00:00 Speaker A
What should CEO’s be doing in this backdrop? They were were already confused on the tower front. Now they had this tossed on their plate. I feel as though they’re like waiting for the next shoe to drop.
00:13 Speaker B
I think CEOs are going to hold off waiting for some form of clarity, which they’re not going to get. Uh, this is chaos reigns. Uh, President Trump missed a a golden opportunity to reset his economic policy around investment and jobs, uh, instead of uh, tariffs. The tariff policy is not working and uh, you know, our balance of trade hit an all-time high if he thinks that’s important. Uh, jobs, uh, are kind of muddling along. Uh, inflation hit a high for the year of 2.9. So, uh, I think we really need to refocus on the economy. Uh, he had an emotional response. He should have stepped back for a few days, considered his advisors and then decided, hey, this is an opportunity for me, state of the Union coming up. I’m going to get American companies started invest again. If I were a CEO, I’ll tell you, I would hold off because I have no idea what the tariffs. Have they changed six times in the weekend? So I’m going I have no idea by country what it is. So I can’t even run the numbers. I don’t know whether to invest in the United States or a factory overseas, how much to ship, how much to import. It’s chaotic. And that’s the last thing business. Business people want two things, Brian. They want predictability and stability. They get neither. So I think they’re going to hold off and I think you’ll the big investments, let’s face it have been in AI, but the rest of the economy companies are not really investing.
02:04 Speaker A
Bill, is it too much, is it too much of a stretch to call, I mean you took off some very important things. Economic growth has cooled, inflation is still I don’t think has come down as fast as the president would like. Is is it too much to call this a Trump slump?
02:26 Speaker B
I think that could be coming ahead in 26. Now, they’ve got some uh in the big beautiful bill, they got some tax benefits that’ll flow to people. So you’re going to see investment from the top, but I worry about this K-shaped economy, all the people on the bottom are going to be suffering. And they’re not going to have jobs and companies are not going to be hiring a lot. They’re going to hold off, see what happens with AI and what happens with tariff policy and investments. So, I think you’ll see uh, frankly, the job increase looked great last month, 130,000, but 120,000 of that was in uh healthcare and private education. Uh, manufacturing overall for 25 was way down. So I don’t think the Trump policy of trying to pressure people to invest in the United States manufacturing, particularly low end is going to work. High end, yes. High-tech manufacturing.
03:32 Speaker A
So, you think the markets are too optimistic still on the Trump economy? I mean, we’re talking about tariffs are still in place, they’re still out there, prices haven’t come down, companies are still passing on these tariffs on the consumers, like our stocks, and and you look at the market, and the market’s still trading at record highs.
03:52 Speaker B
The Mag 7 is pulling it up, and I think that’ll continue. Uh I think you’ll continue to say a huge, it’s it’s almost unfathomable how much investment they’re making in things like data storage. And uh this is going to have a big impact on energy costs and energy availability, frankly. But I think you’re going to see continued heavy investments in research and AI that will keep the economy going at the top. But what’s that say to the small manufacturer? And how is that manufacturer going to compete in this economy? That’s what worries me. And they don’t and people that have to import all their components from overseas, they don’t know what the cost is going to be and what the tariffs are going to be, and they don’t know if they’re going to get refunds from the tariffs they paid last year. So I think we have a chaotic situation.