GDP is attached to consumer spending.  The spending jump to $692 billion will increase fourth quarter GDP growth when calculated.

(Via CNBC) Holiday sales jumped 5.5 percent compared with last year, marking the largest jump seen since the end of the Great Recession, the National Retail Federation said Friday.
Total sales for November and December were $691.9 billion, exceeding the industry trade group’s forecast of between $678.75 billion and $682 billion, which would have been an increase of between 3.6 and 4 percent.

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Oh, go figure.  They re-cog-o-nized that all by themselves…
Yesterday CTH noted Princess Rainbow Sparkles was in Washington DC lobbying Washington State Representative Dave Reichert, Senator Jeff Flake, Senator Lindsey Graham, et al. Isn’t it funny how Canadian officials lobby U.S. representatives for their unique economic interests, but if a U.S. official stepped into Canada to lobby one of their members of Parliament,… yikes, heaven forbid. Foreign election conspiracy. I digress.

Reuters is reporting today that Canadian trade officials are increasingly convinced that President Trump is going to pull out of NAFTA.  The next round of negotiations is scheduled for the end of this month.  Half of the Canadian contingent thinks Trump will exit, the other half think the appearance of a pull-out is simply a negotiating strategy.
An official WH source “close to Trump” is attributing a statement to POTUS: “I want out”.
Ya think?  Scott Minerd, Global Chief Investment Officer at Guggenheim Partners, said “if Trump were to announce a NAFTA exit, the stock market would probably pull back by 5 percent or so, before advancing to new highs.”  He’s correct.
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President Trump, Vice-President Mike Pence and leadership from the administration deliver remarks from Camp David following extensive meetings on this year’s administrative priorities.

According to ADP payroll reports the U.S. economy added a whopping 250,000 jobs in December exceeding the earlier forecast of 190k. The DOW jumps over 25,000.

This jobs report bolsters confidence in the MAGAnomic prediction shared two years ago. So long as current economic trends continue, the explosion in private sector wage rates, middle-class wages, will begin around Q2 of this year (April – June). Once the eight year Obama-labor-lag is fully absorbed, a tighter job market will put upward pressure on real wages.

The Main Street economic engine, the “real economy”, is now positioned to overtake the Wall Street engine, the “paper economy”. Meaning actual profits and losses, real economic GDP growth, will drive company earnings and valuations in 2018.
There is an economic policy synergy now taking place.  The tax package that was passed shows how President Trump’s economic policy drivers (Ross, Cohen, Mnuchin) have structured Main Street businesses to willingly afford the wage rate increases.
The MAGAnomic dynamic is two-fold. The tax rates for the middle-class have dropped; simultaneous to this tax change increasing take home pay, the business sectors will have room to drive actual hourly wage rates higher. Lower rates and higher wages has a compounding impact on the amount of money in workers paychecks/pockets. See how that works?
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If the U.S. were to exit NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), the price you pay for most foodstuff at the grocery store would drop 10% in the first quarter and likely drop 20% or more by the end of the first year. Here’s why:
Approximately a decade ago the U.S. Dept of Agriculture stopped tracking, and reporting, U.S. consumer food prices. The food sector joined the ranks of fuel and energy in no longer being measured to track inflation and backdrop Fed monetary policy. Not coincidentally this was simultaneous to U.S. consumers seeing massive inflation in the same sector.

There are massive international corporate and financial interests who are inherently at risk from President Trump’s “America-First” economic and trade platform. Believe it or not, President Trump is up against an entire world economic establishment.
When you understand how trade works in the modern era you will understand why the agents within the system are so adamantly opposed to U.S. President Trump.
The biggest lie in modern economics, willingly spread and maintained by corporate media, is that a system of global markets still exists.
It doesn’t.
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Well, that didn’t take long.  About a decade ago we needed a phrase to describe a very specific set of republican senators, thus originated the term “Decepticons”.
Decepticons are different from traditional ‘establishment’ types in that they are a cloistered club, a sub-set of the upper-tier within the GOPe, and they protect their exclusive position because of the payments and benefits they receive from an individual lobbyist, Tom Donohue.

