Trump’s stumbles fail to shake CEOs’ confidence
Top CEOs are largely maintaining their investment and hiring plans and remain confident in President Trump’s tax and regulatory agenda despite the investigation into his ties with Russia and snags in Congress.
But a derailment of the president’s proposals would douse their optimism and curtail those plans, according to the Business Roundtable’s second-quarter survey.
CEOs of the nation’s largest companies modestly stepped up their capital spending plans while reining in their hiring agendas a bit. Still, an overall index of their outlook for sales, investment and employment edged up to the highest level in three years.
“We remain confident that Congress and the administration will coalesce around a plan for meaningful tax reform,” Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase and chairman of the Roundtable, said in a conference call with reporters.
The top executives also “remain very positive about the di- rection of the economy,” said Joshua Bolten, CEO of the Roundtable.
Forty-three percent of those surveyed plan to increase capital spending over the next six months, down from 46% in the first quarter. But just 6% plan to reduce investment, down from 13%. That shift pushes up the capital spending index modestly.
Meanwhile, 36% say they’ll increase employment, down from 41%. Just 16% plan to cut staffing, down from 18% early in the year.
And 77% of the CEOs expect sales to rise the next six months while just 3% expect a decrease. Early in the year, 78% anticipated a sales increase and 4% projected a drop.
Overall, the business Roundtable’s index edged up to 93.9 in the second quarter from 93.3 the first three months of the year. The indexes long-term average is 80.
The CEOs’ confidence soared early in the year as Trump took office, but his plan for corporate and individual tax cuts has been called into question amid deepening controversy about his ties to Russia’s alleged interference in the U.S. presidential campaign.