Starting with a footnote: publicly traded companies in the US are required to disclose the regional breakout of their sales. My experience is that this mandate is honored more in the letter than the spirit, as far as detailed compliance goes. The reason? ,,,industry competitors can read 10ks as well as you and I can, and companies are loathe to reveal sensitive information about the sweet spots for sales and earnings growth.

A reasonable guess, or at least the one I use, is that multinationals are 50/50 inside and outside the US.

The two main Trump economic initiatives, as I see them:

–whether intentionally or not, to lower the world value of the currency, meaning foreign creditors will be repaid in dollars that are worth less than anticipated

–replace taxes on income with taxes on consumption (i.e., tariffs), thereby shifting the burden of paying for the federal government away from the ultra-wealthy to ordinary citizens.

The result of these two would presumably be to make everyone poorer, but with ordinary people hurt the most. Shrinking the domestic workforce through ICE, also a key goal, only makes the situation worse.

looking at stocks:

–last year, the most important key to investing success was to own companies with costs in $US and revenues elsewhere. I think this continues to be the case, although the very large gains to be had 12 months ago are probably behind us

–we’re beginning to see negative surprises among consumer stocks. As I see it, these stem from two sources. The first is trading down to less expensive items, which has been happening pretty much since the inauguration. A stock example would be:

supermarkets to Walmart

Walmart to high-end dollar stores

high-end to low-end dollar stores

low-end to off-the-radar stores

stores to raising vegetables or poultry in the back year.

The main point is continuing to consume but finding lower-price outlets.

The second is postponing purchases–like getting another year out of an old car, or sewing up a hole in a jacket rather than getting a new one.

A very old Wall Street cliche is that in bad times consumers shift from large purchases to smaller pick-me-ups that make one feel better.

Recent consumer company reporting suggests to me that even this last is tailing off. If so, it could be signaling another down leg for the domestic economy that will appear in official statistics in a month or tow.