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Dana White, martial-arts magnate and Trump cheerleader

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ANYONE UNFAMILIAR with combat sports, or the leading lights of Donald Trump’s “MAGA world”, may have been surprised to see a bald, stocky man on the podium after Donald Trump’s victory speech. Shouting the president-elect’s praises with the practised passion of a carnival barker was Dana White, the boss of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the world’s largest mixed martial-arts (MMA) promotion. Mr White knows a thing or two about talking up pugilistic characters like Mr Trump.

To the Trump faithful, he was more familiar. Mr White spoke at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in 2016, when Mr Trump became the party’s nominee for the first time. He told the convention of the origins of their friendship: when Mr White took over the failing UFC in 2001, no venue would play host to the “bloodsport”. That is, until Mr Trump offered one of his casinos. Expressing a thought that has since become a mantra for Trump fans, Mr White told the crowd: “Nobody took us seriously, except Donald Trump.”

Mr White praised the qualities of “the Donald Trump that I know”: his “great business instincts”, that he is a “hard worker” and that he is a “loyal and supportive friend”. That these claims were all highly disputable even in 2016 was irrelevant. Like any good fight promoter—and Mr Trump himself—Mr White knows you shouldn’t worry too much about truth when creating a myth.

Mr White’s own origin story, recounted in many interviews and features, is harder to fact-check. The standard version is the tale of a hard-scrabble kid who grew up on the streets of Southie (as South Boston is affectionately known by locals) and in Las Vegas. A bit of a brawler, he got into amateur boxing and eventually co-ran a gym. There he taught boxing to local youths and boxing fitness to businessmen and housewives.

After an extortion attempt by an associate of Whitey Bulger, a notorious local gangster once played on screen by Johnny Depp, he returned from Boston to Las Vegas. He opened another gym and got into MMA, a multi-discipline combat sport so violent that it used to be banned in 36 American states. (John McCain, a senator, presidential candidate and boxing fan from Arizona, once called it “human cockfighting”.) Mr White convinced two childhood friends to buy the UFC for $2m and let him run it.

He cleaned up the sport, professionalising and popularising it. UFC now airs in more than 170 countries and is worth $11.3bn, according to Forbes, a business magazine. The authorised version of Mr White’s story paints its hero as a charming rogue with a foul mouth and a bit of a temper, whose rough edges and upbringing made him the businessman—and showman—he is today. His superpower, he says proudly, is that he’s “a savage”.

Others paint a darker picture. In her “unauthorised biography” of Mr White, his own mother contests the “boy-raising-himself-in-the-streets myth”. And she says his move to Las Vegas was motivated by a falling-out with his business partner, making no mention of a run-in with organised crime. She admits her son’s importance to the popularisation of MMA. But she says his meteoric rise made him “egotistical, self-centred, arrogant and cruel”—a ruthless “tyrant” who rules those around him “by intimidation”.

Some who have had disagreements with Mr White might concur. He has had bitter and protracted legal fights with several of his fighters over allegations of low pay and exploitative contracts. (Mr White denies that there is any problem with fighters’ pay.) And a video that emerged of Mr White slapping his wife in 2022—an incident he admitted to and apologised for—suggests that his brash persona is not always harmless pantomime.

His long friendship with Mr Trump is perhaps unsurprising. Mr Trump is a fight fan, whether it be UFC, boxing or wrestling. His love of strongmen, literal and figurative, is well-documented. The once-and-future president may even see a little of himself in the self-promoter’s unapologetic machismo. Mr White spoke at the RNC not only in 2016 but the next two as well.

The president-elect doubtless understands that his friendship with the fight promoter helps him with young male voters. Some 49% of 18- to 29-year-olds plumped for him, according to exit polls, up from 41% in 2020. At Mr Trump’s victory celebration Mr White shouted out the names of podcasters and YouTube stars who appeal to the sort of young men who follow UFC. One of them was Joe Rogan, a comedian and former UFC commentator who is now among the world’s most popular podcasters.

Now the fight is won, what purse will Mr White receive? A spokesman has said  he has “no personal political ambitions”, and speculation that he may have secured himself a cabinet position still seems far-fetched. But whatever happens, UFC’s fighting spirit seems likely to remain in favour in the Trump White House and its boss a potent influence.

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Economics

Trump and Fed Chair Powell could be set on a collision course over rates

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Jerome Powell and President Donald Trump during a nomination announcement in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017.

Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell could be on a policy collision course in 2025 depending on how economic circumstances play out.

Should the economy run hot and inflation flare up again, Powell and his colleagues could decide to tap the brakes on their efforts to lower interest rates. That in turn could infuriate Trump, who lashed Fed officials including Powell during his first term in office for not relaxing monetary policy quickly enough.

