Altman Says Tarrifs Have Dented Business Confidence

A lot. I made a point this week so far of speaking to quite a few CEOs of large cap companies in order to exchange views on the financial market turbulence and the implications of it, and to ask what they were feeling or sensing in their businesses. And across the board, they're either already detecting some weakness or expect to see it shortly. So the level of business confidence is weakening because the business conditions themselves are starting to weaken, which is not surprising given the shock and awe character of these markets in the last few days.

Well, Scarlett, it's pretty difficult for almost any CEO, maybe not Jamie Dimon, but almost any CEO to by herself or himself make an impact on the Trump administration's approach to tariffs. I think that's asking a lot for any individual CEO. Most of them, after all, only talk to the media on a regular basis at the time of their earnings calls. And, you know, they're not a constant presences in the media ecosystem. So I think that's just a lot to ask. But I can tell you that in private, there's almost universal disaffection toward the tariff policy, because, after all, if you think about it, the idea that if Country A is running a trade deficit with country B, then by definition country B is ripping off Country A is simply fallacious. There are lots of reasons for trade deficits, and they're not all bad ones. For example, the United States is not a serious coffee producer. Brazil produces a lot of coffee, so we buy tremendous amounts of coffee from Brazil and certain other coffee producing countries like Colombia, and we don't sell them any coffee. That's not a bad thing in and of itself. Furthermore, exchange rates have a lot to do with trade deficits. Also, not a bad thing in and of itself. So the very premise of the trade policy, that any trade deficit with any particular country reflects that they're ripping us off, it's just not seen as logical by the business community or for that matter, anybody who seriously thinks about it.

Well, today you saw, it's an alarming thing, you saw the dollar weakened, bonds weakened and equities weakened at the same time. That's quite uncommon because typically the dollar, it's not common to see the dollar weaken and bonds weaken at the same moment. That happens often in emerging markets, but not in the case of the United States. That is not a good sign because it signifies capital outflows and it signifies diminishing confidence in the growth outlook for this country and for that matter, the attractiveness of dollar based assets. So I don't know if that continues or it's a one day thing. No way of knowing that. But it's not good.