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Two of Wall Street’s most prominent executives have said there are upsides to Donald Trump’s policies, even as the US president presses ahead with protectionist measures including import tariffs that have fuelled fears of a slowdown in the world’s largest economy.
Stephen Schwarzman, chief executive of Blackstone, told reporters in India on Wednesday that the tariffs would, “at the end of the day”, lead to a significant increase in manufacturing activity in the US.
“Given the size of the US, that tends to be a good thing for the world,” said Schwarzman, a prominent Trump donor.
“If we’re growing faster we can consume more things. So, you know, that’s one scenario . . . there are other scenarios, because it’s just way too early to play this out.”
Meanwhile David Solomon, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, said the business community “understands what the president is trying to do with tariffs”, though he pleaded for more “certainty” on the Trump administration’s policy agenda.
Trump’s 25 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminium imports came into effect on Wednesday, triggering countermeasures from the EU, which the bloc said would affect up to €26bn of American goods. Canada has also announced 25 per cent retaliatory tariffs on about C$30bn of US-made goods.
The “business community is always going to want lower tariffs, everywhere in the world”, said Solomon.
But he welcomed Trump’s wider agenda and his openness to dealing with executives, telling Fox News that he liked the way “the president is engaged with the business community”. “That’s a different experience than what we’ve had over the course of the last four years,” Solomon said.
“CEOs are excited about some of the tailwinds, like the move to lower regulation,” he said, adding that red tape had been a “significant headwind to growth and investment”.
Solomon said he expected the number of initial public offerings, which had been “muted” over the past couple of years, to increase in 2025.
The Goldman chief was part of a group of business leaders who met Trump at an event held on Tuesday evening by the Business Roundtable, an association of 200 CEOs of large American companies.
Many of the attendees have seen the market capitalisation of their companies slump in recent days amid fears of recession and a widening trade war.
Trump told the gathering that tariffs would boost domestic jobs and industrial production in the US. “The biggest win is if [businesses] move into our country and produce jobs,” he said. “That’s a bigger win than the tariffs themselves.”
As well as resuscitating US manufacturing, Trump’s aggressive moves on trade are designed to reduce the country’s trade deficit, and force Mexico and Canada to stem the flow of irregular migrants and fentanyl across America’s southern and northern borders.
But the deepening frictions between the US and some of its closest allies are causing jitters throughout the business community.
In addition to retaliatory tariffs by the EU and Canada, there is concern about the possibility that Trump will follow through on his threat to impose so-called reciprocal tariffs on all trading partners from April 2, to punish them for taxes, levies, regulations and subsidies that Washington considers unfair.
Additional reporting by Antoine Gara and Oliver Barnes in New York
