Economics
Will Donald Trump’s bros turn out?
Home to a university, Madison is a left-leaning city in a swing state. But if you happened to find yourself at the Kollege Klub on a recent Saturday night, where Sean Paul’s “Get Busy” instructed patrons to shake that thing, you would not know it. A man lobbed MAGA hats into a crowd of rapt frat bros. Presiding were the Nelk Boys, a group of supremely popular YouTubers who film inane pranks. They are fans of Donald Trump and have had him on their podcast three times. This was a party to gin up the vote. Yet voting felt like a concept of a plan compared with downing vodka Red Bulls and shimmying to Swedish House Mafia.
To increase his vote, Mr Trump has two options. He can moderate his message to win over traditional Republicans, the sort of voters who supported Nikki Haley in the Republican primary. He is not doing that—witness the denigration of Puerto Ricans at his rally at Madison Square Garden. Rather it is Kamala Harris who has tacked to the centre and campaigned with former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, a stalwart conservative.
Instead Mr Trump is courting people who don’t reliably vote, but who will vote for him if they can be persuaded to vote at all: he is wooing the bro. He has called the Nelk Boys “the hottest guys around”. He has skipped debates with Ms Harris but made time for podcast chats with Logan Paul, a wrestler; Theo Von, a mulleted comedian; and, last week, Joe Rogan, the gorilla of the genre with 15m listeners. The centre of gravity in this macho galaxy is the United Fighting Championship, a mixed-martial-arts outfit that counts Mr Trump a fan. Its boss, Dana White, speaks (or shouts) at MAGA rallies.
Mr Trump has also appeared alongside rappers and reggaeton singers with names like Icewear Vezzo, Sleepy Hallow and Anuel AA. None has the star wattage of Beyoncé or Bad Bunny, who is Puerto Rican and endorsed Ms Harris after the Garden rally. But they have devoted followings and create a permission structure for black and Latino fans to make an against-the-grain choice. Mr Trump’s forays here can sometimes feel discordant. At a rally in Las Vegas he introduced Nicky Jam, a reggaeton star, like this: “Do you know Nicky? She’s hot!” Nicky is a “he”, who then told the crowd “Necesitamos a Trump!”
Bros like Mr Trump’s schtick. They rate him better on the economy and find him funny: less villain, more anti-hero, says John Della Volpe of the Harvard Kennedy School. An 18-year-old today would have been nine when he announced his first candidacy; there is little memory of or nostalgia for prelapsarian politics. Brandon Maly, the 24-year-old chair of the Republican Party in Dane county, which encompasses Madison, says his cohort feels alienated by social movements. “Hypocrisies like ‘queers for Palestine’? That doesn’t resonate so much with the guys.”
In 2020 Mr Trump won 41% of men aged between 18 and 29 (compared with 32% of women). This year his vote share could rise by several percentage points. Just over 12m men in that age cohort participated last time, so even a small improvement could deliver Mr Trump hundreds of thousands of votes. He is also doing better with black and Hispanic men. Yet overall, this strategy is risky. Offsetting losses among college-educated suburbanites who reliably vote requires gains among people who do so inconsistently and at lower rates. Only half of eligible young men voted in 2020.
The challenge is convincing people with less trust or interest in politics—those who are least likely to consider voting impactful—that it is worth the energy. In Mr Della Volpe’s surveys, 55% of young men who support Ms Harris say they will “definitely” vote compared with 38% of their pro-Trump counterparts. Young women, meanwhile, skew heavily Democratic and are trending more that way.
Mr Trump managed this feat in 2016 by appealing to another disengaged group: white working-class men. Then, too, his ground game was thin. This year in Wisconsin he has outsourced the job of door-knocking and phone-banking to groups run by Elon Musk and Charlie Kirk, a millennial activist. This effort appears disorganised. Ben Wikler, the Democratic state chair, claims his party is “running circles” around Republicans when it comes to get-out-the-vote operations.
Less informed voters care most about the cost of living and tend to pick candidates whom they think they know and relate to. A recent study in the American Political Science Review found that viewers of “The Apprentice” were more likely to choose Mr Trump in the primary in 2016. Entertaining, seemingly apolitical media present a “unique route into the public consciousness”, the authors concluded. That applies equally to Mr Trump’s podcasting and TikToking (where he has twice as many followers as Ms Harris).
