Right now I believe they will be gradual, but even my forecast is 'data dependent.At one time, certificates of deposit (CDs) were a reliable high-yield savings vehicle. The economy will strengthen and the Fed will then tighten. Mining and petroleum drilling will increase due to federal policy changes. Next year, though, much of the uncertainty will be over and companies will make up for lost time. With slower growth, the Federal Reserve members will slap their foreheads and say “By golly, Bill Conerly is right, the economy is not strong enough to justify three rate hikes in 2017.” When delays in spending spread across a wide swath of the economy, growth must slow. But maybe they won’t break ground next month, or sign the contract just yet, or give a manager hiring authority for a while. Most companies that had expansion plans will expect to go forward. The transition to the Trump administration is one of those times of more pronounced uncertainty. Uncertainty always exists for businesses, but sometimes it is more pronounced. The list of uncertainties goes on and on and on. Utilities are wondering about climate change initiatives that affect their fuel choices. Education is up in the air about federal policy. Banking, for example, has many customers in the uncertain sector. And some of the remaining industries should also be nervous. Roughly 49 percent of the economy is subject to high uncertainty from Trump administration policies (after eliminating double-counting in the percentages cited above). There is some double-counting in the percentage cited above. Add to that health insurers, pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers (for which I don’t have data).

What about ObamaCare? Physician practices and hospitals are all nervous about the future of health care spending, and they constitute 6.5 percent of GDP. These industries account for 27.2 percent of GDP. (I cited a list of at-risk industries in my article, Business Strategy Can Protect Against Trump’s Stepped Up Immigration Enforcement.) Businesses most at risk are in agriculture, construction, restaurants/hotels, business and other services, and manufacturing. But that federal audits of employees’ legal status will be stepped up, putting several industries at risk. It seems highly unlikely that the government would devote enough resources to find and deport every illegal alien.

All of these sectors account for 33.6 percent of GDP, according to the federal statistics on gross output by industry.

Policy toward foreign trade is uncertain at this time, impacting companies that export as well as those that import goods for resale, those that import components for manufacturing, as well as businesses involved in transportation and warehousing.

Cd interest rates 2017