In this Marketing School podcast episode, host Eric Siu and guest Neil Patel discuss the economic outlook following the U.S. presidential election. They argue that the election will not trigger a demand boom; instead, interest‑rate policy—driven by the Federal Reserve—will dominate growth prospects. Citing comments from Ray Dalio, Larry Fink, and Paul Tudor Jones, they explain how high global debt and lingering inflation suggest a possible re‑inflation in the next two years. The conversation shifts to media bias, referencing a study that shows disproportionate negative coverage of Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris and a broader decline in public trust in news. They note a growing migration toward podcasts and independent media as audiences lose confidence in traditional outlets, a trend predicted years earlier by Balaji Srinivasan. Finally, they advise marketers not to expect an immediate post‑election surge, urging focus on fundamentals, leveraging podcasts to build trust, and repurposing podcast clips for broader marketing reach. The episode ends with promotional plugs for NP Digital and the Agency Owners Association.
Chapters
Will demand boom after the election?
I don't think demand will boom at all. You're talking about the event Ray Dalio, and this was in Saudi Arabia. It was an investor conference. I believe Larry Fink spoke there, and he talked about that roundtable, right? Yeah, and I don't know if it was a roundtable, but I know he talked about how he doesn't think the Fed is going to reduce rates by another 50 basis points by the end of year. It's going to be 25, is his opinion. Some other people are saying similar things, although the Fed said that they were going to do one point this year. They already did a half a point.
I mean, come on, we— it's probably a quarter.
I, I don't think anyone really knows other than the Fed.
I'll bet you it's a quarter.
But what Ray Dalio is discussing is, hey, there's a big issue of debt, and all these countries have debt. And what people believe when things are bad or the economy's bad, whether it's because we print too much money or there's debt, a lot of people believe, you know what, Harris is going to change our economy, Trump is going to change the economy. I hate to say it, none, very few of them really change any If you look at Goldman Sachs, they did analysis, they said there's very little difference between a Harris campaign and a Trump campaign. And it doesn't matter what promises they make, you still have a lot of other layers to deal with, like the House and the Senate. And it doesn't matter if they're Republican or Democrat or they're for you or against you. A lot of times they have other ulterior motives and they're going to do what they want to do, or they may not like what you have to do. I mean, Elon Musk even said it once, being the president of the United States is like being a captain of a very large ship with a really small rudder.
That's right.
that, you know, it's really hard to move it in whatever direction you want. But the problem here is they're not going to impact the economy that much. There's not going to just be a big demand boom. What really affects the economy is interest rates. And if you look at global interest rates, they're high because inflation's high. And most of the people running these economies aren't going to reduce the interest rates just because there's a new president or elected official. A lot of times the people who control the interest rates, like in the United States, Run separately from the president. The president can't tell the Federal Reserve to raise or decrease the rates. They could try to have some influence, but it's really up to the Federal Reserve.
Have you seen that graph that's kind of superimposed on a previous inflation graph? And so it shows kind of where we're at right now, and the graph looks exactly the same. And so it shows inflation coming down right now, right?
Yeah.
But it basically shows in about 2 years or so, inflation is going to reinflate. And so Paul Tudor Jones, who's a very successful investor, he has said that all roads lead back to inflation. We're gonna like anytime there's a big debt problem, we have to inflate our way out of the problem, right? Because you can't have deflation because oh, I'm gonna cut your wage in half. How are you gonna afford things, right? It's gonna be chaos, right? So the only solution is to inflate also because rich people own assets, right? So the only way is up. And he's like, okay, well, that's gonna happen again. Who knows if next year or two years, but that graph shows two years or so. And so my point of saying all this is that it kind of just yes, the election that doesn't really matter. But what does matter is when you look at history, history tends to repeat itself, and that's. Probably what will happen, not even after this election, just in 2 years or so at the midpoint.
And when you look at the GDP growth, I was watching CNBC the other day, I think they were saying around 2.1% for the 3rd quarter. When you look at that growth, our inflation is more than our GDP growth at this point.
Yep. And so, you know, that's what it is. Just focus on yourself and keep moving forward.
Keep focusing on the fundamentals with marketing, but don't expect after the election there's going to be a boom in demand for all your campaigns or your products or services that you're It's a very slow, long recovery.
I want to take a second to tell you about my podcast co-host's agency. So NP Digital, so Neil Patel Digital. What they do is they do a whole host of marketing services and they are global. They're worldwide. They have SMB services as well. They have mid-market to enterprise services as well. They cover the entire gamut. So you can just go to npdigital.com to learn more about it. And now back to the episode. Mario Naufal did this study over here. So the study says, and this hasn't been verified, but it says TV news hits new bias high, 78% positive Kamala versus 85% negative Trump. So major networks ABC, CBS, and NBC have delivered most unbalanced election coverage in history, Media Research Center finds. Networks spent 31% of Trump coverage on controversies while dedicating only 5% of Kamala coverage to critical topics. The study analyzed over 600 segments since July. The coverage gap exceeds both the 2016 and 2020 elections as networks gave twice as much airtime to Trump after September debate, mostly negative. Final part, findings come as Gallup shows public trust in media hits new low with 36% having no trust at all. I don't know if you remember this when we were growing up, but when my parents watched the news, they always said, shh, shh, shh, right?
Yes.
It was like the most important thing ever. But what's happening now? Do you trust the media as much?
No, I don't trust it on either side. It doesn't matter what site I'm reading, whether it could be Fox or CNN. I really don't trust most of the stuff on the news. And I'm not saying that they're wrong. It's just, I have this biasness in my head for the same reason that Jeff Bezos pointed out. And I think media on both sides have pushed a lot of stuff out that is false. So it just makes us believe certain things.
You know, Balaji Srinivasan predicted this maybe 8 years ago or so. So he's, you know, he was a partner at Andreessen Horowitz and he's like a big crypto guy, um, worked at Coinbase for a little bit. But anyway, so he said his proj— his projection was that the next election, so maybe this is 4 years ago or so, he said the next election is going to be, be based on the new media, which is podcasts. Why is Trump doing so many podcasts? Right. Um, and so things are shifting because people don't trust the media anymore, which is what Jeff Bezos said. People are shifting over to podcasts and things like that, like independent media. Right. And we've seen that shift in In this, um, this election cycle, and I think it's going to continue to happen.
Dude, speaking of podcasts, I was looking at corporations the other day, or agencies that help companies start podcasts. There's actually not a lot of options. No. And it's such a massive channel, yet companies don't really invest in podcasting. I see more companies investing in podcast advertising versus just creating their own podcast. And we all know an ad Isn't the same as organic conversation, which performs way better in a podcast.
Right. Yeah, I don't know. It's, um, the reason we keep doing this is one, because it's fun, but two, you build trust at scale. And then also we get so many clips from this now too. So it's good across the board.
Yeah, it's good across the board.
All right. So that is it for today, guys. Go to marketingschool.io/agency to learn more about the Agency Owners Association, where we help agency owners grow. And that being said, we'll see you tomorrow.
