What a Second Term for Trump Would Mean for Business,in His Own Words

This article is from: Bloomberg Businessweek (North America), Thursday, August 1, 2024

It’s late June, and Donald Trump is plotting his next presidency in the gilded

offseason isolation of the Mar-a-Lago Club. The adoring club members may have

decamped to cooler climates, but Trump is still in a good mood.

Polls show a very tight race between him and President Joe Biden, but his fundraising

is through the roof. It’s also now clear his 34 felony convictions haven’t upended the

race. A big shock will come two days later, at the first presidential debate, and it will

be Biden who’s left reeling. Then a bigger one will arrive on July 13, when Trump

narrowly dodges an assassin’s bullet.

The Mar-a-Lago sitting room features a soaring red balloon tower dotted with giant

gold ones reading “47,” shorthand for the next president—a gift from a local

admirer who affixed a card gushing over “the best commander in chief America has

ever known.” At Trump’s insistence, a staffer fetches the hot new fashion item he

enjoys showing guests: a red MAGA-style cap emblazoned with “Trump Was Right

About Everything.”

Outside Mar-a-Lago’s gates, the rest of the world isn’t so sure. There’s worry about

what another Trump presidency could portend. Wall Street firms from Goldman

Sachs to Morgan Stanley to Barclays have begun warning clients to expect higher

inflation as Trump’s odds of recapturing the White House and imposing protectionist

trade policies have risen. Giants of the American economy such as Apple, Nvidia and

Qualcomm are grappling with how further confrontation with China could affect

them and the chips everyone relies on. Democracies across Europe and Asia worry

about Trump’s isolationist impulses, his shaky commitment to Western alliances and

his relationships with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir

Putin. And while polls universally show that American voters favor Trump’s

stewardship of the economy over Biden’s, it’s unclear to many exactly what they’ll

get if they opt for another round with him.

He waves away such concerns. “Trumponomics,” he says, equates to “low interest

rates and taxes.” It’s “tremendous incentive to get things done and to bring business

back to our country.” Trump would drill more and regulate less. He’d shut the

Southern border. He’d squeeze enemies and allies alike for better trade terms. He’d

unleash the crypto industry and rein in reckless Big Tech companies. In short, he’d

make the economy great again.

That’s the sales pitch, anyway. The plain truth is that no one really knows what to

expect. So Bloomberg Businessweek went to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, to

press Trump for answers.

In a wide-ranging interview on business and the global economy, he says that, if he

wins, he’ll allow Jerome Powell to serve out his term as chair of the Federal Reserve,

which runs through May 2026. Trump wants to bring the corporate tax rate to as low

as 15%, and he no longer plans to ban TikTok. He’d consider Jamie Dimon, chairman

and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., to serve as secretary of the

Department of the Treasury.

Trump is cool to the idea of protecting Taiwan from Chinese aggression and to US

efforts to punish Putin for invading Ukraine. “I don’t love sanctions,” he says. He

keeps circling back to William McKinley, who he says raised enough revenue through

tariffs during his turn-of-the-20th-century presidency to avoid instituting a federal

income tax yet never got the appropriate credit.

And Trump (who has a proclivity to lie) insists he won’t pardon himself if convicted

(of a federal crime in the three federal cases pending against him: “I wouldn’t

consider it.” He may not have to—on July 15, a Trump-appointed federal judge

dismissed charges that he mishandled classified documents. (The special counsel

swiftly announced he would appeal the decision.)

The broad strokes of Trumponomics might not be different from what they were

during his first term. What’s new is the speed and efficiency with which he intends to

enact them. He believes he understands the levers of power much more deeply now,

including the importance of selecting the right people for the right jobs. “We had

great people, but I had some people that I would not have chosen for a second time,”

he says. “Now, I know everybody. Now, I am truly experienced.”

Trump views his economic message as his best route to trouncing the Democrats in

November, with Republicans devoting the opening night of their presidential

convention to the theme of “wealth.” He’s betting that his unorthodox agenda of tax

cuts, more oil, less regulation, higher tariffs and fewer foreign financial

commitments will appeal to enough swing state voters to hand him the election. It’s

also a gamble that voters will overlook the negative traits that characterized his first

term in the White House: the personnel fights, the 180-degree policy shifts, the 6

a.m. social media pronouncements. And of course there’s the matter of the attempted

insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

Already, polling shows signs that Black and Hispanic men are shifting to the

Republican Party as they tire of historically high prices for food, housing and gas. As

many as 20% of Black men now back Trump, though some pundits think those

numbers are overstated. Either way, Biden is struggling to sell key voters on his

economic record, which includes a very low unemployment rate and rising wages.

