The Global Head of Equity Strategy at Jefferies said Monday that despite his bluster toward Beijing, a victory by former President Donald Trump will create “opportunity” in China, not diminish it.

Speaking to Bloomberg TV, Christopher Wood said he is not as pessimistic as some of his colleagues in the financial world with regards to a second Trump term. Investors are concerned about the former president’s continuous talk of using tariffs to even trade discrepancies and his antagonist rhetoric toward China.

“Bottom line, if Donald Trump’s elected and Chinese stocks collapse, that’s an opportunity to add to China,” Wood said.

“People have forgotten that Donald Trump did the big trade deal with China in January 2020. A trade deal was done, and it was all hunky dory, and Donald Trump was going to run on that presidential campaign as ‘I’m the guy who’s negotiated the best trade deal with China since WTO,’ ” he added.

Last week at the Economic Club of Chicago, Trump doubled down on his support of tariffs on foreign manufacturers saying they are necessary to protect American jobs and industry.

“To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff,” Trump told Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait. “It’s my favorite word.

“We will bring the companies back,” Trump said. “We will lower taxes further for companies that will make their product in the USA. We will protect those companies with strong tariffs because I am a believer in tariffs. I am not sure you are. I don’t think you are.”

Wood said that Trump’s previous time in office illustrates his willingness to negotiate with China, giving a hypothetical example of China accepting some higher tariffs if Trump were to ease restrictions on U.S. semiconductor technology.

“[Trump’s] not one of these national security guys in Washington who believe China is a threat to U.S. hegemony,” Wood continued. “In fact, he’s the opposite.”

Wood isn’t the only financial guru to see a Trump win as a window for creative investment. Dan Loeb, founder of New York-based hedge fund Third Point, told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that his firm has begun buying stocks and options from companies that will benefit from Trump’s policies.

“We believe the proposed ‘America First’ policy’s tariffs will increase domestic manufacturing, infrastructure spending, and prices of certain materials and commodities,” he wrote in an investor letter. “We also believe that a reduction in regulation generally and especially in the activist antitrust stance of the Biden-Harris administration will unleash productivity and a wave of corporate activity.”

Mark Dowding, chief investment officer of RBC BlueBay Fixed Income at RBC BlueBay Asset Management, has similarly shifted his investment strategy to be more in line with a Trump victory, citing Republican confidence.

“At the start of the week, I picked up that narrative, and I started thinking ‘This is much more skewed toward Trump than I realized,’ ” he said.

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