As discussed earlier, we would use jobs numbers, especially from the manufacturing sector to measure the success of President Trump in keeping his promises. There would be some other measures too and the most important of them would me to measure the US trade balance. During the campaign, President Trump has been very critical of the kind of trade deficit US has been running as well as of the deals made in the past like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

In January this year, US ran a goods and services deficit of $48.5 billion and President Trump has argued that the country cannot prosper while running more than $500 billion annual deficit. The commerce secretary Wilbur Ross and the treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin has shared similar views and Trump core team seems to be remaining committed to the idea of balancing trade.

This measure is likely to have a much greater impact on the global economy as well as the US economy, while the jobs numbers would more important domestically. US deficits are important sources of dollar liquidity globally and the implications of a 25 percent change in the liquidity would be immense for many countries including China.

However, as the trade deals are usually complex negotiations, it would take more than a year or two for the effects to start surfacing.