Original article written by Stephen Fear for the Bristol Post on 1st February 2017 (also featured on SouthWestBusiness.co.uk on 1st February 2017):

THE rhetoric is over and, against all the odds, Donald Trump is now US President and has taken up residency in the White House.

What does this mean for world peace and prosperity? How will Trump and Brexit affect the UK property market, jobs and security?

The Supreme Court ruled last week that parliament must vote before article 50 can be invoked but I expect MPs to confirm the countries decision to leave.

It is well known that I have criticised President Trump on his stance on immigration and past crude comments about women but overbearing political correctness has grown out of all proportion to its effectiveness, with people frightened to say what they really think for fear of being thought racist or homophobic.

Personally it makes no difference to me whether someone is gay or straight. It certainly doesn’t matter whether they’re black or white either. Whether they are Asian, Mexican or Puerto Rican should be irrelevant, however we should all be able to generally and quietly voice our opinion in a free society.

We in Britain need to be measured in our personal attacks on Trump because he will inevitably affect our prosperity. I certainly do not mean we should agree with everything he says but screaming abuse based on political bias or dogma may directly affect UK jobs and our attempts to confirm a good trade deal with America.

Russia says it wants equal status on the world stage with the USA but, given that the Russian economy is roughly half the size of that of California, it isn’t very likely.

Putin punches above his weight mainly because Russia spends huge swathes of money on its military rather than building infrastructure. Factually it is a very heavily armed but essentially smallish economy and not the economic giant Putin likes to think. Britain’s economy is much larger.

With our leaving the EU it is essential that we obtain a good trade deal with the USA. Its economy is far larger than that of the EU and, despite Trump, is, even now, probably more united too.

The anti-Brexit rhetoric coming out of Brussels has been pointed and, in my opinion, quite high-handed at times. Especially from EU President Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker. Neither have behaved in a statesman like way in my view.

I do not want to see the breakup of the European Union but fear it may happen. It just hasn’t been very well managed for many years. We are leaving a bureaucratic political and trading union, not the continent. We are factually as European as any Frenchman or German.

Best friends often live close to each other. They have some views that are different but they remain friends. They don’t have to live in the same house to remain on good terms.

BMW, Mercedes and other European car makers cannot expect the same favourable terms they get from Britain now, post Brexit, unless our good grace in this regard is reciprocated. Volkswagen sell more than 200,000 cars every year in Britain. They will not want to lose that market anymore than we want to lose theirs.