How are energy investors positioned?
Investing.com - Republicans in the U.S. Senate are racing to release an updated version of President Donald Trump’s "big, beautiful bill," with the GOP facing a self-imposed July 4 deadline to pass the sweeping measure.
Lawmakers remain at odds over the spending cuts and borrowing increases that will be needed to fund tax relief and elevated expenditures on defense and border security proposed in the bill. Slashes to the Medicaid program for low-income Americans and clean energy tax breaks are among the most pressing points of contention.
The House of Representatives previously passed its version of the multitrillion legislation by a thin margin, with Republicans in control of the lower chamber just about overcoming party holdouts and Democratic opposition.
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk has been among the most outspoken conservative figures to come out against the net $2.4 trillion price tag of the more than 1,000-page legislation. The tech billionaire’s comments sparked a heated online row with Trump last week.
Should the Senate pass its version, the House would then need to approve it before a final bill is sent to Trump’s desk to be signed into law.
As senators debate the bill, analysts at TD Cowen laid out three features of the legislation that could impact financial stocks in particular.
First, the strategists flagged the Section 899 regulatory tax, which is designed to combat discriminatory foreign taxes by imposing higher taxes on the U.S. operations of overseas companies.
"This impacts foreign banks with U.S. operations in countries with taxes that the U.S. would likely deem discriminatory. That would include banks in Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom (TADAWUL:4280), and Japan as those banks would see higher taxes on their U.S. operations," the analysts said.
Procedural troubles may also effect student loan reforms and, by extension, private lenders to students, the analysts argued.
Finally, they predicted that the Senate will likely halve a $40,000 state and local tax deduction included in the House version of the legislation.
"That could still help housing, but may make passage of the bill in the House challenging," the analysts said.