One important idea for me that has worked exceptionally well this year has been looking at the US under the Trump administration as like post-WWII Japan–maintaining a weak currency to foster an export-oriented manufacturing economy, while erecting trade barriers to constrain domestic consumption. My portfolio conclusion from this was to look for companies that have $US costs and foreign currency revenues. This has worked well. The post-inauguration plunge in the dollar on fears that Trump wants a repeat of the devaluation of the 1970s as a way of wriggling out from under the large amount of US sovereign debt has meant a large increase in margins for exporters.

Yes, overall US stock indices have been pretty much the worst in the world–the S&P 500 is +18% in dollars ytd vs. +31% for the rest of the world. But a collection of US-based, S&P- or NASDAQ-listed exporters could easily be +40%.

I’ve also been thinking for some time that US-based global consumer companies with solid brand names (created through years and years of advertising spending) could be acquisition targets for foreign firms who see them as, say, 10%+ cheaper now in euros than a year ago.

However, there’s some pretty ugly stuff in the US right now–ICE terror, the secret prisons, the Navy blowing up boats and killing their crews, the shocking willingness of Congress to permit this to continue… Taking off my hat as a human being and putting on my stock market cap, I have two conclusions from this:

–the more concrete. According to the Economist, American multinationals, experiencing nascent boycotts of their products abroad, are shifting their advertising away from highlighting their US heritage to emphasizing their local roots. My guess is that we’ll begin to see surprisingly large damage to the results of consumer-facing multinationals as 2026 unfolds, especially in the EU. If so, from now on the simple formula of foreign revenues/US costs won’t work particularly well.

–the more conceptual. The US domestic situation is more complex. S&P is projecting 2.0% GDP growth for the US in 2026; the OECD is at +1.7% (according to Gemini). Loss of foreign tourism will clip maybe 0.1% from that. Absent a significant change in the political situation, my guess is that next year we’ll see a continuation of consumer trading down and a broadening to include a larger number of the more affluent. If so, the domestic consumer may not be a great place to be, and certainly not at the high end.

My guess, too, is that if the consensus is wrong about GDP growth, it will end up being too optimistic. Usually, the reverse is true. But I worry that there’s CBS-like institutional pressure not to be too negative in a public forum. If so, this would leave me less enthusiastic overall but in more or less the same place as I was a year ago–with strength being in companies with US costs and a substantial chunk of foreign revenues. I also think it will be much safer to stick to industrial suppliers and global tech companies than to consumer names.