Written by Rasheffa Rashid
The win of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States on November 9, 2016, shocked the world. While many might have predicted the win, tough some kept their fingers crossed hoping on Hillary Clinton’s winning the 2016 Presidency US Election. Upon the announcement on his winning, Trump surpassed the threshold of 270 out of the total 538 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. People around the world reacted as the world was coming down on them. Some even believed that The Simpsons from 2000 projection on Trump being the US president and US facing a major financial crunch, which turned out to be true.
Bernama on Nov 9, quoting a report from China’s Xinhua news agency reported, that the victory has made Trump the first president that never held elected office since 1953, pulling a major upset after a controversial and scandalous campaign cycle. What made people feared his win was his crazy campaign resolutions calling to impose ban on Muslim travellers in to the United States. Diamond (2015) a CNN journalist quoting a campaign press release his article mentioned:
“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on”
Trump proposed for the move reacting to a deadly mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, suspected ISIS sympathizers (Diamond, 2015).Trump’s proposal resulted in many of his opponents to engage in a debate over whether a religious test should be conducted for one to enter America. However, his supporters, showed their approval towards proposal (Diamond, 2015) on the ban which was widely debated on netizens on social media.
During the 2016 election on November 8, the stock markets around the world started to show uncertainty and investors projected US Dollar to plunge upon Trump’s win. Referring to a Bernama news report, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) was down in a knee-jerk reaction in line with global bourses to the shocking results of Donald Trump winning the US presidential election. When the announcement on the current status of the market made, Trump had won 276 electoral votes, and only needed six electoral votes to become the next US President, leaving Clinton far behind with only 218 electoral votes. With these results in hand, it was pretty obvious that Trump will hold the next US President post.
Image credit: Image source
A BBC report titled “US Election 2016: Asia markets jolted by Trump win” said Asian stocks had fallen sharply as Trump beat Hillary in their race into the White House.
“All regional markets closed lower, with money flowing into safe haven stocks, gold and currencies including the yen. Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped by 5.4% while European and US markets are expected to slide when trading resumes on Wednesday”
According to the report, the market showed negativity as traders had expected Hillary Clinton to win. The BBC report also said, analyst believed the plunge in Asian Market was because Trump’s win was seen as negative for Asian economies due to his previous protectionist rhetoric. The Republican candidate had talked about imposing tariffs on China imports and punishing companies that send their work overseas.
However, US markets took a U-turn, when it closed higher the following day after Donald Trump’s election win, defied expectations of a slump as investors predicted. The dollar dived after the US election result was called, but has continued to recover against the euro during the day.
On to the Ringgit, The Edge Markets on Nov 10 reported, the ringgit to depreciate to its weakest point at 4.2537 against the US Dollar a day after Donald Trump’s election win. Analysts said Trump’s victory against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton had created uncertainty on US policies on world political and economic backdrops.
It was also reported that, the ringgit lost two per cent week-on-week against a strong US dollar on November 11. Analyst from Affic Hwang Asset Management said, this phenomenon of currency fall, was not only experienced in Malaysia, but the risk-off sentiment shockwave was sent globally. Many emerging market currencies were affected upon a republican winning the presidency. This was mainly due to Trump’s intention to impose stricter trade deals.
Reference
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