With markets whipsawing and Trump trading jabs with just about every European leader, it can be easy to forget we’ve been here many times before. If the turmoil from Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs taught us anything, it’s that CEOs and other business leaders eventually just get down to business.
Exactly one year into the Trump administration, a lot of the confusion is “actually settled in that people can predict a business plan and then go on,” Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson at Semafor Haus in Davos.
The leader of the second-largest US bank is one of the most bullish prognosticators on the US economy, which he predicts will continue to chug along this year thanks, in part, to the tax refunds coming Americans’ way. On the corporate side, it took a few months for companies to work through tariff shocks, but the end of the year saw deal activity “unleashed,” he said. “As we look at next year, our investment banking teams would look around the world and say, the pipelines are full.”
As for what Trump is going to do next? “People always ask, ‘What does he mean?’ Just listen. He’ll say it,” Moynihan said.