advisers. peter navarro, the economist in particular, a new trade office inside the white house that hasn t been part of other presidents economic team. let s pick up on that point about trade. the word about trade is protectionism and what does that mean? it means you are protecting existing companies. and if there s a problem in the u.s. economy right now, it s that there is very little new business creation. that is the sector of the economy where new jobs are created. instead we have these incumbent firms, many of them very good ones, google, facebook, but you ve seen in the last few years a tremendous amount of consolidation in telecommunications or in health insurance. companies are combining. they re not expanding. you have no new companies, for instance. the number of new companies coming into the economy is below 10%, an historic low. its contribution to employment is about 2%, also a historic low. what is needed as joe was
here is that trump gets into war with the republican congress and not only will he be attacked by democrats but he ll have differences with republicans and then he gets very little done. yeah, and i think it goes both ways, though. mary talked about how trump has shown flexibility on immigration. i think the republicans in congress also have to have some understanding that the things he made central to his candidacy, he has to deliver on in some fashion. now, there are parts of our border that have fences. can we build them a little higher? sure. i think you probably have to give him something he can say, look, we have a wall. that doesn t mean you go where he s going or you think he might go on trade. it doesn t mean you restrict how many people can come into the u.s. but i think you probably have got to give him a wall. this issue of bandwidth that dan raised is important. you can only do so many things. i only think they have a year to get the most important priorities done, joe
ambitious agenda with tax reform, regulatory relief and, as you just heard, the repeal of obamacare topping the list. so will president donald trump sign on to the republican plans or does he have some of his own ideas of how to proceed? joe, so paul ryan s plan in the election the year before was i m going to map out an agenda, get all the republicans in the house to sign onto it and that means we re going to take off on day one. is that now what s going to happen? i think we re going to find out obviously. is that, do you think, going to be given a try? whether what paul ryan has done is built a remarkable consensus within the republican conference around six areas of policy, whether it s tax reform, energy, health care. the house has been awfully dysfunctional for the last four years with a lot of different factions. now you ve got a big majority for some of these ideas and as far as we know, donald trump has
disagrees with the historic positions of donald trump on russia. jim mattis much more skeptical of vladimir putin, and also on the budget. he ll want to expand the military and nick mulvany is a skeptic of military spending. i think jim mattis and donald trump will have many interesting conversations. joe. my person to watch is chuck schumer, new york democrat and incoming senate minority leader. a lot of democrats are calling themselves the resistance. they re going to oppose donald trump and all his works on everything. chuck schumer is not by nature or temperament the resistance. he s a transactional deal maker. and i m wondering if he s going to make some kind of compromise with the trump administration, whether it s on infrastructure, immigration, or tax reform. but could he end up being run by elizabeth warren and bernie sanders, instead of him running
not willing to invest in expanding new plant and equipment, new products and i think that s what the trump agenda promises. just to put a number on the last year, third quarter over third quarter, 1.7% growth in gdp. for the previous year not so great. i think the answer you are looking for, paul, is this was the worst recovery in the modern era. did you hear that james? that s what i was looking for. she got it, she broke the code. terrible, terrible wage growth, lousy wage growth. has never broken 3% annual growth, which is really a remarkable statistic when you think about it. you have millions of americans who aren t participating in the labor force. so yes, james, there is a lot of potential out there. i m not arguing but the bump is what s to come. that s why stocks have gone up. joe, it does look like the consumer confidence, you ve seen the dollar very strong,