Democratic opposition gains strength in Congress and poses new challenge to Trump

On Tuesday (3/11), the American electorate changed the game: the majority of the House and Senate passed from Republican hands to Democrats, according to InfoMoney. The result puts Trump in front of an opposition Congress in the last two years of his term, which changes the political environment in which the government will pursue its agenda.

The count, however, is not over yet, and InfoMoney projects that the count will continue for a few days until the final result is reached. Based on partial numbers compiled by Revista Oeste, Democrats already have more than 20 seats in the Chamber, in districts that, in 2024, had double-digit Republican representation in some cases.

As for the Senate, Revista Oeste has so far counted Democratic vacancies in seven states: Maine, North Carolina, Texas, Kansas, Ohio, Iowa and South Carolina. In five of these, Texas, South Carolina, Iowa, Kansas and Ohio, Republicans usually lead the presidential race, which reinforces the weight of the message at the polls.

Among the reasons cited by InfoMoney are the famine, the armed conflict with Iran and the way the Trump administration has been conducting things. The same coverage draws attention to Brazilians in the dispute: three members of the Democratic Party were elected or re-elected in state legislatures. Felipe Souza Lazaballet debuts in the Florida legislature, while, in Massachusetts, Rita Mendes and Priscila Sousa won a new term.

Investment banks are already trying to measure the effect on stocks and the American economy. According to InfoMoney, JPMorgan and UBS carried out this mapping, and JPMorgan understands that the impact depends less on the flag that won and more on how the Legislature will be at the end of the investigation.

What changes for the investor

For those who operate the stock market, Nasdaq, interest rates and the dollar, the central point is that the final composition of the two houses weighs more than the winning flag, which makes the calculation something to monitor closely. With a divided Legislature, the government's agenda may encounter more resistance in the last two years of the mandate, and this matters for those who follow public accounts, because it is Congress that defines which spending and taxation agendas move forward. At the moment, there is still no price projection: what the data allows is to follow the calculation and final formation of the two houses.

Automatically translated from Portuguese.