Emily Stewart
Appearances
Apple News Today
What new election results tell us about how attitudes are shifting
as people's outlooks on income and business and the labor market declined, people's expectations for the future really declined to a level that tends to signal a recession. Now, that doesn't mean a recession is going to come, but people feel pretty bad.
Apple News Today
What new election results tell us about how attitudes are shifting
The University of Michigan also does consumer sentiment surveys, and they're seeing similar things where people feel pretty bad about a lot of things. They feel bad about the economy, regardless of their age, their income, politics. What we are seeing is that people expect the unemployment rate to go up at levels that we were seeing around the Great Recession. So people are anxious.
Apple News Today
What new election results tell us about how attitudes are shifting
But we're also seeing that people are nervous about their own incomes. And that is a little bit different because that's not just saying... Ugh, things are bad, but I'm OK at saying I'm worried I'm not going to be OK as well.
Apple News Today
What new election results tell us about how attitudes are shifting
I do think right now that we can say a fair amount of what's happening in terms of sentiment is really stemming from the White House, is stemming from the president. If you look at Doge, Elon Musk is running. Day to day, it is these people are fired. These people are reinstated. Maybe they're not. We're cutting budgets here. We're not cutting budgets there.
Apple News Today
What new election results tell us about how attitudes are shifting
If you think about tariffs, again, it really has been... Today we're doing this, tomorrow we're doing that. I think there is like a real level of uncertainty. And so maybe that's not showing up in the data yet. But again, if you are a business, how do you make a decision about who to hire right now or whether or not you should hire? Because you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.
Apple News Today
What new election results tell us about how attitudes are shifting
A lot of Americans are nervous about a lot of things in the economy. That's Business Insider's Emily Stewart. If there is one word that I think kind of describes the moment, it is uncertainty, right? People are nervous about what's going to happen in the future. They're nervous about inflation. People are on edge about tariffs and economic policy.
Apple News Today
What new election results tell us about how attitudes are shifting
It seems like sort of day to day, we really don't entirely know what's going on. And we also know that people are nervous about their jobs.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
Businesses, above all, they really like certainty. You want to know that if you're going to make an investment, that's going to pay off for you in the next five years. And we are not in a moment where businesses can really guarantee that.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
Yeah, I mean, the economy is good. Consumers are spending, even though everybody's mad about inflation. You also have a Republican regime that usually is good for business, right? This means lower regulations. This probably means a more favorable tax situation. But again, like I said before, if you are in a moment where you kind of don't know what will happen tomorrow, it makes it
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
Yeah, I think across corporate America, you are kind of getting this sense that there's some pretty broad anxiety. I wrote a piece in Business Insider called it kind of scaredy cat capitalism.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
Yeah. So I think, you know, you can kind of look in this a couple of different ways and see this kind of anxiety manifest itself. I think for me, kind of one of the more obvious places to look is around diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which the president has spoken out against pretty forcefully.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
And he's also asked his agencies to kind of go hunting for potential targets for lawsuits for just regular private companies that are engaging in DEI. And now he's saying you can't engage in illegal DEI.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
Well, the question here is that nobody really knows what illegal DEI means. So what we are seeing is a lot of companies have— some have come out and said, hey, we're going to really— roll back on this. We're going to kind of take a pause. You look like a target, right? Who had kind of been a target of some anti-DEI activism even before this over there. Pride Month displays.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
General Motors cut its DEI section from its annual report. Pepsi had a breakdown of its workforce demographics and a line about how it believed in culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion as a competitive advantage. That's gone. Even a Pinterest, which I guess most people don't think about Pinterest as much, but they used to have a section that was called inclusion and diversity.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
It's now called inclusion and belonging. Pinterest is scared of Donald Trump? Pinterest. I mean, Chipotle had a section that was called diversity, equity, and inclusion. Now it is culture and inclusivity.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
Yeah, so in December, ABC News, which is owned by Disney, agreed to pay $15 million to Trump's future presidential library in order to settle a defamation lawsuit.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
Meta in January cut a deal to give $22 million to the library to settle a lawsuit back from 2021 around the January 6th riots and Trump being removed from their platforms. Elon Musk's ex also has paid money to the Trump library and breached a settlement over a similar situation. Our case
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
Paramount is resisting settling a lawsuit, filed over a 60-minute segment with Kamala Harris.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
But a lot of people think it will probably settle. Because they want to do a business deal with SkyPants and Paramount would rather do the deal and probably wouldn't mind spending the money to settle. But we don't know if they're actually going to settle. And basically, I think the bigger picture here is that Trump likes to sue companies, right? He always has.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
And these are maybe the types of lawsuits that if you're a Disney, if you're a Meta, you... in normal times, definitely have the money and the wherewithal to fight these lawsuits.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
But right now, the guy suing you is in the White House, and they are making the calculation that it's just better to make this payment to reach the settlement to do this donation and kind of move on and be in a better relationship with the guy in the White House.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
publicly traded companies big corporations answer to their shareholders and their shareholders might be looking around right now and saying hey like if you play ball with this administration this is going to be better for us overall right you think of an apple that recently made a big announcements about investments in the united states and jobs in the united states apple's also facing a scenario where it may be facing the u.s putting tariffs on goods from china and so
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
You know, there's a world where it's like, OK, I'm nice to Donald Trump today. Say, hey, buddy, like we're making all these investments. And when those tariffs do come down, maybe you get an exception or maybe you can at least get him on the phone to talk. And so I do think there is some level of this is. for better or for worse, kind of smart business.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
But also, like I said before, a lot of these companies don't want to be a target. And it's not just of the president. And it's not just of a lawsuit. You think about these social media campaigns. I think a lot about Bud Light back in 2023.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
Huge blow up over a teeny tiny marketing campaign that they did with a transgender influencer. And that really hurt their business and it hurt their reputation.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
Yeah. You think about kind of, let's say, back in 2017 or Trump's first term. Right. And there were companies didn't play as much footsie with Trump as they are right now. But a lot of them did join these kind of advisory councils to the president and around Charlottesville when there were racist riots in Charlottesville.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
All of these companies backed out and said, we're quitting the council, we're quitting the council under pressure.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
And that, I think, was an example of a moment where a lot of companies, it wound up turning around on them and kind of being a moment of bad publicity for being a part of these councils. That being said, they're all back now. Everybody's fine.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
Yeah, I mean, like Costco and JP Morgan have both come out and said... We are sticking with our DEI initiatives. This is how we are doing things. I do think it's important to point out, too, like just because you're not talking about it as much doesn't mean you're not doing this kind of stuff.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
What's going on internally is much more important than kind of what you're saying in a little annual report to the SEC.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
It's a dollar, right? You know, I've never been to Costco, but it's a dollar.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
My name is Emily Stewart and I'm a senior correspondent at Business Insider. And we used to work together. We did used to work together.
Today, Explained
The Gulf of America?
I mean, I think a lot of companies are in a moment of just some trepidation around the political environment, right? You have a White House that is moving very fast and breaking a lot of things, whether that be... executive orders on diversity, equity, inclusion, the president trying to move on tariffs. It's just kind of a real moment of uncertainty.