Donald Trump's CPAC speech is a reminder that he's not really in charge of his White House

He riles up crowds, but nothing he says actually matters or reflects administration policy.

By Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesiasmatt@vox.com Feb 23, 2018, 1:10pm EST

Speaking at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on Friday, President Donald Trump announced a policy idea that at a normal time, from a normal president, would have dramatically moved financial markets. But of course, nothing of the sort happened.

He said that unless he can get Mexico and Canada to agree to sweeping changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement that would eliminate the US-Mexico bilateral trade deficit, he “will terminate the deal and we’ll start over again.”

Specific companies that depend on the ability to easily import goods from Mexico to the United States should have seen their share prices plummet while firms that compete with Mexican imports should have seen prices soar. Instead, it was a blah day on financial markets, with the Dow up slightly and no particularly surprising moves from individual companies.

Trump has been president for more than a year now, with NAFTA talks proceeding in a desultory way unrelated to any actual policy change. The economy continues to grow at roughly its Obama-era pace, but corporate America is now enjoying a surge of deregulation and tax cuts that powered enormous stock market growth in 2017. Business loves Trump (as Trump himself likes to say), and corporate America just shrugs off his various pronouncements on trade policy. Trump also promised to eliminate the bilateral deficits with China and Vietnam, and nobody in the business world took note.

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https://www.vox.com/2018/2/23/17044770/trump-cpac-2018-speech