A few notable things

While I've never made a buy or sell decision in stocks based on an appointed Treasury Secretary, outside of an emerging market, Scott Bessent certainly has a great resume. His focus and work will be four fold, 1)Get expiring tax cuts extended and add on a few more which will likely get done I believe but most of the result will just be status quo with current tax rates, 2)Get the budget deficit as a % of GDP down to 3% from the current 6% ish but will be tough as Congress inevitably will have to make the spending decisions needed for this which will have short term economic implications, 3)The dollar, which on one hand I'd think the administration wants a weak dollar but tariffs theoretically helps to boost it, and 4)The tariffs, will it be targeted or scattershot?

Assuming Robert Lighthizer is back and tariffs are again used as an economic weapon, I just hope there is some reflection on the 2018 tariff battle that resulted in a manufacturing recession and damage was done to all the downstream part of the economy impacted by higher costs. For example, steel and aluminum domestic producers were protected but all users of this raw material got stuck with a bigger input cost bill that cost more jobs than those saved at steel and aluminum producers. 

Back in December 2019 the Federal Reserve released a paper titled "Disentangling the Effects of the 2018-2019 Tariffs on a Globally Connected US Manufacturing Sector." Their conclusion, "We find that the 2018 tariffs are associated with relative reductions in manufacturing employment and relative increases in producer prices. For manufacturing employment, a small boost from the import protection effect of tariffs is more than offset by larger drags from the effects of rising input costs and retaliatory tariffs. The producer prices, the effect of tariffs is mediated solely through rising input costs."

"While one may view the negative welfare effects of tariffs found by other researchers to be an acceptable cost for a more robust manufacturing sector, our results suggest that the tariffs have not boosted manufacturing employment or output, even as they increased producer prices...In addition, our results suggest that the traditional use of trade policy as a tool for the protection and promotion of domestic manufacturing is complicated by the presence of globally interconnected supply chains."