Andrew Milgram

It can be a change in consumer preferences that impact a number of companies, change in government policy, all sorts of things.

Unfortunately, today it's everything.

The most acute is, of course, the tariff risk.

And by the way, we have some data, we have some thoughts about what that might look like for companies, but the indecision of tariffs.

Yeah, the uncertainty, yeah.

Think about it.

Somebody said to me recently, well, Christmas is canceled.

Why is Christmas canceled?

Well, you have to put your orders in now.

So if you're a business trying to make a decision about what your Christmas book is going to look like, how do you even make that choice today?

I think it's a really tough time to be a corporate manager.

I think there's lots of challenges in the economy.

People are having to make big bets where you don't know which way anything's going to go.

Are you going to be able to have your supply chain continue to be in China?

Are we going to have a persistent trade problem with them?

tariffs.

Our data looks at, again, across the middle market, and then we look at the public market and we say, what are the likely impacts and how does this work through the balance sheet and what would you suspect happens?

I can make a pretty strong argument that public companies will actually benefit from the tariff regime.

And again, I'm going to assume that the West Wing is being thoughtful in its analysis and its deal-making strategy, and they've probably come to a similar conclusion.

I think the Treasury Secretary speaks pretty confidently and directly about this, and I agree with their assessment.