WSJ What’s News
Trump’s Economic Messaging Spooks CEOs. Why Are They Keeping Quiet?
Wed, 12 Mar 2025
P.M. Edition for Mar. 12. President Trump’s stop-and-start trade policy is prompting executives to call officials for clarity. WSJ White House economic policy reporter Brian Schwartz discusses what they’re hoping to gain. Plus, CEOs critical of the Trump administration aren’t saying so publicly. We hear from Journal management reporter Chip Cutter about what it would take to get them to speak out. And Canada and the European Union impose retaliatory tariffs after U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum go into effect. WSJ reporter Kim Mackrael breaks down how the EU tariffs would work, and how they could affect the U.S. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the key economic concerns discussed in this episode?
U.S. inflation rose less than expected in February, but tariffs are still looming. Plus, Canada and the EU impose retaliatory tariffs, and some may hit the U.S. where it hurts. And Trump's economic messaging is spooking CEOs. But in public, they're keeping their opinions to themselves.
CEOs are saying the stock market would have to fall by a lot for them to really say anything. And there was still a group of CEOs in those respondents who said they didn't feel like there was any sort of room for them to speak out right now.
It's Wednesday, March 12th. I'm Alex Osola for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. New data from the Labor Department show that consumer prices were up 2.8 percent in February versus a year earlier. That's lower than the January gain of 3 percent and slightly lower than economists' expectations.
For more on these numbers, I'm joined by WSJ economics reporter Justin Lehart. OK, Justin, we've been hearing so much about the economic impact of Trump's tariffs. Are they affecting these numbers?
Not yet. Most of the tariffs didn't go into effect until this month. We had some new ones out today, steel and aluminum. So obviously those aren't affecting anything. So it's sort of a wait and see when it comes to that.
Core inflation, which excludes food and energy prices, rose 3.1 percent in February. That's the lowest year-over-year reading since 2021. What does this mean for the Fed?
Core inflation is sort of a measure of the trend of inflation. So the good news is that did cool. The Fed actually follows a different measure of inflation from the Commerce Department. And there was sort of some bad news in the number today. A lot of the decline that year-over-year core reading was due to a drop in the airline prices. So the expectations on the Fed –
They're not going to be cutting until June, investors don't think. And the danger is they may not even cut then. It really depends on how the data progresses in the months ahead, both for inflation and then for the economy at large. It's comforting to see sort of that headline. But once you dig in, it's not as happy as you might have thought.
That was economics reporter Justin Layhart. Thank you, Justin.
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Chapter 2: Why are CEOs hesitant to speak out against Trump's policies?
Because our expectations have indeed been swept aside in the last few years, let alone the last few weeks. Established certainties about the international order have been upended. Some alliances have become strained, while others have drawn closer. We have seen political decisions that would have been just unthinkable
a few years ago, a few months ago, a few weeks ago, just to see them overturned the following day. So the level of uncertainty we are facing is exceptionally high.
Coming up, why worried executives keep calling the White House. That's after the break. President Trump's stop-and-start trade policy has rattled some of his allies. It's also triggered a flood of calls from business executives pleading with advisers for clarity on the president's strategy. White House economic policy reporter Brian Schwartz joins me now with more. So, Brian, walk me through this.
An executive is worried and calls a friend in the White House, like Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. What happens next?
Well, once word gets out the door that these tariffs are going to be coming down on these countries, Canada, Mexico, China, European Union, you name it, people like Susie Wiles start to receive a flood of phone calls from CEOs and major business leaders. with concerns about these policies.
And the idea is that they're not exactly telling or, listen, we think that they should be completely removed, right? But they are trying to really be very clear that if these tariffs are put in place, they will, in fact, hurt their industries. They will, in fact, potentially be a detriment to consumers because prices in a lot of these CEOs' minds will go up.
Why are they not appealing directly to take off the tariffs?
There has been historically really not great results from doing that with the president. And the CEOs learned from this in the first time around. You think back to the 2016 through 2020 years of Trump, when he first started putting on tariffs as a really core part of his economic policy. They tried these campaigns and they really didn't do anything.
So now it appears that because that failed the first time, they're trying to do this this way in their meetings.
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