“Without question,” said Joseph LaVorgna, former chief economist at the National Economic Council during Trump’s first term, when asked about the potential for a conflict. “When they don’t know what to do, oftentimes they don’t do anything. That may be a problem. If the president feels like rates should be lowered, does the Fed, just for public optics, dig its feet in?”

Though Powell became Fed chair in 2018, after Trump nominated him for the position, the two clashed often about the direction of interest rates.

Trump publicly and aggressively berated the chair, who in turn responded by asserting how important it is for the Fed to be independent and apart from political pressures, even if they’re coming from the president.

When Trump takes office in January, the two will be operating against a different backdrop. During the first term, there was little inflation, meaning that even Fed rate hikes kept benchmark rates well below where they are now.

Trump is planning both expansionary and protectionist fiscal policy, even more so than during his previous run, that will include an even tougher round of tariffs, lower taxes and big spending. Should the results start to show up in the data, the Powell Fed may be tempted to hold tougher on monetary policy against inflation.

LaVorgna, chief economist at SMBC Nikko Securities, who is rumored for a position in the new administration, thinks that would be mistake.

“They’re going to look at a very nontraditional approach to policy that Trump is bringing forward but put it through a very traditional economic lens,” he said. “The Fed’s going to have a really difficult choice based on their traditional approach of what to do.”

Market sees fewer rate cuts

Futures traders have been waffling in recent days on their expectations for what the Fed will do next.

The market is pricing in about a coin-flip chance of another interest rate cut in December, after it being a near-certainty a week ago, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch. Pricing further out indicates the equivalent of three quarter-percentage-point reductions through the end of 2025, which also has come down significantly from prior expectations.

Investors’ nerves have gotten jangled in recent days about the Fed’s intentions. Fed Governor Michelle Bowman on Wednesday noted that progress on inflation has “stalled,” an indication that she might continue to push for a slower pace of rate cuts.

“All roads lead to tensions between the White House and the Fed,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM. “It won’t just be the White House. It will be Treasury, it’ll be Commerce and the Fed all intersecting.”

Indeed, Trump is building a team of loyalists to implement his economic agenda, but much of the success depends on accommodative or at least accurate monetary policy that doesn’t push too hard to either boost or restrict growth. For the Fed, that is represented in the quest to find the “neutral” rate of interest, but for the new administration, it could mean something different.

The struggle over where rates should be will create “political and policy tensions between the Federal Reserve and the White House that would clearly prefer lower rates,” Brusuelas said.

“If one is going to impose tariffs, or mass deportations, you’re talking about restricting aggregate supply while simultaneously implementing deficit finance tax cuts, which is encouraging an increase in aggregate demand. You’ve got a basic inconsistency in your policy matrix,” he added. “There’s an inevitable crossroads that results in tensions between Trump and Powell.”

Avoiding conflict

To be sure, there are some factors that could mitigate the tensions.

One is that Powell’s term as Fed chair expires in early 2026, so Trump may simply choose to ride it out until he can put someone in the chair more to his liking. There’s also little chance that the Fed would actually move to raise rates outside of some highly unexpected event that would push inflation much higher.

Also, Trump’s policies will take a while to make their way through the system, so any impacts on inflation and macroeconomic growth likely won’t be readily apparent in the data, thus not necessitating a Fed response. There’s also the chance that the impacts might not be that much either way.

“I expect higher inflation and slower growth. I think the tariffs and the deportations are negative supply shocks. They hurt growth and they lift inflation,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “The Fed will still cut interest rates next year, just perhaps not as quickly as would have otherwise been the case.”

Battles with Trump, then, could be more of a headache for the next Fed chair, assuming Trump doesn’t reappoint Powell.

“So I don’t think it’s going to be an issue in 2025,” Zandi said. “It could be an issue in 2026, because at that point, the rate cutting’s over and the Fed may be in a position where it certainly needs to start raising interest rates. Then that’s when it becomes an issue.”

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Economics

Congestion pricing in New York gets the go-ahead after all. Maybe

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NOVEMBER 20th marks the first “Gridlock Alert” day of New York City’s holiday season. This is the official designation for the city’s busiest traffic days of the year. But traffic is bad most days, with more than 900,000 cars entering Manhattan’s central business district. INRIX, a traffic-data firm, found that New York City leads the world in urban traffic congestion among the cities scored, with the average driver stationary for 101 hours a year. After years of false starts, including a cowardly pre-election pause by Kathy Hochul, New York’s Democratic governor, congestion pricing has the green light.

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Economics

Howard Lutnick, Donald Trump’s pick for commerce secretary

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Editor’s note: On November 19th Donald Trump chose Howard Lutnick to be commerce secretary in his new administration. We published this profile of Mr Lutnick on November 16th and have updated it to include his appointment.

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