President-elect Donald Trump’s targeting of corporations, to make them change their practices, is reminiscent of policies in Italy under dictator Benito Mussolini, according to billionaire bond manager Bill Gross.
"Some of these pre-term policies, where he’s cajoling companies to move production back into the United States -- that’s fine -- but it reminds me to some extent of policies in Italy long ago associated with Mussolini and government control of corporate interests," Gross said in an interview Friday on Bloomberg Radio. "I don’t want it to go too far."
Gross, who manages the Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund, also said that "there’s a lot of voodoo" in terms of the economics of Trump’s tax policies around cutting rates and repatriation of money by companies to generate revenue and investment.
Trump has singled out companies including makers of airplanes and automobiles, pressing them on prices or to keep jobs in the U.S. This month Ford Motor Co. canceled a $1.6 billion factory in Mexico, saying it would add positions in Michigan instead.
In an investment outlook last month, Gross wrote that the Trump administration may boost stock markets in the short term but his policies will likely limit long-term economic growth by restraining trade and corporate profits. Gross said Friday that the U.S. economy and labor market are improving.
The U.S. labor market turned in a solid performance at the end of 2016, putting job gains above 2 million for a sixth year. The jobless rate ticked up to 4.7 percent as the labor force grew, and wages rose 2.9 percent from December 2015, a Labor Department report showed Friday in Washington.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.