Macro trends blogger and economist David Woo @DavidWooUnbound, CEO of David Woo Unbound, a global forum devoted to the promotion of fact-based debates about markets, politics, and economics, joins Julia La Roche on episode 186 for a wide-ranging conversation on economics and politics, including the attempted assassination on former President Trump and why the market has the so-called Trump trades all wrong.

This episode was recorded on Friday, July 19.

Woo, the former head of Global Interest Rates, Foreign Exchange, Emerging Markets Fixed Income Strategy & Economics Research at Bank of America, is known for some of his bold and contrarian calls, including Trump winning the presidential race in 2016 (https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/08/bofaml-analyst-got-ovation-from-co-workers-the-morning-after-election.html), and that the 2020 US presidential election would be much closer than expected and the results contested (https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/the-dangerous-groupthink-stalking-wall-street-20210909-p58q48).

Links:

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DavidWooUnbound

Website: https://www.davidwoounbound.com/

Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Davidwoounbound

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction and welcome David Woo

01:25 Big picture macro view

03:00 Geopolitical update

04:10 Trump trades

06:53 Election is not over yet

08:01 Assassination attempt and the risk of another attempt

11:15 JD Vance

15:20 Finding a replacement to Biden

18:45 2025 will have nothing to do with 2017

22:44 Challenges in financing tax cuts, tariffs, and potential for a global trade war

25:50 Collecting taxes on big tech companies doing business outside the US would be bearish for stocks

28:00 Trump will face a massive budget deficit and why he's not that bullish for bitcoin

28:50 Trump 1.0 vs. Trump 2.0 economy

30:30 If Trump wins, he'll inherit a huge mess from Biden

35:41 Immigration

40:31 The ultimate Trump trades are defensive trades

44:30 Betting on a recession

50:37 Generative AI is a bubble that will trigger a recession

56:55 Parting thoughts