I think he meant from election day, and yes, that is how investment works. Companies plan investment months and years in advance based on how well they believe they can forecast the business climate in the future. Regardless of of helpful or hurtful any individual Obama program might have been for business, his most damaging behavior to business was his unpredictability.
:lamo
I'm sorry, but... Obama was fairly cautious, and often telegraphed moves months in advance.
In contrast, Trump is highly unpredictable, easily provoked, and changes his mind thrice daily. He's already split the White House into at least three warring camps (Bannon/Miller; Kushner; Priebus), any of whom can prevail at a given moment. He makes policy decisions based on getting mad over a CNN or Fox News piece. Businesses don't know what his tax cuts will be like, if he will levy a tariff or a border tax, if he will rip up NAFTA because Carlos Slim insulted him via Twitter, if he's going to insult Li Keqiang or Xi Jinping during a phone call.....
Or, with health insurance, no one knows what the heck is going on. Repeal? Repeal and replace? Now we're onto "repair?" Years of protests, no replacement plans, vague promises that can't be fulfilled, no one knows what to expect next.
Nobody in the business world could really predict the size of the shadow that the government would cast over their business, or what exemptions might be granted to their competitors from various onerous government taxes or regulations.
Of course they could, that's what lobbyists are for.
And unlike Trump so far, some elements -- like rule changes, or setting up the Consumer Protection Bureau -- can take years, and often involved bringing key players into discussions. Trump can't even trust his own office, which leads to secretive drafting of EOs that are ineptly dropped on agencies like an anvil.
As such they turtled more than they invested. There is a huge amount of cash that the private sector is currently sitting on because they didn't know how to invest.
....no, they were sitting on their cash because
we just went through the worst economic downturn in over 80 years. Plus, credit has been dirt cheap for the past ~5-6 years, so they've had little reason to spend their own cash. In fact, lots of companies have borrowed in order to buy back stock. They viewed credit as a better mechanism to do this than capital.
Trump is seen as being friendlier to business than Hillary Clinton or Obama... a difference that was applauded by the left, and really still is, so it should come as no surprise that a lot of businesses not directly connected to global warming mitigation schemes are more positive about their future and investing based on it.
Yes, he's friendlier. Except to retail, which is worried that they're going to get smacked by higher prices on all those cheap imported goods they sell. Or the auto industry, which imports a ton of parts from Mexico. Or electronics, since almost everything is now made in Asia (China), whom Trump has already riled. Or aerospace, which is a heavy export industry, which could lose lots of business to foreign competitors if Trump continues to run headlong into a trade war. Or agriculture, which exports huge amounts of food to Mexico, and imports from all over the world. Or oil, since tariffs or border taxes could increase the costs to refiners. Or....
Not to mention that politics has become a minefield. E.g. Kalanick has withdrawn from some Trump business panel, because Uber didn't blockade the airport protests, which riled up unknown thousands to quit Uber. Staying neutral is becoming increasingly difficult, because anyone anywhere can become somebody's target.
Businesses like the idea of tax cuts (duh), but are less enamored of the rest of Trump's baggage.
![LaborMarket_may16_figure1.png]](https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/04112731/LaborMarket_may16_figure1.png])
