Contrary to some claims, Trump has been relatively consistent in his policies, and versions of those policies have been enacted in America before. Businesses adapted then and can again.

As the prospect of President Trump becomes more likely, some smart investors are worried about it. I don't think they should be.

The chance of Donald Trump becoming President is no longer remote. As of Sunday, Trump leads Hillary Clinton for the first time in the RealClearPolitics poll average.

President Trump: An Unhedgeable Risk?

Some of the smartest investors I know are concerned about the prospect of a President Trump. I don't think they should be. Albert Wenger, a leading venture capitalist, worries about Trump and the "dangerous rise of populism". Top angel investor Tyler Willis (the subject of our Interview With An Angel Investor) raises another concern in the tweet screen captured below.

It's true that Trump has modified some of his impolitic statements (an example), but on economic policy, he's been fairly consistent for decades. See, for example, this 1990 Playboy Magazine interview. In it, Trump raises similar concerns about trade as he has in his current campaign. Essentially, Trump was an economic nationalist decades ago, and remains one today.

That said, if you think Trump represents a risk to a company such as Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), whether out of pique toward the Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, or, as Chris DeMuth, Jr. skeptically asked, as a Teddy Roosevelt-style trust-buster, you can always hedge Amazon. And if you're worried about Trump's threats against Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), you can hedge Apple. For that matter, if you think a President Trump might sink the whole market, you can hedge market risk. But fear of Trump is overblown. Consider the following.

Economic Nationalism Isn't New

Sometimes the status quo gets so ingrained that we forget what came before. That's the case with the economic globalism shared by recent Democratic and Republican leaders. But Trump's proposed economic nationalism has a pretty long track record. As Ian Fletcher pointed out on Seeking Alpha several years ago, America was founded as protectionist nation:

Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and most of the other great names from American history were all protectionists. Protectionism was, in fact, Lincoln's number two issue after slavery. As he put it in 1847, Give us a protective tariff, and we will have the greatest nation on earth. Revealingly, the only major exception to America's protectionist consensus was the antebellum South [...]

Of course, the slave-holding South wasn't worried about competing against low-wage countries, since they weren't paying any wages. Fletcher's post is worth reading in full, but the tl;dr version is that the United States moved away from protectionism after World War II in part to help prop up Cold War allies. Of course, with so many foreign factories having been reduced to rubble by the war, America's trade surpluses continued for a few decades more. The U.S. posted its last annual trade surplus in 1975.

Even after that, we've had occasional resurgences in protectionism, such as President Reagan's tariffs against Japanese motorcycle manufacturers to defend Harley-Davidson (NYSE:HOG). The stock market managed to do okay during the 1980s. Manufacturers such as United Technologies (NYSE:UTX), whose Carrier air conditioner unit has been a target of Trump, are global companies, and, as such, can adjust where they manufacture and sell products in accordance with a new tariff regime. For example, they could avoid a tariff on imported goods by manufacturing products for the U.S. market in the U.S. and using factories in Mexico and elsewhere to supply other markets.

What About Immigration?

In addition to trade, the other major plank of Trump's economic nationalism has been immigration. He has advocated cracking down on illegal immigration, and restricting legal immigration. We've been here before too. The history of U.S. immigration includes periods of relatively open borders (prior to 1920, the 1970s until now) and periods of relatively closed borders (the mid-1920s until the mid-1960s). American businesses adapted to both.

Business Is Business

It's not a secret that the leaders of some of America's biggest companies aren't on the same page politically as Trump. Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), (NASDAQ:GOOGL) search unit Google's recent choice of home page doodles, Yuri Kochiyama, probably wouldn't have sit well with Trump, had he heard about it. As a more direct example, Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) founder Mark Zuckerberg founded a lobbying group, FWD.us, to advocate against some of the policies proposed by Candidate Trump (as the screen capture below, in which FWD.us expresses its concern for the future of the GOP, illustrates).

Does that mean Facebook, Amazon, Apple, United Techologies, etc., wouldn't be able to navigate under a President Trump? No. If Candidate Trump becomes President Trump, these companies will work within his policies the same way they work within the policies of foreign leaders all over the world. Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook may not be fans of Donald Trump, but that won't stop them from doing business in President Trump's America any more than their differences with, say, Prime Minister Najib Razak keep them from doing business in Prime Minister Razak's Malaysia now.

Don't Panic About The Donald

Since I run a website and an iOS app that help investors hedge, it's in my interest to point out risks. And I've written about Trump's threats against specific companies before. But the more I think about the prospect of a President Trump, the more I think the risk to investors is overstated. Maybe you should panic about something else.

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.