He’s also facing down panic over his age. Trump could win in November, and many

Democratic leaders are increasingly concerned he’ll deliver Republicans control of

the House and Senate along with the White House.

In that case, he’d have unprecedented leverage to shape the US economy, the climate

for global businesses and trade with allies. His first term demonstrated that he

prefers to work oneon-one, which would give the CEOs and world leaders who have

the best relationships with him an advantage while leaving his enemies falling short,

and perhaps even fearful of what he’ll do. If one thing stands out from

Businessweek’s interview with Trump, it’s that he’s fully aware of this power—and

he has every intention of using it.

On the US Economy

Trump, in a dark suit and tie, holds court in the cool afternoon darkness of Mar-a-

Lago’s chintz-and-gold sitting room, keen as always to play the magnanimous host.

He takes it upon himself to order a round of Cokes and Diet Cokes for his visitors,

then gets down to explaining how he’d govern if reelected in November.

“Now, I know everybody. Now, I am truly experienced”

(Business leaders prize stability and certainty. They didn’t get much of either in

Trump’s first presidency. This time around, his campaign is more professionally run,

but he hasn’t produced a detailed economic policy agenda to reassure them. The

vacuum has generated confusion among those who are planning for a second Trump

term.

In late April, a few of Trump’s informal policy advisers leaked to the Wall Street

Journal an explosive draft proposal to severely curb the independence of the Federal

Reserve. It was broadly inferred that Trump had endorsed the idea, which didn’t

seem like a stretch given his prior attacks on Powell. In fact, the Trump campaign

insisted he’d endorsed neither the proposal nor the leak, and his top campaign brass

were furious about it. But the episode was a consequence of Trump’s still-unformed

policy, which has left wonks from such think tanks as the Heritage Foundation

battling to fill in the details and jockey for influence. Other conservative policy

entrepreneurs have been pushing proposals to devalue the dollar or institute a flat

tax.

At Mar-a-Lago, Trump makes it clear he’s fed up with the unauthorized freelancing.

“There’s a lot of false information,” he complains. He’s eager to set the record

straight on several topics.

First, there’s Powell. He told Fox News in February that he wouldn’t reappoint the

Fed chair; now he states unequivocally that he’ll let Powell finish his term, which

would last well into a second Trump administration.

“I would let him serve it out,” Trump says, “especially if I thought he was doing the

right thing.”

Even so, Trump has thoughts on interest-rate policy, at least in the near term. The

Fed, he warns, should abstain from cutting rates before the November election and

giving the economy, and Biden, a boost. Wall Street fully expects two interest-rate

cuts before the end of the year, including one, crucially, before the election. “It’s

something that they know they shouldn’t be doing,” he says.

Next on his mind: inflation. Trump has been endlessly critical of Biden’s stewardship

of the economy. But he sees, in the anger generated by high prices and interest rates,

an opportunity to woo voters who typically don’t support Republicans, such as Black

and Hispanic men. Trump says he’ll bring down prices by opening up the US to more

oil and gas drilling. “We have more liquid gold than anybody,” he says.

Third is immigration. He believes harsh restrictions are key to boosting domestic

wages and employment. He characterizes immigration restrictions as “the biggest

[factor] of all” in how he’d reshape the economy, with particular benefits for the

minorities he’s eager to win over. “The Black people are going to be decimated by the

millions of people that are coming into the country,” he says. “They’re already

feeling it. Their wages have gone way down. Their jobs are being taken by the

migrants coming in illegally into the country.” (According to the US Bureau of Labor

(Statistics, the majority of employment gains since 2018 have been for naturalized US

citizens and legal residents—not migrants.)

Trump’s language turns apocalyptic. “The Black population in this country is going

to die because of what’s happened, what’s going to happen to their jobs—their jobs,

their housing, everything,” he continues. “I want to stop that.”

