The riskiest election in US history

Donald Trump’s illness has rattled markets as investors try to understand the implications of an incapacitated American president or a bitterly contested election.

What happens if the US president dies?

The vice president takes over, under the 25th Amendment to the US constitution, adopted in 1967. This sets out that the vice president automatically becomes president (not just acting president). It also creates a process for an ailing president voluntarily to transfer power to the vice president. And it provides for circumstances in which a president either cannot or will not invoke the amendment. The vice president, backed by a majority of cabinet members, can invoke it by writing to Congress. But if a reluctant president is well enough to disagree, Congress must decide it by a two-thirds vote. There’s plenty of room for rancour, division and instability – and even more so if the vice president is also out of the picture. In those circumstances, the speaker of the House of Representatives becomes president.

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.