Tom Donohue is the President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest single lobbying group in all of Washington DC.   Donohue represents the interests of massive financial institutions and multinational corporations.  Donohue receives hundreds of millions from his corporate conglomerates; and he controls the distribution of tens-of-millions toward individual senators on capitol hill who agree to uphold those interests.
A ‘Decepticon’ will NEVER break ranks with the Chamber. EVER.  Regardless of the Chamber position.  That character trait is what makes them uniquely “Decepticons.”

WASHINGTON DC – Senate Republicans are growing frustrated with what they see as a lack of clear direction in President Trump’s trade agenda, which they warn is hurting U.S. exporters.
Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee vented their concerns in a recent meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

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Initial 2017 sales growth estimates exceed $33 billion (almost 6%), for a total of $598 billion, according to analysis by Customer Growth Partners.
Consumer spending represents two-thirds of total GDP; and with initial Q4 sales growth estimates coming in much higher than anticipated – this puts even more fuel into fourth quarter GDP growth estimates that have been hovering near 4%.
The stunning retail growth increases have been noted in both on-line and brick-and-mortar stores which reflects a more broad increase, driven by consumer confidence, likely to exceed these initial estimates.

CBS – […] Total retail sales this holiday season added up to a record $598 billion dollars — up $33 billion from last year. “This is literally the best season since before the recession,” business owner Craig Johnson said.

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PART I – As the year winds down there will be lots of reviews of all things political. Lists of shifts and outlined accomplishments will be compiled to either show the advances or declines depending on tribal affiliation of the pundit.
However, not many people ever ask the questions behind the “why”.  Why is there so much opposition to President Trump?

In the larger analysis, Donald Trump and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) proposition is a daily reminder that citizen inspired government can eliminate the decades-long notion of politics as a profession.
There are hundreds-of-thousands of people within the institutional system known as politics. Each member carving out a specialty and selling their expertise as necessary within the opaque organization known as government. From city council, through state legislature and into federal representation, the primary selling point of each participating member is to declare their operational skill within the institution.
Heck, the professional political enterprise is so accepted as ordinary you can even go to college and earn a degree in how to be a politician. Why?
Boil down government to its most basic of institutional objectives and the entire premise is about operating common systems to the benefit of the aggregate assembly. The only thing that changes is the scale of the assembled constituency, local, state or federal.
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The economic strategy of President Trump is so consequential and encompassing, even the domestic effects are felt globally.

♦Removing the U.S. from the multinational TPP trade deal initially planted the seeds of doubt amid multinational trade forecasters because the shift positioned the U.S. with unique leverage. They saw Trump using access to the worlds largest market as a negotiating strategy.
♦A few months later, President Trump walked away from the ridiculous regulatory restrictions within the Paris Climate Treaty.  Instantaneously this put even more strategic manufacturing and economic advance on the U.S. ledger, and simultaneously made American energy independence a foregone conclusion.
♦And now that congress has codified President Trump’s lower domestic business taxes, in conjunction with opening up ANWR for energy development (a strategic economic goal for 20+ years), the size of the U.S. economic and manufacturing advantage has just increased U.S. trade leverage to almost unimaginable levels.

Economic Nationalism – President Trump’s strategy has created: •Lower and long-term predictable energy costs, not attached to OPEC or multinational influence; •Lower and long-term raw material costs due to slashed regulatory environment; •lower and long-term business manufacturing tax rates; and now Trump begins negotiating trade deals.

Add these advantages together within the largest economic market in the world and the U.S. is now the place where manufacturers will want to do business.  Additionally, the process of utilizing Canada and/or Mexico as a workaround into the U.S. market, via NAFTA, is on the cusp of removal.
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Oh, we have no idea yet how big and consequential the synergy between all of President Trump’s economic policies are toward an almost unfathomable MAGAnomic result; but we’ll find out really soon, BIGLY.
The international community is just now beginning to recognize how intensely sequential the domestic MAGAnomic tax policy is when combined with the international America-First trade policy therein.

2018 will be the year when every international trade partner reassess their best financial interests; and with the tax outline codified into law, POTUS Trump, Secretary Ross, Secretary Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Lighthizer are about to initiate the biggest multinational trade shift in the history of international economics.
Yes folks, I’m actually talking about that phase when we discover we are living within the orbit of: “almost too much winning”.   This is where we begin to recognize that 5%, 6% and even 7% GDP growth is easily attainable. Here’s how it works.
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