Since Donald Trump’s election as president, stocks have been in rally mode. And a failure to pass his administration’s first signature legislation isn’t likely to derail the market rally.
The House of Representatives is set to vote on the American Health Care Act later Friday afternoon. As of late morning, it appeared that the GOP did not have the votes needed to pass the bill.
On Friday morning, stocks in the U.S. were slightly higher but, overall, not doing much ahead of the vote. On Thursday, if you look hard enough, it appeared markets got a bit jittery as the healthcare-related headlines rolled in during the day. But overall, markets appear largely indifferent to the outcome of this vote.
Earlier this week, markets sold off on vague concerns over the ability for this bill to pass which, by extension, cast into doubt the whole of the Trump economic agenda.
However, some analysts saw the sell-off as rooted in more technical factors than any individual headline. And this also falls broadly in-line with the idea that markets and politics are viewing the Trump administration through completely different lenses.
Cutting taxes, spending on infrastructure, and cutting regulations were the pillars markets — as well as businesses and consumers — had gotten so excited about since the election. House leadership, however, began with healthcare. And the market’s logic says that if the first part of the agenda fails, the whole thing is in trouble.
But reports on Thursday said that Trump told House Republicans the AHCA will either pass, or the administration will move on. Which should be great news for markets.
Fears are overblown
As Andrew Hunter, an economist at Capital Economics, wrote on Thursday, “We think fears that the failure of the bill could seriously threaten the rest of Trump’s legislative agenda are overblown.”
Hunter added that, “there is no procedural reason why the failure of the bill would threaten future legislation. The Republicans have chosen to pursue health care reform through a reconciliation bill, which requires only a simple majority to pass the Senate.
“However, only one can be passed each fiscal year. With a reconciliation to the 2017 budget being used for health care, tax reform will be left for a separate reconciliation to the budget for the 2018 fiscal year, which begins in October.”
And so while passing the AHCA might seem to provide a gateway to the rest of the Trump agenda, the reality is that healthcare and tax reform we jammed together out of political, rather procedural, necessity. The ability for lawmakers to act quickly and decisively on tax reform — which was the most obviously positive Trump agenda item for markets — is not hampered by a failure on healthcare.