Drilling for oil aside, Trump hasn’t detailed a plan for lowering prices. His personal

conviction that the robust tariffs he’s proposing will produce a US windfall isn’t

shared by mainstream economists, who warn that they’ll spur further inflation and

amount to a tax increase for US households. A report from the Peterson Institute for

International Economics estimates that his tariff regime would impose an additional

annual cost of $1,700 for the average middle-income family. And Oxford Economics,

a nonpartisan research group, estimates that Trump’s combination of tariffs,

immigration restrictions and extended tax cuts could also increase inflation and slow

economic growth. The through line of these policies, says Bernard Yaros, lead US

economist at Oxford Economics, is “an increase in inflation expectations.”

Then there’s the budget deficit. Trump’s desire to renew his landmark 2017 Tax Cuts

and Jobs Act—estimated price tag: $4.6 trillion—and to further reduce corporate

taxes doesn’t pencil out to a balanced budget in any way that he or his advisers have

yet explained. Coupled with the upward pressure on interest rates economists expect

from his protectionist policies, Trump’s plans could exacerbate the country’s

growing debt burden.

In the end, however, Trump’s other positions could be enough to sway business

leaders to his side. Harold Hamm, a Trump donor and the executive chairman of oil

giant Continental Resources Inc., writes in an email: “There seems to be outright

hostility to free markets in the Biden Administration. As a result, capital is parked on

the sidelines. Why? Because of regulatory uncertainty and in some cases downright

regulatory hostility toward certain sectors.” Hamm cites the pause Biden put on

liquefied natural gas projects in January as one example. “When Trump is reelected,”

he predicts, “that capital that was parked on the sidelines will be unleashed

once again.”

On US Business Leaders

Corporate America is still adjusting to the likelihood of Trump’s return. Privately,

many CEOs aren’t thrilled. “They can’t stand him,” says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale

School of Management professor who runs a leadership institute for CEOs and speaks

regularly with many top executives. Nevertheless, they recognize that a shotgun

remarriage could be in the offing.

On June 13, Trump met privately in Washington with

dozens of the country’s most prominent chief executives, a group that included

JPMorgan’s Dimon, Tim Cook of Apple and Brian Moynihan of Bank of America. The

occasion was a “fireside chat” put on by the Business Roundtable, a nonpartisan

(lobbying group. The gathering brought Trump face-to-face with a number of

corporate leaders with whom he’s long had a vexed relationship. Many were leery of

him from the outset of his presidency; some spoke out publicly after the Jan. 6

attacks on the US Capitol by his supporters. Cook, Dimon and Moynihan all

condemned the violence, with Cook calling it “a sad and shameful chapter in our

nation’s history.” Yet just weeks after a Manhattan jury convicted Trump of 34

felonies, everyone dutifully assembled to commune with him—an unmistakable sign

of the shifting power dynamic.

Trump is highly attuned to his standing with America’s corporate chieftains, and he

vacillates between wanting their approval and hoping to bend them to his will. At

Mar-a-Lago, when he’s presented with the July issue of Businessweek, featuring

LVMH Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy SE CEO Bernard Arnault on the cover, he refers

to Arnault, one of the world’s richest men, as “an incredible guy, a friend of mine I

think,” and asks whether this relationship had come up. (It hadn’t.)

Trump bristles when it’s pointed out to him that no Fortune 100 CEO has publicly

contributed to his campaign. (Since then, Elon Musk has pledged financial support.)

And he’s still smarting from CNBC’s coverage of the Business Roundtable meeting,

which featured quotes from an anonymous CEO who slammed Trump as “remarkably

meandering” and “all over the map.”

On the contrary, the meeting was “a lovefest,” Trump insists. “I will tell you when

I’m not loved, because I feel that better than anybody,” he says. “CNBC called and

apologized to me, because they found that we had a great meeting.” (A CNBC

spokesperson writes: “We did not apologize. We spoke to the former president about

keeping the lines of communication open.”)

Trump says he reminded the assembled executives that in 2017 he slashed the

corporate tax rate “from 39% to 21%” (actually from 35% to 21%) and vowed to push

it lower still, to 20%. “They loved it, they were happy,” he recalls. He adds that he

wants to cut the rate even lower than that: “I would like to get it down to 15.”

But Trump is also aware that whatever “love” the CEOs might have expressed was

ultimately driven by self-interest: They can read election polls like everyone else.

“Whoever’s leading gets all the support they want,” he says. “I could have the

personality of a shrimp, and everybody would come.”

