How Trumponomics could spark ‘bucking of trend’
From left to right: Jeremy Roche, James Jaffa, Rob Hodgetts, Bob Allen.
Some people like their coffee black. Others with a splash of milk. Or lots. Or cream. Some like the whole coffee scene but not so much the caffeine. Decaf it is. Some concede the other options have merit now and again. Others will not budge.
Politics is the same. And so it was, through this prism of different viewpoints, that we peered at the state of the US yacht market in a panel session late on day two of our Superyacht Investor London conference this week.
Because the thing is, for a session that a few months ago was destined to be a gentle stroll through a potentially more certain post-election landscape, the context had changed.
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Talk of tariffs, trade wars and shifting geopolitics has titled the landscape. The question for us was, how has it affected the American superyacht buyer?
“There is a bucking of the trend,” said James Jaffa, the founder of British law firm Jaffa & Co, which has recently opened a US office in Fort Lauderdale and who is buying a home there.
“Historically, the US leads the charge on economics and therefore boat buying but I think there’s been a shift. America is about to follow us [Europe] in the boat buying trend.”
James Jaffa (centre) lands his point on the US panel at Superyacht Investor.
According to Jaffa, Europe has been “fairly soft” in the 30-40m market over the past year or two, while America has been “pumping”. The top of the market, 50-70m and above, has been “arguably stronger than I remember it being for a while … and will carry on getting stronger because if you’re at 60m money you’re almost always going to have 60m money”, he said. But in the smaller segments, people are “sitting on their hands more and waiting to see”.
“There’s no doubt that Trump economics has been helpful for the superyacht world, but actually in the last month or so, since the stock market started falling a little … there’s been a noticeable cooling off in that 30m, 40m, 50m range with US buyers,” said Jaffa.
“Everything Trump says and does, whether you like it or you don’t like it, if the stock market’s high, people feel wealthier, they buy yachts. In Europe, we’re at the bottom of our curve and I think the US is about to follow that as we pick up in our trajectory.”
Jeremy Roche (left) speaks as Bob Allen (right) looks on.
Jeremy Roche, a Europe-based broker for US firm Denison Yachting said the year in the US began with “very, very positive sentiment” following a slow 2024 but is now experiencing “a little bit of a dip” alongside the recent political rumpus.
“I remember saying last year that we were likely to see bigger highs and bigger lows if a certain person came in and that’s exactly what we’re seeing,” said Roche.
But while sentiment might be shifting, the actual numbers suggest something different, conceded Roche. “This year [at the Palm Beach show], we did 50% more deals than we did at the show last year. And that was last week,” he added.
“There’s lots of product out there for sale. People are back to a sort of a normal regime where they are looking for the right deal. The overall feeling is deals are harder to do. But these Americans have got more money than you can shake a stick at, and they will be buying boats because they love them.”
Bob Allen, the veteran US superyacht lawyer and founder of Robert Allen Law, believes the disruption coming from the US administration will be short-lived.
“There’s a lot of thought that all these staccato executive orders that he’s [President Trump] issuing are disrupting the world, and the threats of these retaliatory tariffs are disrupting the world,” said Allen. “In a way they are, but temporarily.”
Wealth divided
According to Jaffa, America is becoming “increasingly inward-looking”, but it will have the effect of strengthening the market in Europe and the rest of the world, notably the UAE and the Middle East.
“There are two elements to the market at the moment. The wealth has very clearly divided and gone east and west,” he said.
“You’ve got the American market looking at American money, taking care of American interests, and buying domestically and still in Europe and taking them back to the US. Then you’ve got the UAE and the Middle East looking at the rest of the world. We’ve seen this gravitational pull of wealth east and west, and it’s left an empty middle ground geographically in Europe.”
On the subject of tariffs, the panel was at least in agreement that they would not affect the yachting industry to any significant degree, in contrast to the business jet market in which many planes have Canadian engines bolted to them. Even with US clients buying European yachts and taking them back across the Atlantic, the feeling was that they would largely stay in the Caribbean anyway.
Shake it up
For his part, Allen is optimistic for an end – albeit “not perfectly just for anybody” – to conflict in Ukraine as well as the Middle East, which will have a knock-on effect for the yacht industry.
“There was a president of the USA who said speak softly but carry a big stick,” he said. “Trump has a different approach; he speaks loudly but he also carries a big stick.
“It may take 12 months … but I believe we’re at the beginning of a new era, unless mainland China decides to go into Taiwan.
“I think what James is saying about Europe having springback is good, I think he’s wrong about us being more insular. But I’m tremendously optimistic. Sometimes before good things happen you have to shake things up a bit so they settle out in a different way. I think we’re in good shape in the yachting industry and we’re going to be better.”
And with that glimpse into Trumponomics, it’s time for a coffee. Black, since you asked.
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