See the world through the eyes of an economist.
America is a weird place
With Trump taking the White House, I thought I’d share my favourite charts from Planet America.
First up, there was a huge surge in Google Searches for “change my vote.” (100 here means the most ever for that search term.) Too late kids, too late.
Speaking of Google Searches, there was also a spike in searches for “Did Joe Biden drop out?” on the day of the election. It kinda blows my mind how you could miss that.
There was also a surge in searches for “moving to Canada”. Just remember, be careful. If you die in Canada you die in real life.
In terms of the Trump vote, Trump made up ground – sometimes significant ground – in almost every demographic. The only two demographics where Trump lost ground was with Men 65+, and with college educated women, and even then, not by all that much.
That said, this might not be the endorsement Trump probably thinks it is. With a global cost-of-living crisis, there is a lot of anger directed at incumbent parties, wherever they sit on the political spectrum.
As the Financial Times’ chief data reporter, John Burn-Murdoch, points out, nine other major global democracies had already gone to the polls in 2024 – including the United Kingdom, France, India and Japan. In all of them, the incumbent party lost support – the first time this has happened in more than a century of election tracking!
This is also the third election in a row where the incumbent lost (or had it stolen from them if you believe Trump.) That’s the biggest streak since the 1800s.
What will a Trump economy look like?
The general vibe is that Trump policies will be inflationary – especially trade tariffs and “mass deportations”, which reduces the available labour pool. Hedge Fund managers, for example, were expecting lower global inflation going forward. After Trump’s win, they now expect higher.
What Trump says and what Trump does are different things, but he did bring in a lot of protectionist measures last time he was in office. And the general flow of things lately has been strongly in favour of more tariffs and trade restrictions, so it’s likely we will see some action here.
Men, this is what women really want
A survey asked women what hobbies they found most attractive in men. Reading topped the list, but shout out to the 88% of women who found blacksmithing sexy. A good blacksmith is hard to find these days.
At the other end of the spectrum, the least attractive hobbies were hanging out in the manosphere, gambling and porn. But shout out to the 30% of women who find men who nominate “drinking” as a hobby attractive. I hear you. We all need a drinking buddy sometimes.
And that’s how the world looked through the eyes of an economist this week.
DB.