This wasn’t always the case. With Trump disgraced and seemingly finished in politics

after his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, the Republican business

community was part of a coalition eager to anoint a new standard-bearer for the

party. It began lavishing money and attention on a rising generation of businessfriendly

politicians, led by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina

Governor Nikki Haley and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who has also served as

co-CEO of the investment firm Carlyle Group Inc. But in 2024, DeSantis’ presidential

campaign collapsed, Haley’s petered out, and Youngkin’s never took place. Business

(leaders were shocked and crestfallen as Trump cruised to the nomination.

“Everyone read this wrong,” says Liam Donovan, a Republican business lobbyist.

“There was a core assumption that Trump was finished. But DeSantis was never

going to be the guy, nor was Haley. People saw an opportunity to turn the page, tried

to make it happen, and it didn’t happen. The base wanted Trump.”

Trump famously carries grudges: At a conservative political conference last year, he

pledged to deliver “retribution.” But asked at Mar-a-Lago whether he’ll go after

CEOs he dislikes, he demurs. “I don’t have [plans for] retribution against anyone,” he

says.

He does rekindle long-running feuds with Meta Platforms Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg

and Amazon.com Inc. founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos. Bezos, whose

newspaper kept a running tally of false claims Trump made while president (it

reached 30,573), draws particular ire. Trump says he has “done a great disservice to

himself” and made “a lot of enemies” with his ownership of the Post.

For all his corporate critics and enemies, Trump doesn’t lack support in the

boardroom or on Wall Street. “The Trump economy was very good,” says Scott

Bessent, CEO of Key Square Capital Management LLC and a top Trump donor. “It

worked for people at the top and at the bottom. The market was good. Real wages

increased. It was a very good time.”

Other prominent CEOs who don’t identify as Trump partisans have also been praising

his presidency. “Be honest,” Dimon said at the World Economic Forum in Davos,

Switzerland, in January. “He was kind of right about NATO, kind of right about

immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked. He was right

about some of China. … He wasn’t wrong about some of these critical issues, and

that’s why they’re voting for him.”

Trump relishes the compliment. He’s changed his view of the man he attacked on

Truth Social last year as “Highly overrated Globalist Jamie Dimon” and now says he

could envision Dimon, who’s thought to be contemplating a political career, as his

secretary of the Treasury. “He is somebody that I would consider,” Trump says. (A

spokesperson for Dimon declined to comment.)

For all his periodic wrath toward business leaders, Trump appears eager to have them

serve in a second administration. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, a former

tech CEO, made Trump’s short list for vice president and is likely to land in his

cabinet. Bessent is also a candidate for Treasury secretary. Trump is even embracing

CEOs who, not long ago, were considered possible challengers. “Glenn Youngkin is

prime time,” he says in a post-interview aside. “I’d love to have him in my

administration.” And Trump’s ultimate pick as running mate, JD Vance, was a

venture capitalist for years.

Still, many chief executives feel trepidation about a Trump renaissance. Ken

Chenault, the former chairman and CEO of American Express Co., says Trump’s

(threats have had a chilling effect on corporate leaders. “People are staying on the

sidelines,” he says, “because they greatly fear that there will be retribution.”

Chenault raises another example of that happening during Trump’s presidency: his

opposition to the $85 billion AT&T-Time Warner merger and concerns he was trying

to force a sale of CNN over displeasure with its coverage of his administration.

Current CEOs, Chenault says, are terrified of winding up in Trump’s crosshairs: “The

fear is real.”

On Foreign Policy

As president, Trump shattered the long-standing Republican orthodoxy of favoring

free trade. He says he’ll go further if reelected. At Mar-a-Lago he offers an

impassioned defense of US tariffs—he’s been studying McKinley, dubbing him “the

Tariff King”—to make it clear he intends to ratchet up levies not just on China but on

the European Union, too.

“McKinley made this country rich,” Trump says. “He was the most underrated

president.” In Trump’s reading of history, McKinley’s successors squandered his

legacy on costly government programs such as the New Deal (“the whole thing with

the parks and the dams”) and unjustly poisoned an important tool for economic

statecraft. “I can’t believe how many people are negative on tariffs that are actually

smart,” Trump says. “Man, is it good for negotiation. I’ve had guys, I’ve had

countries that were potentially extremely hostile coming to me and saying, ‘Sir,

please stop with the tariff stuff.’”

To the consternation of many business and consumer groups, Biden maintained

Trump’s tariffs on China, even increasing ones on steel, aluminum, semiconductors,

electric vehicles, batteries and other goods. “This is going to add price inflation

across the board, all in the name of ‘tough guy’ election-year politics,” Yaël

Ossowski, deputy director of the Consumer Choice Center, a nonpartisan advocacy

group, said in May.

