Trump’s economy was good for New England before. Times have changed.

Trump is dusting off his first-term playbook — tax cuts, deregulation, sharp curbs on immigration, and steep increases to tariffs. It’s a strategy fraught with potential risks for the economy in Massachusetts and throughout New England.

That’s because, as business leaders and economists warn, the world is a lot different than it was eight years ago.

“The problem of 2016 was the sluggish economy after the Great Recession,” said Mark Melnik, director of economic and public policy research at the Donahue Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “That’s not the economy we have in 2024.”

The biggest concern: Fueled by Trump’s tax cuts, the economy could overheat, complicating the Federal Reserve’s plan to return lending rates to more normal levels now that inflation has retreated. That would have sweeping ramifications for consumers and key local industries including housing, biotech and hospitals, tech startups, higher education, and tourism. Trump’s hard line on immigration could hinder the already tepid growth in the state’s labor force, while his climate change denialism is a harbinger of tough times for the region’s emerging clean tech sector.

The president-elect will inherit an economy in the fourth year of an expansion that started with the rapid rebound from the brief pandemic recession of 2020. Growth in quarterly gross domestic product has averaged a solid 2.3 percent since the start of 2022. The jobless rate remains low by historic norms even as it has crept up this year. Inflation, which spiked in 2021-2022, has significantly moderated. The stock market has been hitting one record high after another.

By comparison, when Trump took office in January 2017, the economy was still building steam after the long “jobless recovery” that followed the 2008 financial crisis. Simply put, there was more room to grow then than there is today.

His economic agenda is mostly bullet points, with few details fleshed out, but his broad goals are clear, and they point to potential risks and rewards for local businesses.

As he did in his first term, Trump will seek to run the economy “hot,” powering growth by extending his 2017 tax cuts that expire next year and reducing the corporate tax rate to 15 percent from 21 percent; it was 35 percent when Barack Obama left office. He would augment that fiscal boost by removing government constraints on businesses, and promoting oil and gas production to lower prices.

While a hot economy would generate jobs and raise incomes, there’s a danger it could also reignite inflation, the very problem the Fed spent the past two years battling and which was instrumental in Kamala Harris’s defeat. That could be disastrous for a local economy struggling under the weight of high housing costs, as construction loans and mortgages would remain prohibitively expensive.

“Economists, including myself, are concerned that Trump will be inflationary,” said Adam Guren, an associate professor who specializes in housing at Boston University. “To the extent to which inflation rises, interest rates will rise.”

Rates have already climbed as investors anticipate a stronger economy under Trump.

The labor force is also a worry. Trump’s promise to deport millions of people who are in the country illegally could leave many employers short-handed, especially in low-wage industries such as retail, hospitality and tourism, health care and social services, and housing construction.

Melnik, the UMass economist, said 80 percent of the growth in the state’s labor force since 1990 has come from foreign-born workers who have offset losses from retirements and outmigration to other states. “If inflation is our biggest problem, reducing the labor pool doesn’t fix that,” he said.

Strict immigration limits could also hurt high-wage sectors like life sciences, tech, and finance, which attract the best and brightest foreign workers. Local colleges and universities could struggle with a falloff in international students, as well as a decline in federal funding under a president who was hostile to higher education in his first term.

Trump and his vice presidential pick, JD Vance, have proposed targeting the federal funding that most colleges and universities rely on. They have said they will use the funding as leverage as they look to replace university accrediting agencies, and suppress diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts across the sector.

While it’s not clear yet whether Trump will follow through on these fronts, university leaders worry about funding threats, as well as immigration policies that could impact international students and faculty members, said Marty Meehan, president of the UMass system.

“That is a concern, and candidly, it’s taken us a while to get the number of international students back up again after the first Trump administration,” Meehan said.

Trump’s focus on tariffs, meanwhile, threatens to inflict higher costs on consumers and businesses even as it seeks to encourage US companies to make more products at home. How much of his tough tariff talk is just a negotiating ploy remains to be seen.

Economists say a strict tariff regime would force consumers to pay more for food, clothing, consumer electronics, and cars, which the United States imports in large quantities.

Boston’s footwear industry is warily eyeing Trump’s tariff promises. The industry is already smarting from tariffs that took effect in 2018. Nearly all shoe manufacturing happens overseas now. Even New Balance, which runs several factories in New England, imports most of its shoes. The footwear industry argues that higher tariffs will be counterproductive, by driving up prices for US consumers.

Trump’s broad expansion of tariffs on imported goods could hurt companies that depend on overseas suppliers, such as online furniture retailer Wayfair. Back in 2019, when Trump raised tariffs on some Chinese goods to 25 percent, Wayfair said customers backed off and buying activity slowed.

