Name: CEOs paying attention to Trump, Rubenstein says
Uploaded: 2026-01-07T16:56:55.928Z
Duration: 4 min 50 s
Description: President Donald Trump has the attention of corporate America and CEOs, says David Rubenstein. Trump says he will be meeting with insurance company and oil industry leaders soon.

President Donald Trump has the attention of corporate America and CEOs, says David Rubenstein. Trump says he will be meeting with insurance company and oil industry leaders soon.

David Rubenstein highlights that corporate America is paying close attention to President Trump, as his administration has shown a willingness to make major decisions affecting corporations, including direct involvement in mergers and regulatory matters. CEOs are generally responsive to Trump’s initiatives, recognizing his unique influence compared to previous presidents.

Rubenstein also notes that while the idea of a U.S. sovereign wealth fund is not a major topic among executives, the country’s ability to print dollars as the world’s reserve currency has functioned similarly. He emphasizes that geopolitical events, such as conflicts in Ukraine or tensions in Asia, are now a primary concern for CEOs, with most companies employing geopolitical advisors to navigate these unpredictable risks.

CEOs paying attention to Trump, Rubenstein says

Lots of things have taken place already in 26. You're a man with fingers in a lot of pies. Can you talk to us about how the stage is set for corporate America in 26? Well, corporate America has recognized that President Trump likes to make major decisions that can affect corporate America. So I think the CEOs of corporate America, when invited to the White House or to do something with the President, are likely to respond favorably to what he wants to do. Now, obviously, some may not politically agree with him, but generally, they recognize that he can block a corporate deal, he can do things in terms of regulations that other presidents wouldn't do. So I think he's obviously got the attention of corporate America. So when they sit down and have a conversation, they being the oil executives with the United States and the President of the United States, does that have to factor into their decision as to whether to deploy capital in a place like Venezuela? Well, I think they recognize that the President is going to do certain things that are gonna help the oil industry, I suspect, and he has said that publicly. So I think they recognize that when he says he's gonna do something that's gonna affect them, he's likely to do it. And so many of them are fairly responsive to him. They recognize that he's different than most presidents of the United States who don't usually get that deeply involved in corporate mergers and acquisitions, but this president is different. We've also talked about the idea of a sovereign investment fund or something like that, and you've seen equity investments on the part of the U.S. government in a number of different companies. Based on your conversations with chief executives, is this something that's welcomed? Is this something that's even solicited? It's not a major subject of conversation. Remember, we have a budget that is so gigantic that it's not gonna be affected, and corporate America's not gonna be affected by a sovereign wealth fund all that much because it's not gonna be that big. Right now, we have an annual deficit of about $2 trillion, overall corporate, overall indebtedness about 38 trillion. And we're not gonna have a sovereign wealth fund that's gonna be big enough to impact that. And it'll take a while for the results of investments by a sovereign wealth fund to have any real impact on the federal deficit, in my view. But I think there should be a sovereign wealth fund. We've had one for years. It's called the printing press. Basically, by printing dollars, because we're the only reserve currency, we've had a sovereign wealth fund, and it's enabled us to do things we wouldn't otherwise be able to do because we're printing $2 trillion every year of money that we're spending that we don't really have. So we've had one, it's just not in the same form as the President's now talking about. You have these wonderful conversations with leaders in markets and companies, and the latest, Ray Dalio, has been pretty vocal about how the era of Americana is coming to an end in some way or another, and how there is this trajectory. As the head of a company, as someone who talks with corporate executives, do you get the sense that they feel that when they talk internationally with their peers? Well, remember, for such a long time, since World War II ended, we've been the only reserve currency in the world, and we pretty much dominated the global economy. We have about, what, 5% of the world's population, and we're about 18% of the world's GDP. So we're disproportionate in our influence, and I think it's very difficult for people to step back and say, uh-oh, all of a sudden the world's gonna change. It happens more gradually. But people recognize that we're not gonna be the only reserve currency forever, and they recognize we can't keep running up these deficits forever, and so I think corporate America is probably expecting some changes to occur, but I think a lot of people are waiting to see what happens in the midterm elections, what's gonna happen this year. The president himself has said that he's very upset if the Democrats were to win control of the House, because he said yesterday that they might try to impeach him. So a lot of people are gonna look at the midterms and see what happens there. But right now, I would say the economy in the United States is in reasonable shape, leaving aside the deficit issue. Unemployment numbers are tolerable. Inflation is tolerable. If there are gonna be big problems, we don't know exactly what they're gonna be. Geopolitical events are probably more likely to impact the economy than any things that we're gonna do ourselves. So what could happen with the Russia-Ukraine war, what could happen in Iran, what could happen in China-Taiwan are more likely to affect the economy and the markets than anything we're gonna be able to do by ourselves. How much is geopolitics weighing on corporate America right now? How much is this the conversation in boardrooms? There's no CEO that doesn't have a geopolitical advisor these days, because everybody recognizes that geopolitical events can affect them dramatically. For example, if you're in the oil business, look what's happened just recently. If you are in the agriculture business, Ukraine has gone through a major change and they were a major exporter of wheat. So I think everybody has a geopolitical advisor and everybody's sensitive to it, but in the end, you can't anticipate certain geopolitical events. When you tend to anticipate things that are gonna happen, they usually don't happen. And when you don't anticipate them, that's when they happen. So it's very difficult to think your geopolitical advisor is gonna make you much richer or smarter, because they really don't know that much more than you know yourself.

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