Paul Post photo
By Paul Post
Federal tax refunds from President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill are expected to be $150 billion higher this spring, helping all kinds of business as people purchase everything from lawn tractors to new homes.
That’s what keynote speaker Robert Doll said during a recent 2026 Economic Outlook program hosted by Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce at the Excelsior Springs Event Center with more than 100 attendees on hand.
The bill, which the president signed into law last July 4, includes tax deductions for tips, overtime pay, auto loans, and creates Trump accounts allowing parents to create tax-deferred accounts for their children, all set to expire in 2028.
“That’s real money and creates a tailwind for consumption,” said Doll, CEO of Houston-based Crossmark Global Investments. “The economy is improving. Economic growth in the United States in 2026 will be 50 basis points higher than it was in 2025 and there’s nothing embarrassing about 2025.”
“We are using the phrase high-risk bull market to describe where we think we are,” he said. “The bull market part says the path of least resistance is up. The two conditions, in my judgment, for that to continue number one, are that earnings estimates keep drifting higher. That’s certainly been the case so far.”
“The second condition is the Fed, that it remains at worst neutral or constructively positive, meaning they talk about cutting rates, not raising rates,” Doll said. “Those two things have powered the market higher now for some time and are necessary conditions for things to repeat for a continued a bull market. The high-risk part says be careful. If one of those things comes unglued or something negative gets in the way, like we saw a year ago with tariffs, the high-risk part is engaged. Those things need to be watched carefully.”
His talk was followed by a panel discussion featuring local business and economic analysts –
Adirondack Trust President and CEO Charles Wait Jr; Arrow Bank President and CEO Dave DeMarco;Ben Chuckrow, Stifel senior vice president, investments and branch manager; and Martin Shields, Bouchey Financial Group chief wealth advisor and shareholder.
Panelists concurred with Doll’s favorable economic projections, including Saratoga County and the greater Capital Region. “Tax refunds are truly going to have an impact on what we do as a community bank from auto sales, residential sales and local small business,” DeMarco said. Doing business in New York state is really challenging, yet despite that we continue to see new business opening.”
He specifically cited recent groundbreaking for a $100 million new Micron semiconductor plant near Syracuse, continued nanotech investments in Albany, and plans for a second GlobalFoundries plant in Malta as projects driving the upstate economy.
“That’s all building growth in the region,” DeMarco said.
Wait pointed out that diversity led by the technology, manufacturing and tourism/hospitality sectors give the region a resilient economic base. “We don’t experience the high highs, we also don’t experience the low lows,” he said. “Just maintaining that steady growth is one of the benefits we have in this area, which makes it such a great place to be.”
Wait said his optimism is also fueled by sales tax and hospitality numbers, which are on a growth trend. From 2022 to 2025, sales tax collections in the county increased 13 percent with a gain of roughly $20.8 million. This includes a 5.8 percent from 2024 to 2025 when collections totaled more than $181 million.
Likewise, lodging facilities say revenue per available room rose 18.1 percent the past four years, which includes a nearly 3 percent from 2024 ($137.53) to 2025 ($141.51). The supply of available rooms increased 5.2 percent the last two years with the opening of new hotels to keep pace with growing demand (4.3 percent).
Chuckrow said GlobalFoundries has already received $6.1 billion in federal funding, which will help with company’s proposed expansion plans in Malta. “They’re expected to hire 1000 to 1500 new employees over the next five to six years,” he said. “The construction jobs they’re projected to need to build out the new foundry or foundries is about 9000.”
“And as our need for chips as a result of AI, and GlobalFoundries being the largest pure chip manufacturing company in the United States, I can’t see how this area can’t grow; but also grow its tax base because employees coming to this area are going to be higher salaried employees,” he said. “We’re also going to have lots for kids graduating from our great local community colleges so I couldn’t be more optimistic about the growth of Saratoga.”
“Right now we are in a very, very good environment for the US economy,” Chuckrow said. “I don’t see anything, barring any exogenous event, that really should derail it.”
But he said AI is still an unknown quantity with regard to its impact on the economy, both nationally and locally.
“I remember the early Nineties when the Internet was first starting,” he said. “We didn’t know what it was going to do. The Internet, I believe, is what caused inflation to go negative, which is a really bad thing because if there’s no inflation and you need to buy something and you know the price is going to be cheaper tomorrow, you aren’t going to buy it.”
Similarly, Chuckrow believes AI will have the same kind of effect by making it much easier for people to compare prices and find the least expensive item almost instantaneously. “AI is going to bring down inflation the exact same way,” Chuckrow said. “I think it’s going to be both good and bad.”
“Certainly it’s (AI) becoming more and more a part of our business and will change the way not only our banks run, but a lot of other business,” DeMarco said.
In addition to Saratoga Springs’ extremely vibrant downtown, increasingly strong urban centers such as Troy, Schenectady and Glens Falls are fueling outward growth. “Everything flows from there,” he said.
The Capital Region’s median salary is the highest in upstate New York, he said, adding that “we have the highest level of college graduates compared to other upstate cities and much of the U.S.”
“If you’re going to start a business, tell me what country you’d rather be in than the United States,” Shields said. “We’ve got challenges, but it’s still the best place to start a business. I think that’s the case here as well. It’s really hard not to be positive about his area.”