This time around, executives of the Boston-based company said they are more prepared to shift to alternate suppliers, and more of their suppliers have moved manufacturing outside of China.

Businesses in Massachusetts and throughout the region would be hit by higher costs for key components they use in their products. Top local imports include medical equipment and pharmaceuticals, crucial to the life sciences and health care sectors, and industrial machinery.

Biotech and hospital leaders have other worries, too.

Jeremy Levin, chief executive of New York-based Ovid Therapeutics, which has laboratories in Boston, was highly critical of Trump in the Republican’s first term and publicly warned against cutting scientific corners in the approval of COVID vaccines. Levin supported Harris.

Nonetheless, he said he is cautiously optimistic that Trump would be supportive of the pharmaceutical industry despite the president-elect’s criticism of high drug prices. He said Trump has proposed tax breaks for innovative technologies and for people who invest in startups, which Levin likes.

Levin was alarmed, however, by Trump’s suggestion that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an outspoken skeptic of vaccines, might play a prominent role at the Department of Health and Human Services or any of its agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration.

During the course of his campaign, Trump was vague when discussing the health care agenda for his second administration. But he or some of his supporters in Congress have at times called for replacing the Affordable Care Act, imposing broader restrictions on abortions, and cutting the Medicaid budget.

While it’s not clear whether Trump will pursue any of those plans, many in the health care industry are alarmed at the prospect of further upheaval, particularly in a hospital sector already weakened by the pandemic, the bankruptcy of Steward Health Care, and several hospital closings in recent years, according to Steve Walsh, president of the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association.

The post-election mood is quite different in the financial sector, where many are welcoming Trump’s victory.

Wall Street on Wednesday posted its biggest post-Election Day gain in history, reflecting confidence in Trump’s ability to effectively promote growth.

“If President Trump comes in, there will be a supply-side boom just like we had in the first term,” Kevin Hassert, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Trump administration, told CNBC in an interview before the election.

Bank stocks in particular soared on the hopes that the tight regulatory climate that the industry faced under the Biden administration will loosen up considerably. In particular, bank mergers have faced tough scrutiny in the past few years, with many deals getting delayed for months and some (such as State Street’s proposed Brown Brothers Harriman acquisition) getting scrapped altogether. The scrutiny, many believe, made CEOs more cautious about even considering deals. Now, that perspective is going to change.

“There’s going to be more of a willingness to allow banks to merge,” said Chris McGratty, head of US bank research at investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. “I don’t think it’s going to be the Wild West. I think it’s going to be smart deals.”

The startup economy in Massachusetts, along with the rest of the country, has suffered from decreased venture capital backing since interest rates jumped in 2022. To the extent Trump’s moves delay Fed rate cuts, that pain could be extended.

Life sciences and tech startups working on everything from fusion energy to quantum computing remain a strength of the local tech scene. They’ve been fueled by a combination of research from the region’s many universities plus increased government backing for science and technology during the Biden administration.

“It’s an open question whether [Trump] will continue to support very large-scale investments in science and technology,” Cait Brumme, chief executive of Boston-based startup accelerator MassChallenge, said. “Collectively those programs have been a huge boost.”

Trump is also expected to scale back tech antitrust enforcement, clearing the way for more takeovers. In the short term, that could pump up the startup economy as money from acquisitions gets recirculated to back new companies.

“The long-run effects of stronger antitrust enforcement may be positive for startups by encouraging greater competition in the tech industry,” said Thomas Chemmanur, a finance professor at Boston College who has studied the issue.

The incoming administration is expected to significantly slow the transition to clean energy by attempting to block unspent federal dollars for climate action, rolling back rules to cut carbon emissions, and expanding oil and gas production. Even before new policies are enacted, fear and uncertainty could suffocate support for emerging clean energy and clean tech industries, which face strong competition from rivals in China and Europe, analysts said.

The power of the president to influence the economy is routinely overstated. With the exception of his big tax cut package, Trump arguably got more credit for the economy’s strength in the first three years of his term than he deserved. And Joe Biden was unfairly blamed for inflation, which had far more to do with pandemic disruptions to supply chains and soaring energy prices, triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, than his stimulus spending.

But Trump is weighing some very aggressive actions. He can unilaterally impose some tariffs and immigration restrictions. And with the GOP poised to possibly control the House as well as the Senate, any proposals requiring congressional approval, including on taxes, would have a good chance of becoming law.

For anxious businesses throughout New England, the wait begins.

Andrew Brinker, Hilary Burns, Jon Chesto, Diti Kohli, Aaron Pressman, Jonathan Saltzman, and Robert Weisman of the Globe staff contributed reporting to this story.

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Larry Edelman can be reached at larry.edelman@globe.com.