Trump ‘bump’ or Trump ‘slump’? What dealers expect from the next four years

At Art Basel Miami Beach, the imminent second presidential term of Donald Trump is a subject that is on many minds but few lips. “In 2016, people on the left were angry. Blum gallery (then Blum & Poe) showed Sam Durant's 2008 lightbox work End White Supremacy facing the entrance. This year, we’re all in a state of anticipatory grief,” says Marc Spiegler, the former global director of Art Basel from 2012 to 2022. “Last time it was a shock,” says Rachel Lehmann, the co-founder of Lehmann Maupin gallery. “This time around he won a majority. It’s sad, but it is what it is.”

The first two days of the fair confirmed that any surety provided by the US election’s decisive outcome has yet to considerably impact the trade, with the turnover for most galleries appearing to match that of last year. Broadly, this has meant the adjectives most commonly used by dealers to summarise sales are “decent” or “healthy”, but rarely anything more effusive or dire.

“So far it has not been crazy good, like it had been in past editions, but not bad either,” says Amanda Roberts, a Los Angeles-based director of Sprüth Magers, which is showing a video work by Barbara Kruger hinting to US political resistance, Pledge, Will, Vow (1988/2020), priced at $500,000. Roberts’s words were echoed by Alexandra Slattery, the director of Two Palms in New York, who says that while she was “aware that people were anticipating increased demand from buyers”, she “hasn’t noticed a difference yet”.

Pablo Picasso’s Couple with Cup (1969) is believed to be the most expensive work on offer at the fair, priced at $30m from Acquavella. It was exhibited at Pace gallery in a 2019-20 exhibition at its now-closed Palo Alto location. As of Thursday afternoon, it was still available. Other prized pieces brought to the fair include Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (1990), offered for $27m at Helly Nahmad Gallery. A gallery director noted that the conversations this year have been more engaging than in 2023 thanks to the certainty brought by the election result.

Betting on the upside

Plenty of dealers are anticipating a boost to the flagging market due to tax cuts promised by Trump on the campaign trail. “I have a hunch things will get good in the next six to 12 months. The mood is uncomfortably optimistic,” says Douglas Marshall, a director at Marshall Gallery, Santa Monica, which is exhibiting at the Untitled Art fair. “I don’t discuss politics with clients—certainly not in Miami,” he adds. “I’m based in Los Angeles where people are publicly Democrats. That’s not the case here.” (Last month, for the first time in 36 years, Miami-Dade County went Republican, although 52% of voters in the city of Miami Beach voted for the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris).

Hope for a market revival under the Trump administration also underlines an uneasy tension sitting at the root of the art market. “The art world is socially liberal and fiscally conservative, and the subset of people who collect art typically benefit from economic policies that exacerbate inequality,” says the New York-based art adviser Alex Glauber. He adds that due to prevailing macroeconomic conditions, collectors appear to be approaching the Miami fairs with greater consideration, and rushing less, which is resulting in “lower volume but higher quality of sales”.

Much is now contingent on the decisions of “a president-elect who rather prides himself on the unpredictability of his management style”, says Paul Donovan, the chief economist of UBS Global Wealth Management (UBS is Art Basel’s global lead partner).

According to Donovan, “the consensus is that Trump won’t do 100% of what he promised, but he will do some of it. There is some scepticism on tax breaks as those will have to pass through Congress with a wafer-thin majority. But the global economy is strong, despite a gap in perception, and people are still spending on art.”

Tariffs’ possible ripples

Donovan argues that any coming tariffs likely “won’t be universal” and are unlikely to include art, but rather sectors like automobiles from the European Union and Chinese electronics. But his views are not shared by Francis Petit, the director of fine art shippers Gander and White in New York, who this week told The Art Newspaper: “I don’t think [Trump] is bluffing at all.”

The potential ramifications of a US protectionist turn underscore how vital American collectors are to supporting the global market. “The sense is that, should tariffs hit art, US collectors feel they have enough material domestically that they can continue to buy without too much disruption,” says the New York-based adviser Rob Teeters. “Rather it’s galleries abroad that are dependent on US collecting that will be hardest hit.”

One regions whose art markets are particularly reliant on US buyers is Latin America. A record number of galleries from there are showing at Art Basel Miami Beach this year, under the initiative of the fair’s new director Bridget Finn. Higher import taxes could disrupt a strong period: a report published last month by Bank of America found that sales of Latin American art (which also includes work by diaspora artists) is currently experiencing an upwards trend, with an 18% year-on-year increase—momentum that is “expected to continue into 2025”.

Domestic collectors in Latin America, especially from its biggest markets—Brazil and Mexico—can be credited for some of this, but it is US collecting, both privately and institutionally, that remains the dominant propelling factor for many of the region’s galleries. “The US is our biggest market by numbers,” says Stefan Benchoam, the director of the Guatemala City gallery Proyectos Ultravioleta, which is showing a solo stand of paintings by the artist Paula Nicho Cumez in the fair’s Positions sector. “Let’s see where the chips fall regarding the next administration. I’m very aware that everything could change suddenly.”

Other dealers from the region remain stoic. “Trump makes threats but often doesn’t fulfil them,” says Jan Fjeld, a director at the São Paulo gallery Vermelho. He notes that this current period of increased sales for Latin American art is not as significant as the “boom” that took place in the mid-2000s, which was fuelled in part by US buying. “When those collectors departed, Brazilians were able to keep things going. We have a strong domestic market.” And importantly, he adds, this is not his first time dealing with a Trump administration. “We did okay in the last round. We’re prepared for four more years.”