New York real estate investment adviser Joel Ross is described as a Democrat who doesn't much like Donald Trump. He's also become nationally respected for uncanny and insightful predictions.
With such an impressive record of prognostication, I felt readers might enjoy knowing his predictions for future events. Here's what he wrote in his mid-January newsletter called the "Ross Rant."
He says Europe is swinging to the right, which will create many social and financial troubles. Obamacare will be replaced with a more free-market system that House Speaker Paul Ryan already has. Corporate taxes will be cut to 15 percent or a bit higher. All Obama executive orders will be reversed, and most regulations he put in place will be canceled.
"The Supreme Court will get a conservative justice right away and [Justice Ruth] Ginsburg will try to hang on until she dies in office to try to deny him her seat. She will not last four years."
Trump will get as many as three judge picks who "think the Constitution says what it means, not the left-wing politics of [Justice Sonia] Sotomayor. It will be much more pro-business. Antitrust cases will go away.
"Sanctuary cities will lose funding, and San Francisco and Berkeley and Boulder will go nuts. The border will somehow be secured and Mexico will not pay. Border Patrol will be materially increased. Gang members will be arrested and deported but everyone else will get to stay here. Ryan will stay as speaker. Trump will do what any good NY real estate guy does, he will get up from the table until he gets the deal close to what he wants."
NAFTA will be revised, Ross believes. Mexico will suffer because many U.S. companies will not move plants there until they see what the revisions say. They won't defy Trump early on and risk his wrath.
"The Pentagon and U.S. defense contractors are big winners. Defense spending will ramp up by huge numbers. The military will add over 200,000 people over the next two years. Weapons spending will dramatically increase. This will add a lot of new jobs between the additional military and the added jobs in defense plants. Private equity will take a big hit with carried interest going away and this will make a small part payment for the tax cuts. Estate taxes will mostly go away. Cops will be respected again and racial strife will end as Trump tries new ideas to build charter schools and rebuild the ghettos. There will be no more honoring the families of the thugs ... the way Obama and Hillary did. He will honor the cops. The downtrend in crime will get reinstated. Transgender anything will go away," Ross believes.
"The military will be told to go win wars and not be social experiments with transgender soldiers. Rules of engagement will be changed to kill the enemy instead of cater to political correctness. There will be an infusion of another 5,000 U.S. soldiers into Iraq and more into Syria to back up the destruction of ISIS. The bombing campaign will be stepped up to what it should be. By March, ISIS will have been defeated. They will try to carry out major terror attacks, but now the world will call Islamic terror what it is and there will be a more aggressive fight and coordination.
"Putin and Trump are from the same mother and will get along. ... The Iran nuke deal will get torn up and Iran will find itself back under sanctions. ... This will be world-changing. The Saudis won big on this, Israel won huge. Developers win because the EPA will be defanged. Climate change legislation is dead and the Paris pact will be defunct."
Ross predicts political correctness on college campuses "will be pressured to end although for quite a while there will be protests ... . Today professors are telling students they do not have to take exams because they are so upset. ... This is exactly what's wrong with American colleges today. It is just telling kids boo hoo if you feel bad, you get excused from work."
Although Ross says he doesn't care for Trump as a person, he says "he is president now so we need to deal with [the] reality of what next. Paul Ryan has already reached out to heal the rift and they have already planned a quick special session to pass repeal of Obamacare and undo the regulations and do other things quickly. ..."
"Most important, the entire world is about to change. We will see if for good or bad but change it will in massive ways. The tide of anti-socialist, anti-PC, anti-diversity, anti-entitlement, anti-establishment of the past 70 years is washing across the world and Trump is simply the ultimate example of what had already been happening with Brexit and in Europe. As far as the stock market--it will now rise. Taxes will get cut, the Supreme Court will not be activist, antitrust will end, some type of infrastructure program will be instituted, banks will be free to lend, regulations will be drastically reduced, and corporate profits will rise," he concludes.
I notice some of his earlier predictions have become reality after three weeks. It'll be interesting to see what else Ross believes will unfold in light of an entrenched bureaucracy and leftists so openly hostile to Trump.
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 02/14/2017