It’s working.
President-elect Donald Trump’s talk of lowering corporate tax rates and reducing regulation is already helping the economy, according to New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Group President Tom Farley.
Farley shared his views on the economy and the causes of the recent stock market rally with CNBC’s Squawk Box on January 18. Squawk Box anchors interviewed Farley live from Davos, Switzerland, during the 2017 World Economic Forum meeting.
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He joked with co-anchor Joe Kernen, “Who knew that if you talked about lowering corporate income taxes and smarter regulation that maybe we'd see a pick up in the markets and animal spirits? Maybe you knew, Joe.” The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up nearly 2,000 points since Trumps’ victory.
Farley said the number one complaint of CEOs he spoke with was high corporate income tax rates, with some “companies are paying, you know, 33 percent, 34 percent, 32 percent corporate income taxes and they’re fed up with it.”
Trump’s website stated that he plans to “lower the business tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent,” something Farley said “will be good” for the economy.
When it came to reducing regulation, Farley said “People are really excited.” He even knew of and one CEO who was “already seeing regulations not be implemented that were otherwise going to be implemented.”
Farley said he “thinks it [2017] will be a good year” and added that last year the NYSE had zero IPOs in the first quarter but “Next week and the following week we'll have six or seven IPOs.”
Though experts in addition to Farley have credited the rally to Trump’s win, the broadcasts networks have barely made a connection. When the Dow soared to record highs four days running in November, NBC and CBS excluded Trump’s name from stories about it. In fact, between Election Day and Dec. 13, ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news shows aired only 11 combined stories about the stock market’s huge rally. Five of them ignored Trump altogether. There were fewer stories than there were stock market record highs during that period.
