CEOs Are Paying Attention to Trump, Rubenstein Says

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00:00Lots of things have taken place already in 26. You're a man with things in a lot of pies.

00:04Can you talk to us about how the stage is set for corporate America in 26?

00:08Well, corporate America has recognized that President Trump likes to make major decisions

00:13that can affect corporate America. So I think the CEOs of corporate America, when invited to

00:17the White House to do something with the president, are likely to respond favorably to what he wants

00:22to do. Now, obviously, some may not politically agree with him, but generally they recognize that

00:27he can block a corporate deal. He can do things in terms of regulations that other presidents

00:31wouldn't do. So I think he's obviously got the attention of corporate America.

00:36So when they sit down and have a conversation, they being the oil executives with the United States

00:40and the president of the United States, does that have to factor into their decision as to whether

00:44to deploy capital in a place like Venezuela? Well, I think they recognize that the president

00:49is going to do certain things that are going to help the oil industry, I suspect, and he has said

00:54that publicly. So I think they recognize that when he says he's going to do something that's going to

00:58affect them, he's likely to do it. And so many of them are fairly responsive to him. They recognize

01:04that he's different than most presidents of the United States who don't usually get that deeply

01:08involved in corporate mergers and acquisitions, but this president is different.

01:12We've also talked about the idea of a sovereign investment fund or something like that,

01:16and you've seen equity investments on the part of the U.S. government in a number of different

01:19companies. Based on your conversations with chief executives, is this something that's welcomed?

01:24Is this something that's even solicited? It's not a major subject of conversation. Remember,

01:31we have a budget that is so gigantic that it's not going to be affected, and corporate America is not

01:36going to be affected by a sovereign wealth fund all that much because it's not going to be that big.

01:41Right now, we have an annual deficit of about $2 trillion, overall indebtedness about $38 trillion.

01:50And we're not going to have a sovereign wealth fund that's going to be big enough to impact

01:53that. And it'll take a while for the results of investments by a sovereign wealth fund to have

01:59any real impact on the federal deficit, in my view. But I think there should be a sovereign wealth

02:04fund. We've had one for years. It's called the printing press. Basically, by printing dollars,

02:09because we're the only reserve currency, we've had a sovereign wealth fund. And it's been

02:13enabling us to kind of do things we wouldn't otherwise be able to do because we're printing

02:17$2 trillion every year of money that we're spending that we don't really have. So we've

02:22had one. It's just not in the same form as the president's now talking about.

02:26You have these wonderful conversations with leaders in markets and companies. And the latest,

02:31Ray Dalio, has been pretty vocal about how the era of Americana is coming to an end in some way or

02:36another and how there is this trajectory. As the head of a company, as someone who talks with corporate

02:42executives, do you get the sense that they feel that when they talk internationally with their peers?

02:48Well, remember, for such a long time, since World War II ended, we've been the only reserve currency

02:53in the world. And we pretty much dominated the global economy. We have about, what, 5% of the

02:57world's population, and we're about 18% of the world's GDP. So we're disproportionate in our influence.

03:03And I think it's very difficult for people to step back and say, uh-oh, all of a sudden,

03:07the world's going to change. It happens more gradually. But people recognize that we're not going to be

03:11the only reserve currency forever. And we recognize we can't keep running up these deficits forever.

03:16And so I think corporate America is probably expecting some changes to occur. But I think a

03:21lot of people are waiting to see what happens in the midterm elections, which are going to happen

03:24this year. The president himself has said that he's very upset if the Democrats were to win the

03:30control of the House, because he said yesterday that they might try to impeach him. So a lot of people

03:35are going to look at the midterms and see what happens there. But right now, I would say the economy

03:39in the United States is in reasonable shape, leaving aside the deficit issue. Unemployment

03:44numbers are tolerable. Inflation is tolerable. If there are going to be big problems, we don't

03:50know exactly what they're going to be. Geopolitical events are probably more likely to impact the

03:54economy than any things that we're going to do ourselves. So what could happen with the

03:58Russia-Ukraine war? What could happen in Iran? What could happen in China-Taiwan are more likely

04:03to affect the economy and the markets than anything we're going to be able to do by ourselves.

04:06How much is geopolitics weighing on corporate America right now? How much is this the conversation

04:12in boardrooms? There's no CEO that doesn't have a geopolitical advisor these days, because

04:17everybody recognizes that geopolitical events can affect them dramatically. For example, if

04:21you're in the oil business, look what's happened just recently. If you are in the agricultural

04:26business, Ukraine has gone through a major change, and they were a major exporter of wheat.

04:30So I think everybody has a geopolitical advisor, and everybody's sensitive to it. But in the end,

04:35you can't anticipate certain geopolitical events. When you tend to anticipate things that are going

04:39to happen, they usually don't happen. And when you don't anticipate them, that's when they happen.

04:43So it's very difficult to think your geopolitical advisor is going to make you

04:46much richer or smarter, because they really don't know that much more than you know yourself.

04:50So I'll see you next time.

04:55Okay.

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