Decoded No. 4: Who Really Gains from Trump’s Economic Policy (full note, PDF)

Decoded, analysis note No. 4. Driss EFFINA, PhD. October 2026. PDF, 25 pages, 14 charts and diagrams, 10 tables.

Who gains from Donald Trump’s economic policies: businesses, households or the US economy as a whole? This note answers the question with 26 official time series for 2007 to 2026, an exact accounting decomposition, a set of time-series tests and the strongest published causal research. The answer is asymmetric. Corporate owners are the first and clearest winners in both presidencies.

Inside the full note:

• The question and the short answer
• Policy episodes and the timing problem
• How policy reaches beneficiaries
• Profits, household income and output
• Jobs, pay and manufacturing
• Corporate gains: from tax retention to margins
• Investment, productivity and pay
• Trade balances and the financing of gains
• What the time-series tests can and cannot show
• What the causal research establishes
• The second term so far
• Households: distribution, ownership and the price break-even
• Who gains: a scorecard
• Leading-indicators dashboard
• Scenarios to 2028
• Implications for policy and for investors
• What to watch

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