Surveys have shown that business leaders around the US are excited about Donald Trump’s return to the White House. But not all of the policies he’s promising appeal to every CEO.
On today’s Big Take DC podcast, Business Roundtable CEO Josh Bolten joins host Saleha Mohsin to share what the business leaders he represents want from tax and trade policy — and Bloomberg’s Nancy Cook describes how Trump relishes one-on-one negotiations with fellow executives.
Read more: US Executives Turn More Optimistic After Trump Win, Surveys Show
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Since Donald Trump won the election, a prominent feeling among CEOs is excitement for what it means for the US economy. According to a recent survey, two thirds of US business executives say they're confident about the economic outlook for the year ahead. Several CEOs have been offered plumb Cabinet positions, and many of Trump's nominees are expected to back policies that are viewed as a win for the business community, like cutting back on financial regulations and cutting taxes. But it's what these execs don't know that may give them some pause. They're hanging on every little hint of what the incoming administration might actually do.
With Trump winning and an all Republican Congress, there's less anxiety about the outcome on tax but the bigger concern may end up being in our t raid and international economic relations.
That's Josh Bolton. He was White House Chief of Staff to George W. Bush, and now he serves as the head of a lobbying group called the Business Roundtable, so he represents the policy interests of CEOs at leading US companies. He regularly talks to people like Jamie Diamond of JP Morgan, and those types of conversations give him a window into what matters most to these executives. Bloomberg Nancy Cook told me advocating for businesses as a block is a bit harder in the Trump White House.
So much of his relationship with people is based on his personal relationship, and so his relationship with Tim Cook of Apple may be different than his relationship with the CEO of Walmart.
As Trump's second term approaches and his campaign promises turn into policies, Bolton and the CEOs he represents are considering how they can lobby for what they want from the White House and whether the new Trump administration will listen Today on the show, how top business leaders in the US are preparing for another Trump term. What issues are America's business leaders lobbying for, and how could Trump's unique approach to negotiating change the way they come to the table. From Bloomberg's Washington Bureau, This is the Big Take DC podcast from Bloomberg Goose, I'm Saleamosen. The Business Roundtable is a lobbying group that represents the interests of more than two hundred top American companies from Chipotle, to Delta Airlines and Amazon. According to Open Secrets, the group spent over fifteen million dollars lobbying in twenty twenty four, making it the tenth biggest lobbying group in the country. Generally, groups like BRT will spend that money according members of Congress and government agencies to back the policies they support, but their job is a bit trickier under Trump.
I think BRT still tries to be a very influential player with every White House, but I think Trump likes to deal with c on like a one to one basis, rather than as much being swayed by groups like you know, BRT, or the Chamber of Commerce or any of these individual business groups which in the past have been like the most powerful lobbyist in Washington.
Nancy says these groups had a wall during the Biden administration too, for a different reason. There weren't many people in President Joe Biden's inner circle who business leaders felt they could call.
President Biden really shunned a lot of CEOs and really sort of took his sense of what was happening in the labor market much more from labor leaders rather than Wall Street or CEOs.
So We're going to see a shift from the Biden administration not having deep ties with business to the Trump administration where there are more inroads.
Yeah, there's going to be a ton more in roads. I mean, as long as all these people get confirmed by the Senate, which is a huge If there would be Howard lutneka Commerce, you know, he comes from Canter Fitzgerald, he's the CEO there and comes from Wall Street. Scott Besson at Treasury also, I think, you know, has a lot of Wall Street credibility. We're going to see Kevin Hassett and the NEEC people know who he is. He's been around Washington for a long time, and so I think the business community is going to feel like they have sort of more people to reach out to.
Josh Bolton has already had some success in gaining Trump's ear for BRT members.
Earlier this year, President Trump came to the Business round Table in June. We invited President Biden as well, but he was overseas.
At the time. Bolton and the other CEOs were eager to talk to Trump about his plan to maintain the sweeping tax cuts from twenty seventeen, especially the one that dropped the corporate tax rate from thirty five to twenty one percent. While that rate doesn't technically expire, lawmakers are reopening the entire package to negotiation. Since revenue will be needed to offset the large cuts Trump is proposing, Bolton wants to ensure the cuts that most impact businesses remain in place. He told reporters in June that the group was prepared to spend eight figures on lobbying in part to protect their tax interests. When Trump came to be ort's headquarters later that week, he addressed this policy head on.
When President Trump was asked, will you defend the twenty one percent rate, he said no, And there was a kind of a gasp from the crowd, and he said, I like round numbers, and twenty is a round number, not twenty one. He said, maybe even fifteen. So he gave a teaser to the crowd at the business roundtable that maybe he would seek an even lower corporate rate.
And that wasn't the first time Trump brought up the idea of a fifteen percent rate.
You have to remember Trump in twenty seventeen actually wanted the corporate rate to be fifteen percent. He also wanted to call the twenty seventeen tax built, cut, cut cut, but was overruled by some advisors. So I think that he would love to get it as low as possible. But you know, if you lower it to fifteen percent, then you can't do some of these other things. Trump has promised, no tax on tips, no taxes on overtime. There are a bunch of personal income taxes that are expiring next year. I think that originally, you know, there was a lot of jubilation from the business community. Oh, the Republicans, you know, are going to control everything. We'll be able to do tax cuts. But the fact of the matter is there's a lot of priorities on the table now, and at the end of the day, I think even Republican lawmakers are not going to want the tax bill to, you know, be so expensive that it blows a huge pole in the tofesite, so they will have to prioritize.
