As Trumponomics 2.0 looms, expect a tumultuous four years

Disruptions in trade, financial markets and geopolitics will be on the cards.

- Vikram Khanna

As 2025 unfolds, we will re-enter a four-year cycle dominated by an unpredictable American presidency with radical ideas that threaten to upend the economic order, both domestically and globally. At such a disruptive time, any economic forecasts, wherever they come from, will be subject to wide margins of error and should be taken as speculation, at best. With that caveat in place, here's a sense of what might be in store.

The Trump administration's economic platform will influence five key areas: trade, monetary and fiscal policies, immigration, regulation and industrial policies.

In trade, the first salvos have already been fired. A self-avowed "tariff man", President-elect Donald Trump threatened, during his campaign, to impose tariffs of 60 per cent across the board on Chinese goods and at least 10 per cent on those from the rest of the world. In a Nov 25 post on his social media site Truth Social, Trump declared: "On January 20th as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25 per cent tariff on ALL products coming into the United States."

Separately, he vowed to slap 10 per cent tariffs on China on top of already existing tariffs, which vary by product category and range from 25 per cent to 100 per cent.

In the realm of fiscal policy, the most far-reaching measures relate to taxes. Trump has pledged to extend the tax cuts his administration introduced in 2017 which are set to expire in 2025 and to slash the US corporate tax rate from 21 per cent to 15 per cent, plus eliminate taxes on specific types of incomes such as service workers' tips, overtime pay and social security benefits.

On immigration, his administration has threatened to not only tighten border controls but also to deport illegal immigrants, estimated to be 11 million in number.