Financial guru and Donald Trump adviser Wilbur Ross said the president-elect beat Hillary Clinton because he endeared himself to Americans who are “sick and tired” of not being treated well by elected officials.
“The reality is Donald Trump recognized that there is a lot of trouble out there,” Ross told CNBC. “There's a whole huge segment of the population that has not been well-treated. They were sick and tired of it and that's what changed the election,” he said.
“I don't think that Hillary Clinton ran a bad campaign. I think she ran a brilliant campaign to tell you the truth,” the WL Ross & Co. chairman and CEO said.
Ross has faith that Trump will appoint the right people to the offices they can best fulfill, thereby holding to his campaign vow to make America great again.
“I think Donald Trump is going to make the decisions. He's got very good transition team that's been working ever since the convention. People forget the transition ideas didn't start Wednesday morning. They started way back at the convention,” Ross said.
As far as the stock market rally in the wake of Trump’s victory, Ross agrees.
“It's correct for the market to be aggressive right now,” he said.
“And the reason is several things. Trump's policies as you can see from everything he said and from the little 100 day thing that we wrote, is expansive. It’s fiscal policy being put to work. One of the missing ingredients in the last several years has been fiscal policy. There's a real limit to what monetary policy can do on its own. You can’t push a string,” he explained.
Ross contends that Trump’s economic blueprint will quickly put the nation’s business on a robust path to prosperity.
“Corporate tax rate down from 35 to 15, that means you have 30% more of pre-tax earnings come through to post-tax. How many companies ever have a 30% increase in a year. Darn few,” he said.
“Second, the idea of writing off capital investment immediately is huge. The thing that's been lagging the most in our economy has been capital investment. And this, plus bringing money back from overseas, plus the lower tax rate on ongoing earnings of return that's powerful medicine.”
An investor and businessman who made his billions advising bankruptcies and restructuring flailing companies, Ross was No. 20 in Newsmax's 100 Most Influential Business Leaders in America.
Meanwhile, Trump still has his critics.
Harvard historian and economist Niall Ferguson warned Trump’s campaign proposals would lead to a two-year boom in the U.S. economy followed by a rising fiscal imbalance and higher inflation and interest rates.
Trade renegotiations, possibly trade wars with countries such as China and Mexico, would hit the U.S. hard because it had a wide trade deficit, Ferguson said.
Trump's plan to cut taxes and invest in infrastructure and defense would boost GDP in the short-term, but it would significantly increase the U.S. budget deficit, leading to higher inflation and interest rates, Business Live explained.
“[Trump] will probably look pretty good next year and the year after that, but there is always a reckoning with these populist policies.”
(Newsmax wire services contributed to this report).
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