Until November 5th, millions of Americans will head to the polls to choose between two presidential candidates. This decision represents a clear choice between „continuity“ or an „America First“ policy. The campaign of both candidates has focused on how to reduce inflation and new ideas for economic and fiscal policies. Together with Lora Pavlova and Alexander Glas (both ZEW Mannheim), I co-authored a policy brief analyzing how the policies of the candidates and the US presidential election could influence the German economy.
This policy brief analyses German professional forecasters’ views on the upcoming US presidential election in November 2024 and its impact on the German economy. Our analysis is based on recent data from the Financial Market Survey (Finanzmarkttest, FMT), a long-standing survey of financial market experts and professional forecasters in Germany. The FMT is well-known for producing the ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment, one of the most important indicators for the German economy. For our analysis, we first asked respondents to assess the likelihood of a Trump victory, conditional on several events that may affect the election outcome. Next, we gathered scenario-based forecasts for German GDP growth and inflation over the upcoming president’s tenure, depending on whether Trump or Harris wins the election. To better understand the differences in the conditional macroeconomic expectations, we asked the panellists which candidate they thought was more likely to achieve certain economic or political outcomes. Lastly, we included an open-ended question on possible measures the German government could take now to protect the German economy from potential adverse effects of the next US president’s policies.
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