Here’s what CEOs are saying about Trump’s tariffs and the economy

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Here’s what CEOs are saying about Trump’s tariffs and the economy

This is The Takeaway from today’s Morning Brief, which you can sign up to receive in your inbox every morning along with:

99% of the time I have a good sense of the economy ahead of an action-packed gathering like the Milken conference.

Held each May, the unique conference brings together a wealth of characters ranging from NBA legend Magic Johnson to investing maven Ken Griffin.

You can just feel the money in the room.

Unlike recent Milken conferences, this year’s event will have a heavy showing from the White House — with a few sideshows, of course.

The two headliners on this front: Tesla (TSLA) CEO and DOGE master Elon Musk (who appeared last year) and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang was just added to the speaker list late this week.

Media titan Rupert Murdoch is also expected to make a rare appearance amongst the various Trump administration folks walking the halls.

I once again have a bunch of really cool live interviews teed up, along with a few Opening Bid podcasts. So be sure to tune into Yahoo Finance Monday morning!

Back to the economy.

There’s more going on with the economy than the 0.3% GDP drop that momentarily hit stocks this week. It’s just not that simple. Tariffs are hurting a lot of companies (including Apple (AAPL) to the tune of $900 million in extra costs, we learned this week). But it’s not hurting others, as conventional wisdom would hold.

Put it all together, and you have a very confusing investing backdrop.

The best thing I can do is present what the world’s top leaders are seeing and hearing. From there, you make your own judgment on where the economy may be headed — because, honestly, I’m not sure, and I suspect that confusion will be on display in my chats this week at Milken.

Here’s what CEOs have told me in the last week on Trump tariffs, markets, and the US economy.

“If you look at the US business, the weakness in volume in Q1 was concentrated in what we call future consumption packaging, which is much more predominant in supermarkets or … independent trade outlets, rather than either convenience or the away-from-home quick-serve restaurants and all the away-from-home channels. So that’s where the weakness was focused, which I think is partly an indication of some of the affordability pressure for the lower-income consumer and some of the geopolitical reaction.”

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“If you look at our results, what I’m seeing actually is a step up in transactions as it relates to our business in the US. We had our best quarter as it relates to sales comps in the last five quarters. And so, we continue to see progress in the Starbucks business with customers.”

“We’re not seeing a change in the basket . So when they come in, the attach [rate] has been pretty much the same as far as customization or adding on food.”

A Starbucks coffee logo is displayed outside one of their stores on March 23, 2025 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images) · Kevin Carter via Getty Images

“We saw strong, broad-based consumer spending [in the quarter]. We definitely saw some deceleration in certain parts of the economy, but also strong spending growth in other parts of the economy.

“What we can add is a view in a broad-based way across a significant portion of Americans and almost all the categories in which they spend. And, you know, for the last three months or so, including the first three or four weeks of April, we’ve seen strong spending growth.”

“In general, we have seen some net equity selling and we have seen sentiment among our clients become a little bit more bearish. So in general, as a group, among our 45 million clients, there has been a little bit more concern. Now, within that, we have seen some of our longer-term-oriented investors and some of our more active traders get invested. I was just in Ann Arbor in one of our branches, and I said, ‘How are clients doing?’ And they were telling me our younger investors, many of them haven’t seen a pullback like this. And so … our youngest investors are some of the ones calling us where they’ve never called us before.”

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#Heres #CEOs #Trumps #tariffs #economy

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