Like investors, corporate leaders are assessing the impact of Donald Trump’s second presidential term. Boston Consulting Group global chair Rich Lesser, who advises CEOs, director boards, and senior business leaders, joins Catalysts Host Seana Smith to discuss how C-suites are thinking about the US economy with a Trump White House. Lesser says it’s important to acknowledge the fundamental strength of the US economy as a “starting point” for Trump’s second term. “The fundamentals of the US economy are quite strong, and the fact that we’re going in the right direction on interest rates, we’re going in the right direction on inflation. Unemployment has stayed relatively low, bumped up a tic, but not much.” He adds, “The mood is probably a bit anxious about how some of this will play through. Tariffs affect industries in very different ways … There’s still challenges facing businesses. Pricing power is dramatically lower in a lower inflation economy and that’s created some stress. But overall I would say there’s pretty good level of optimism on the economy. And you see that in the markets. And I think you see that with CEOs.” The consultant says that was with “any administration when there’s such a big change” corporate leaders are likely to “wait to see appointments, wait to see which policies get priorities. Obviously, on the campaign trail, a lot of things get discussed [including] quite high levels of tariffs unprecedented in our lifetimes, many different kinds of tax cuts directed at different groups, businesses, workers, the need to sort of address a deficit which certainly has stayed very high and the hope is that it will certainly not go higher and ideally start to come down a bit.” “There’s many things that are still uncertain. It’d be hard for business leaders to have a certainty around that when no one else does. On the flip side, you can have uncertainty and still have some degree of optimism, and that’s the way I would characterize it, specific to the economy.”
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