What Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at the Milken event (and how his critics responded)
- In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles.
- The big story: Trump’s movie tax may have the opposite effect of the one intended.
- The markets: Western markets are down, Asian markets are up.
- Analyst notes from EY on Fed independence, JPMorgan Chase on global GDP, JPMorgan Chase on earnings, and Pantheon Macroeconomics on employment.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning from the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles, an annual gathering of policymakers and leaders focused on finance, philanthropy, and health. That intersection makes for interesting juxtapositions, where university and NGO leaders who are feeling the pain of Trump Administration policies mingle with investors seeing opportunities to profit. Elon Musk spoke about DOGE and the future of humanity at a private meeting, one attendee told me, not necessarily in that order. At my dinner last night, speakers pivoted from the power grid to power politics.
Of course, tariffs remain top of mind. While Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told an audience that trade, tax cuts, and deregulation would spur greater U.S. prosperity, how and when that will happen remains unclear. (My colleague Jeff John Roberts has a deeper analysis of Bessent’s remarks.) Bessent didn’t speak much about tariffs specifically but mentioned lowering U.S. debt to around 3% and growing manufacturing in the U.S.
In the panel that followed, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser noted that the bank’s clients could accept 10% tariffs, vs. 25%, and are waiting for certainty. BCG Global Chair Rich Lesser is advising his clients to focus on pricing strategies and productivity: “Leveraging AI, building adaptiveness, these are essentially no-regret moves.”
Many of the investors I’ve talked to here are confident that this is a good time to make money. When it comes to opportunistic credit investments, Victor Khosla of Strategic Value Partners said, “we were really busy last year and we’ve gotten a lot busier.”
John Koudounis, CEO of Calamos Investments, launched a capital-protected Bitcoin ETF this year to capitalize on renewed interest in cryptocurrencies amid Trump’s support. “We’d like to bring more people into the asset class,” he said. “If you look at the average mom and pop, they’re scared.”
Who can blame them? As AON CEO Greg Case put it: “We’re not talking nearly enough about the connectivity of risk”—examining the impact of trends in trade, technology, weather, and the workforce. “We continue to see the value of working together, public and private. When it works, it’s amazing.”
More news below.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com