Cahoot: Trump, Energy, and Elon

All right, well, welcome to another episode of Hot Takes with Manish and Jer, bringing you the latest in E commerce news and how it may impact you. So, Manish, Trump wins the election. And it seems, you know, everything that you read since Trump won the election tends to focus on cost pressure and whatnot and impacting supply chain professionals, you know, quite substantially. Another example, I read something about, you know, Trump's, you know, drill baby drill, you know, focus on energy policy, you know, and how that's going to impact inflation. How should sellers be thinking about what changes should they be potentially making based on some of the energy policy changes that we expect to see?

Well, that's a very good and important question. You know, energy is one of the primary ingredients in commerce, right? Oil and gas and electricity drives our commerce, you know, all our vehicles. So it has direct correlation inflation. So I personally think that you know, more than the energy policy, which of course is a greater concern for the environment, in my opinion. I don't expect the oil prices to dramatically go up or go down. I think regardless of whether more oil is produced, the global demand for oil is very high. So I don't think that you're going to see a, you're going to pay less than half or half of what you're paying at the pump today. I think, on the other hand, inflation could potentially creep up more based on his tax policies for the companies in the US If Trump ends up cutting the corporate tax rate, which can lead to a greater inflation because the Fed, the Federal Reserve may not be able to cut interest rates, which means they will keep the borrowing rates high. And so that is more likely to impact than the price of the pump.

And so I'm curious because obviously you spend a lot of time digging deep into a lot of these topics. What do you expect Elon Musk to benefit or how do you expect Elon, Elon Musk to benefit from his. What did he spend $130 million on? Trump's.

Wow, that's a very interesting question. It remains to be seen because I don't expect the Trump administration to add any new subsidies on electric vehicles because that obviously contradicts with the drill baby drill policy. So I don't expect that, you know, there, there is some talk about TikTok, whether, you know, the US Government will force the sale of TikTok for several reasons. You know, we heard a lot about that under the Biden administration. So it, you know, Elon Musk could be potentially the Future owner of TikTok if that sale goes through because that's a very large platform and clearly he will have a big role, I think, in the government. I think it's going to certainly help him in many ways in regulations. Less regulations allows him to send his rockets to space more easily and more frequently, bringing his self driving cars on the road sooner of your regulation and expediting those processes. So I think he made a smart bet and it has paid off so far.

Interesting. Yeah, thanks Maneesh. Remember listeners, information is only power when you put it into action. So think about what you can do to improve your business in these areas. And until next time, keep learning and stay curious.