Many Americans revile Mr Trump. Yet plenty share the view of the frat brother in Madison who told your correspondent that America, “in its simplest form, is a business” and that Mr Trump is the boss. ■
Production at the VW plant in Emden.
Sina Schuldt | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
The struggling German economy has been a major talking point among critics of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’ government during the latest election campaign — but analysts warn a new leadership might not turn these tides.
As voters prepare to head to the polls, it is now all but certain that Germany will soon have a new chancellor. The Christian Democratic Union’s Friedrich Merz is the firm favorite.
Merz has not shied away from blasting Scholz’s economic policies and from linking them to the lackluster state of Europe’s largest economy. He argues that a government under his leadership would give the economy the boost it needs.
Experts speaking to CNBC were less sure.
“There is a high risk that Germany will get a refurbished economic model after the elections, but not a brand new model that makes the competition jealous,” Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro at ING, told CNBC.
The CDU/CSU economic agenda
The CDU, which on a federal level ties up with regional sister party the Christian Social Union, is running on a “typical economic conservative program,” Brzeski said.
It includes income and corporate tax cuts, fewer subsidies and less bureaucracy, changes to social benefits, deregulation, support for innovation, start-ups and artificial intelligence and boosting investment among other policies, according to CDU/CSU campaigners.
“The weak parts of the positions are that the CDU/CSU is not very precise on how it wants to increase investments in infrastructure, digitalization and education. The intention is there, but the details are not,” Brzeski said, noting that the union appears to be aiming to revive Germany’s economic model without fully overhauling it.
“It is still a reform program which pretends that change can happen without pain,” he said.
Geraldine Dany-Knedlik, head of forecasting at research institute DIW Berlin, noted that the CDU is also looking to reach gross domestic product growth of around 2% again through its fiscal and economic program called “Agenda 2030.”
But reaching such levels of economic expansion in Germany “seems unrealistic,” not just temporarily, but also in the long run, she told CNBC.
Germany’s GDP declined in both 2023 and 2024. Recent quarterly growth readings have also been teetering on the verge of a technical recession, which has so far been narrowly avoided. The German economy shrank by 0.2% in the fourth quarter, compared with the previous three-month stretch, according to the latest reading.
Europe’s largest economy faces pressure in key industries like the auto sector, issues with infrastructure like the country’s rail network and a housebuilding crisis.
Dany-Knedlik also flagged the so-called debt brake, a long-standing fiscal rule that is enshrined in Germany’s constitution, which limits the size of the structural budget deficit and how much debt the government can take on.
Whether or not the clause should be overhauled has been a big part of the fiscal debate ahead of the election. While the CDU ideally does not want to change the debt brake, Merz has said that he may be open to some reform.
“To increase growth prospects substantially without increasing debt also seems rather unlikely,” DIW’s Dany-Knedlik said, adding that, if public investments were to rise within the limits of the debt brake, significant tax increases would be unavoidable.
“Taking into account that a 2 Percent growth target is to be reached within a 4 year legislation period, the Agenda 2030 in combination with conservatives attitude towards the debt break to me reads more of a wish list than a straight forward economic growth program,” she said.
Franziska Palmas, senior Europe economist at Capital Economics, sees some benefits to the plans of the CDU-CSU union, saying they would likely “be positive” for the economy, but warning that the resulting boost would be small.
“Tax cuts would support consumer spending and private investment, but weak sentiment means consumers may save a significant share of their additional after-tax income and firms may be reluctant to invest,” she told CNBC.
Palmas nevertheless pointed out that not everyone would come away a winner from the new policies. Income tax cuts would benefit middle- and higher-income households more than those with a lower income, who would also be affected by potential reductions of social benefits.
Coalition talks ahead
Following the Sunday election, the CDU/CSU will almost certainly be left to find a coalition partner to form a majority government, with the Social Democratic Party or the Green party emerging as the likeliest candidates.
The parties will need to broker a coalition agreement outlining their joint goals, including on the economy — which could prove to be a difficult undertaking, Capital Economics’ Palmas said.
“The CDU and the SPD and Greens have significantly different economic policy positions,” she said, pointing to discrepancies over taxes and regulation. While the CDU/CSU want to reduce both items, the SPD and Greens seek to raise taxes and oppose deregulation in at least some areas, Palmas explained.
The group is nevertheless likely to hold the power in any potential negotiations as it will likely have their choice between partnering with the SPD or Greens.
“Accordingly, we suspect that the coalition agreement will include most of the CDU’s main economic proposals,” she said.
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