US CEOs need to push Trump in a business-friendly direction, find their missing backbones
Trump presidency. But did any CEOs expect fierce trade wars with America’s closest allies? And did any investors expect the current nosedive in the markets? America’s businessman president is turning out to be a capital-basher like no other.
The S&P Index has just recorded its worst performance compared with the rest of the world this century. The dollar is weakening, inflationary pressure is rising and credible voices are predicting a recession.
Shell-shocked, some of the country’s most powerful CEOs are speaking out. The CEO of Ford, Jim Farley, says that Trump’s tariff proposals will impose “a lot of costs and a lot of chaos.” The chairman of the board of Costco Wholesale Corp., Tony James, worries that uncertainty is killing investment. “If you’re a business executive right now, you don’t know the path of the future, so that causes you to hold back on things temporarily.”
It would be comforting to report that Trump gave a convincing explanation of his policies when he addressed the Business Roundtable, a group of America’s top CEOs, on Tuesday.
But alas we cannot report that — or anything — because the press were unceremoniously kicked out of the meeting.
The administration’s main defense of its actions is that you need some initial pain if you are to have long term gain. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent talks of a “detox period.” House Speaker Mike Johnson prefers a billiards analogy.