No one really knows which of President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promises will become national policy, but Trump’s public statements suggest his near-term impact on Hawaii’s economy could be helpful in some ways and quite painful in others.

Trump wants to end the federal budget sequester imposed in 2013 that has limited military spending, and Hawaii’s strategic location makes it a likely beneficiary if the national purse strings are loosened to provide more money for military bases, ships, personnel and housing, experts say.

On the other hand, if the new president does anything that depresses the currencies of the nations that feed Hawaii’s international tourism trade, that would make Hawaii vacations more expensive and have an ugly near-term impact on the local visitor industry.

Longer term, if Trump rips up international trade agreements and clobbers U.S. trading partners with sanctions — as he promised — he could trigger an international recession that likely would send Hawaii’s visitor industry into a steep dive.

Figuring out which of those possibilities will become reality is wild guesswork.

Ralph A. Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum Center for Strategic and International Studies in Honolulu, points out that former President Jimmy Carter came to office determined to withdraw U.S. forces from South Korea, and Ronald Reagan had planned to recognize Taiwan as the legitimate government of China. Both were forced to backpedal from those positions.

“What history has taught us is that 50 percent of what every candidate says is far-fetched,” Cossa said. “The challenge with Trump is to figure out which 50 percent is true and which 50 percent isn’t.”

Boost for military

In what could be an early example of walking back the rhetoric, Trump preached during the campaign that U.S. allies, including South Korea, will have to pay more if they want U.S. military support, but then called President Park Geun-hye on Thursday to affirm his commitment to the existing security alliance, according to the South Korean government.

“There’s a difference between what you say as a candidate and what you say when you become president, so anyone who thinks they know what Trump’s policy is toward anything right now is deluding themselves,” Cossa said.

That said, when the Republicans take control of both chambers of Congress, Trump may be able to get the budget sequester lifted for defense spending. If that happens, “you’re going to see an instant 10 or 20 percent jump in spending from the Pentagon, and a sizable amount of that will be in Hawaii and the Pacific,” Cossa said.

The military spent $7.6 billion in Hawaii in 2014, which accounted for nearly 10 percent of the state’s gross domestic product, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

For Carl Bonham, executive director of the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization (UHERO), the immediate near-term concern for Hawaii is the effect Trump’s actions might have on international currency markets.

Mexico and Canada are the two largest trading partners for the U.S., and the Mexican peso dropped after the election over concerns that Trump as president will constrict international trade. A similarly sharp drop for the Canadian dollar would affect a key tourism market for Hawaii, he said.

“Canada is a large source of visitors to Hawaii. They are No. 3 behind the U.S. and Japan,” Bonham said. “If you see a 10 percent depreciation of the Canadian dollar, that makes a Hawaii vacation 10 percent more expensive, and it hurts us very, very directly.”

The currencies of emerging markets and Asia could also be a risk. For example, if Trump follows through on his pledge to declare China a currency manipulator and slap a tariff on imports from China, “that’s more than enough to cause currency gyrations all over the globe,” Bonham said.

Another important near-term concern is the uncertainty about Trump and his impact on the national economy, and the effect that uncertainty will have on business investment and consumers, Bonham said.

Cloud of concern

Economist Paul Brewbaker of TZ Economics said in written comments that if Trump as president embraces the protectionist policies he advocated as a candidate, including large tariffs on Chinese exports to the U.S., “it will make everybody in the U.S. worse off, materially, and ironically won’t affect China that much in the future.”

Policies such as Trump’s plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, will add to the cloud of concern. Repeal of Obamacare could do economic harm to millions of people who stand to lose their health coverage as well as the companies that provide that coverage today, Bonham said.

Uncertainty about immigration is another major factor because “if we were to throw millions of migrants out of the country immediately, that would have a significant negative effect on our economy” which could also ripple out to affect Hawaii, he said.

“Uncertainty is likely to be the name of the game for quite a while,” Bonham said. “Everybody’s in the same boat. Nobody really knows what he’s going to do.”

A somewhat cheerier possibility involves potential U.S. investment in infrastructure. Trump has said he will launch a program to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in building roads, bridges, railways, seaports and airports, which could pay dividends for Hawaii if Trump can persuade the Republican Congress to agree.

“We have significant infrastructure gaps, and we have at the moment extremely low borrowing costs, so if it’s done right it’s something that Democrats, progressives … and Donald Trump have been talking about for quite a while as an important sort of stimulus tool,” Bonham said. The idea makes sense given the state of the nation’s aging infrastructure, he said.

“That’s not normally a Republican priority, but then Donald Trump’s not a real Republican,” Bonham said.

However, Brewbaker said a stimulus package such as the one Trump has proposed is normally a tool for coping with an economic downturn, and Trump’s plan apparently will take effect at the time when the U.S. is at or near full employment.

“There is no recession now, there is only full employment, so the only thing that comes from a fiscal stimulus at full employment is higher interest rates and higher inflation,” Brewbaker said in written comments.

Weighing on interest

Bonham also warned that today’s low borrowing costs for the federal government might not apply to Trump’s stimulus plan if Trump first provides the large tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers, as he promised. Those tax cuts would dramatically increase the federal deficit, which likely would push interest rates higher, Bonham said.

Brewbaker predicted Trump will indeed act quickly to cut income tax rates for high-income households and reduce corporate taxation because he has a Republican Congress now to help him get it done.

Possible hope for TPP

Trump aggressively campaigned against the controversial trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but Cossa said he thinks the TPP agreement might be salvaged yet.

He recalled that President Obama campaigned in 2008 against the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, also known as KORUS. After the election Obama claimed to have “fixed” the agreement without renegotiating it, and Congress approved it, Cossa said.

Bill Clinton likewise campaigned against the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and he too claimed to have improved the agreement without actually renegotiating before it took effect, Cossa said.

As for TPP, “I would imagine at some point Trump will wave his magic wand over it and say, ‘I’m the world’s greatest negotiator and I just fixed the deal,’” Cossa said.

Cossa noted that Trump’s opposition to free-trade agreements directly contradicts the Republican Party platform, which trumpets the importance of free-trade pacts. Cossa also contends the Trans-Pacific Partnership would help Hawaii by generally boosting trade and investment, and also by helping to reduce the local price of imported goods.

Bonham said the most alarming long-term aspect of the new administration could be its approach to climate change.

If the United States spends the next eight years mining coal and ignoring the potential of renewable power, “to me that’s the scariest aspect. We don’t have time to mess around” with the problem of climate change, he said.