Bolton told me he recognizes the need to get the federal deficit under control, but he believes keeping corporate taxes low should remain a priority, and he's optimistic about the president electx general position on that.
He laid out his whole agenda, but he did it in a way that gave it a definite pro business tilt on taxes and regulation, two sets of issues that our members care a great deal about and did not dwell very much on the portions of his agenda that have caused our members some concern, that is to trade in tariffs, trade and tariffs.
Trump's proposals in these areas don't have the same widespread popularity among business leaders after the break, how Trump's latest tariff plans have CEOs preparing. When it comes to taxes, the business community is expecting to see some wins from a Trump presidency, but Bloomberg's Nancy Cook says the picture gets more complicated with tariffs.
Because no one knows exactly what Trump will do.
Trump's latest threat is an additional ten percent tariff on top of existing tariffs on China.
So he has talked about putting tariffs anywhere from sixty to one hundred percent on China. He has indicated that he will go after the European Union much more with tariff. I interviewed him in June and for an hour and a half I was with him at mar Lago and asked him a bunch of questions about these idea of tariffs, like, how serious are you? I think that he likes to talk about them like a great revenue raiser, a great way to raise money for the federal government and potentially even replace some of the income tax. But I do think some of the people around him, like the potential incoming Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, feel like the tariffs are a little bit more of a negotiating tool rather than something that he is definitively going to put on. And so what I will be watching for is how both business groups like BRT but also just world leaders start lobbying Trump to try to dial back these tariffs, or at least the threats of them.
I asked Josh Bolton how BRT is thinking about this.
I think everybody has to take what the president says quite seriously. I mean, we know from experience in his first term sometimes it's bluster to create a good negotiating position, but often he really means it and he has a tendency to follow through. With respect to the recent threats that President Trump has put out about tariffs, the ones on Canada and Mexico, to me, those feel like negotiating positions. President Trump has a laudable goal of trying to tighten up the border, both with respect to drugs and those who are trying to come across illegally. The question is what's the best way to go about that. The threat of tariffs may help bring Canada and Mexico to the table. Our hope would be that the President is able to bring them to the table and get satisfactory resolution on those issues without having to resort to tariffs, which are very damaging to the US economy.
The impact of these tariffs will hit different businesses and sectors differently. Those that rely heavily on importing raw materials could see much higher production costs.
Companies like that will have been planning for many months considering a diversification of their supply chains, but a lot of the impact of this would likely be unavoidable if, in fact, large tariffs are imposed on a large number of goods coming into the United States.
Trump has always paid close attention to what business leaders and markets think of his policies and his presidency, so I asked Nancy, if these groups are so worried about tariffs, is there anything that business community could do to sway him.
They're likely to have less influence there than they do on taxes. Trump loves tariffs, you know, He's called tariff like the most beautiful word. I feel like he actually does believe in them, and so I think companies will certainly be able to lobby him and create direct appeals to him, but I feel like they're going to have a tougher time moving him off of the idea of tariffs broadly than taxes.
The thing is to get through to Trump, the business community will need to do more than just traditional lobbying.
Having seen Trump's presidency the first time, I think a lot of these CEOs know now that rather than sort of coming in at the last minute and making donations or having an army of lobbyists, lobbying Trump really works best if the CEO reaches out directly to Trump.
And that approach to lobbying raises a question. If Trump does follow through with his proposals, will he do so uniformly across the board or will he try to get something in return from individual CEOs.
What would be so interesting to watch is what individual meetings with him and different CEOs does to the tariffs. So when I was down at mar Lago interviewing him, in June. He told a story about Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, and Trump was threatening some sort of tariffs or something that would have impacted some part of their supply chain, and Tim Cook called Trump directly. He came to the White House and met with Trump, you know, for a good amount of time. Trump, I think felt excited about that. I mean so excited that he told me this few years later in Florida, and I think Trump felt very wooed by Tim Cook, and so he backed off whatever sort of tariffs was going to affect Apple. And so I think there's a lot of lessons in there for how CEOs are going to try to deal with Trump. It's going to be one on one. It's going to be a personal outreach. It's going to become wherever Trump is, be it mar A Lago or the White House, and I think that that's where a lot of these people will try to cut deals.
With Trump's inauguration just over a month away, one thing is certain, the global lobbying effort has already begun.
We already saw the Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau head down to mar A Lago for dinner, which was really sort of lobbying about the tariffs. Trump is going to France this weekend to view the new Notre Dame Cathedral, which was renovated. I assume tariffs will come up on that trip as well.
It's not just world leaders concerned about the impact of new tariffs. CEOs, like many economists, are worried about how quickly the US can ramp up its own manufacturing and the impact on American can.
It's unlikely will ever be in a situation where everything can be in the United States. We can't turn back the clock one hundred years to when countries operate. It's very much as a closed environment. We're in a very integrated, globally competitive environment, and if the United States attempts to put up walls to the free flow of commerce into and out of this economy, we will find ourselves falling way behind our international competitors.
Thanks for listening to The Big Take DC podcast from Bloomberg News. I'm Salia Moosen. This episode was produced by Julia Press. It was mixed by Alex Sugia and fact checked by Audreyanatapia. It was edited by Aaron Edwards, Wendy Benjaminson, and Senior producer Naomi Shaven. Wendy and Elizabeth Ponso provide editorial direction. Nicole Beemsterborer is our executive producer. Stage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Please follow and review The Big Take DC wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps new listeners find the show
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