View / Markets are defying gravity — for now

Tankers are still on the ocean. Warehouse inventories are dwindling but not empty yet. Markets defying geopolitical dangers and economic warning signs to regain their year-to-date losses. Lazard CEO Peter Orszag told me yesterday at Semafor World Economy that this is “a Road Runner moment,” where we’re already over the cliff, but are suspended for a few cartoonish seconds before gravity kicks in. Citadel CEO Ken Griffin warned of a full-on recession if the Strait of Hormuz stays closed for more than six months.

The administration is pushing back, unevenly. In an interview with Semafor Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent acknowledged inflationary pressures from the Iran war — and said the Fed was right to “wait and see” on rates, an implicit concession that cutting in the face of price spikes might be good politics but dicey economics. The administration is confronting both the consequences of its own actions on tariffs and Iran and, as Ben wrote this week, the unshakeable fact of modern politics that “virtually all of the time, most Americans are mad at you about the economy and there’s little you can do about it.”

But in the cartoons, Wile E. Coyote only falls when he looks down and notices the void. The Trump administration is not looking down: Bessent conceded the economy would have “some making up to do” after first-quarter growth is expected to fall to 1.3%, but mostly held to the administration’s forecast of 4% growth for the year. The market is not looking down: The S&P 500 is back in the green for the year after Monday’s jump.

And CEOs are mostly not looking down, and continuing to press ahead, for now. Neuberger Berman CEO George H. Walker said “there are fat left-tail risks” but that the economy is “in a good place,” and Hilton CEO Chris Nassetta said his company is continuing to sign deals — for new hotels in the Gulf, no less. “You’ve got to contend with the fact that the investment cycle is longer than the political cycle,” Fifth Third Bank CEO Tim Spence said. The question is whether consumers look down.