On Tuesday night, the whole of America got a king tide. And this one came in a colour.
I should declare an interest before going any further. I am a registered Democrat, which in the corner of Florida where I am lucky enough to have a house, is roughly as fashionable as wearing a fleece to the yacht club, so forgive me if I enjoyed watching the water rise more than a neutral columnist ought to.
And rise it did. Democrats took back the House and flipped seven Senate seats on the way to at least 54, winning Texas for the first time since 1988, even after Musk threw £200million at the race, and Kansas for the first time in nearly a century. Susan Collins, who had survived everything Maine could throw at her for almost 30 years, was finally carried off by the swell. In New York, where I spend the rest of my time in the US, Kathy Hochul won by about 20 points, the water arriving at Manhattan’s front door and being shown in by the doorman.
Florida, naturally, did its own thing. The wave lapped at our ankles, carried off at least three House seats that had been redrawn specifically to stay dry, then stopped politely at the governor’s mansion, where Byron Donalds squeaked in with barely half the vote. We build on sand down here and are astonished every time.
What I hope the wave does, more than anything, is wash. Salt water is a marvellous cleaner. It takes the litter off the beach, flattens the sandcastles built by shouty boys with plastic buckets, and leaves the sand looking as though nobody has spent a decade scrawling their name in it. American politics could do with the rinse.
The President’s response was pure King Canute, if Canute had skimmed the story. On Wednesday he stood on the building site of his new White House ballroom admiring the steelwork, having posted a picture of a red cap with “VETO” stitched across the front. Canute, at least, sat on the shore to prove to his courtiers that no king commands the tide. This one appears to think a hat will do it.
A wave also needs a surfer, and here I will be openly partisan. Gavin Newsom leaves the California governorship in January, has said he will give 2028 serious thought once the midterms are done, and should now seek the Democratic presidential nomination. He has said he would stand aside if Kamala Harris runs, which is gallant. It is also, I suspect, a position he will have to revisit, because tides do not wait for good manners.
Now, business readers will recognise the trap here, because every one of us has fallen into it. A wave is weather. It is not a change of climate.
The markets did what markets do after a good night out. Stocks rallied, gold went back above $4,000, Ørsted jumped seven per cent and BAE Systems fell five as traders bet on a slower rise in US defence spending. But the same analysis carries the dull bit that matters: after the Supreme Court struck down his emergency tariffs, the administration rebuilt them under trade law that needs no vote in Congress, and the new majorities do not take their seats until January.
So for the 40,000 or so UK firms the British Chambers of Commerce reckoned were caught by Trump’s 15% global tariff, nothing changed on Wednesday morning. The regime that saw American buyers of British goods pay $1.36bn in a single four-month stretch has been rebuilt, not torn down. In July I grumbled that Congress could not even muster a strongly worded letter about the President’s Truth Social sideline. Now it holds the pen. Holding the pen is not the same as getting the law signed.
The lesson for any SME selling into the States is the one every Floridian learns in their first autumn. Celebrate the wave, but budget by the tide table. Keep the tariff line in your 2027 forecasts. Write your US contracts so they survive a veto. Treat Tuesday as a statement of intent rather than a cheque in the post, and let the upside surprise you rather than the downside sink you.
Waves are glorious things. But the man who does well out of them is the one who read the tide table, and kept his wellies by the door.
