What Do the Capitol Riots Mean for the Future of our Economy?

By Daniel Kong

Sunny Hills High School

On January 6, 2021, Trump supporters attempted to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election by rioting and storming the United States Capitol. After breaching multiple police perimeters, the pro-Trump rioters damaged, ransacked, and occupied parts of the building for hours.

As a result, there were multiple deaths and the nation seemed to be in chaos.

However, one thing seemed unaffected: the stock market.

While members of Congress were trapped in the Capitol building and the National Guard was called in to restore order, traders in financial markets remained unfazed.

So while the capitol riots affected the nation’s morale, it had nearly no effect on the economy.

There have been some cases of corporations and businesses dropping their employees that were identified to be at the riot, which has caused several people to lose their jobs, but there were no major or significant moves in the stock market.

Unfortunately, there is no assurance that these riots will no longer happen ever again.

Specifically, since the capitol riots happened because of Trump’s controversial loss in the 2020 presidential election, there is a possibility that it may happen again in the near future, especially with the recent inauguration of President Joe Biden.

However, since these capitol riots are primarily focused on the presidential election, I can’t foresee this having any major effect on the economy or on any major corporations.

Rather, now that the government realizes how easily they were broken into, I believe that our country should put emphasis on national security.

High school students around the nation believe that the capitol riots will have a short term effect, but won’t hurt the country in the long run.

“I believe that these effects will steadily die out,” said Kyle Min, a junior at Los Alamitos High School. “The United States has already suffered insurrections before and they have been dealt with by creating laws appealing to those individuals.”

“I think that there will not be a significant change in the economy. There might be some small businesses in the area of riots that suffer losses, but a small radical group not accepting the president will not have a noticeable impact,” said Ryan Lee, a junior at Sunny Hills High School. “In order to stop the damage that does happen, I think the responsive forces should focus on ending these riots as soon as possible and making the streets safe again.”