It’s no surprise that the outcome of the election will help certain companies based on the stance of the winner. It is in these companies’ best interest for the candidate whose policies best help their goals to win. Although corporations aren’t allowed to directly donate to a candidate, many donate to political action committees (PACs) that will donate the money to a specific party. There are many different policies that can affect a corporation.
Since republican spending mainly focuses on defense these companies will improve in performance now that Trump is elected. Republican presidents have historically spent more money than democrats. Trump’s last term was no exception. The only time a democrat has outdone trump on military spending before 1974 was when Obama was overseeing the war on terror. Now that Trump is elected, the defense contracts are expected to skyrocket resulting in immense gains for these companies.
Nonrenewable energy companies will benefit from the lowered regulation that comes with the Trump administration. With decreased regulation on domestic oil production, corporations like Exxon-Mobile and Chevron will greatly benefit. On the other hand, renewable energy companies haven’t done as well since the election. This is because the main sector that Harris has stated that she would focus on if elected was renewable energy.
Another sector that will similarly benefit from a lack of regulation is finance. With Trump coming from a background in finance, he has already stated that he will rollback as many regulations as possible. The Biden Harris administration has held its financial regulations steady which doesn’t benefit large financial corporations like Goldman Sachs or Bank of America. The day after the election, both of these companies saw massive gains.
Electric vehicles companies were divided in their support. One would expect for a focus on green energy to result in the support of the companies that would benefit. This isn’t the case with Tesla. Elon Musk has been extremely vocal in his support of Trump donating more than one hundred million to his campaign. This donation could just be due to the cutting of corporate taxes, or Tesla could be hoping for stricter tariffs on foreign EV’s, increasing the demand for domestic EV’s.
The market saw a lot of volatility after the election. This volatility went both ways with companies that would have been supported by Harris’ policies decreasing and those backed by Trump’s policies skyrocketing. Although the market saw big swings in the days after the election, in the long run these changes won’t have a substantial impact on the market.