In Trumpworld, however, Biden’s actions are seen as validation that Trump was right

—and his Democratic critics were wrong—about the threat China poses to the US

economy and security. Trump is eager to prescribe more of the same medicine,

including to European allies. In addition to targeting China for new tariffs of

anywhere from 60% to 100%, he says he’d impose a 10% across-the-board tariff on

imports from other countries, citing a familiar litany of complaints about foreign

countries not buying enough US goods.

“The ‘European Union’ sounds so lovely,” Trump says. “We love Scotland and

Germany. We love all these places. But once you get past that, they treat us violently.”

He mentions reluctance in Europe to import US automobiles and agricultural

products as key drivers of the more than $200 billion trade deficit, a statistic he

considers a critical measure of economic fairness.

As with so much else, Trump views trade in personal terms. He speaks of it as though

(it were a private negotiation between himself and recalcitrant foreign leaders who

understand full well that they’re exploiting the US and therefore must be curbed.

He’s animated as he recounts a conversation with Angela Merkel, then Germany’s

chancellor. “Angela, how many Fords or how many Chevrolets are there in the middle

of Munich right now?” he remembers asking.

He mimics Merkel’s German accent in reply: “Oh, I do not believe many.”

“How about none?” he says he shot back.

Satisfied that he’s illustrated his point, Trump turns back to the Businessweek

reporters. “They treat us very badly,” he says. “But I was changing all of that and

that culture.” Return him to the White House, he suggests, and he’ll finish the job.

Trump’s transactional view of foreign policy and his desire

to “win” every deal could have ramifications around the globe—and even rupture US

alliances. Asked about America’s commitment to defending Taiwan from China,

which views the Asian democracy as a breakaway province, Trump makes it clear

that, despite recent bipartisan support for Taiwan, he’s at best lukewarm about

standing up to Chinese aggression. Part of his skepticism is grounded in economic

resentment. “Taiwan took our chip business from us,” he says. “I mean, how stupid

are we? They took all of our chip business. They’re immensely wealthy.” What he

wants is for Taiwan to pay the US for protection. “I don’t think we’re any different

from an insurance policy. Why? Why are we doing this?” he asks.

Another factor driving his skepticism is what he regards as the practical difficulty of

defending a small island on the other side of the globe. “Taiwan is 9,500 miles

away,” he says. “It’s 68 miles away from China.” Abandoning the commitment to

Taiwan would represent a dramatic shift in US foreign policy— as significant as

halting support for Ukraine. But Trump sounds ready to radically alter the terms of

these relationships.

His views about Saudi Arabia, by contrast, are more amicable. He says he’s spoken to

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud within the past six months, though he

declines to elaborate on the nature and frequency of their talks. Asked if he worries

that increasing US oil and gas production would upset the Saudis, who wish to

maintain their primacy in energy, Trump replies that he doesn’t think so, pointing

once more to a personal relationship. “He likes me, I like him,” he says of the crown

prince. “They’re always going to need protection … they’re not naturally protected.”

He adds: “I’ll always protect them.”

Trump blames Biden and former President Barack Obama for eroding US relations

with Saudi Arabia, saying they pushed the country toward a key adversary. “They’re

not with us anymore,” he says. “They’re with China. But they don’t want to be with

China. They want to be with us.”

He has reasons beyond American foreign policy for favoring closer ties with the

Saudis. Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake for him. On July 1 the Trump

(Organization and DAR Global announced plans to build a Trump Tower and luxury

hotel in Jeddah. An investment fund founded by his son-in-law Jared Kushner has

also taken a $2 billion investment from the Saudi government’s wealth fund.

Western allies, now familiar with Trump’s personal and mercurial approach to

foreign policy, are taking extensive measures to prepare for his possible return to the

White House. These include increasing defense spending, transferring control of

military aid for Ukraine to NATO, racing to improve relationships with Trump’s

advisers and affiliated think tanks, and reaching out to Republican governors and

thought leaders to divine his intentions. At a NATO summit in Washington, Ukrainian

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged allies to act quickly to help his country repel

Russia’s invasion instead of waiting for the election results in November to decide

what to do.

Dan Caldwell, a policy adviser at the right-leaning think tank Defense Priorities, says

that “it’s actually in Europe’s interest to ‘America-proof’ their defense and to start

operating on the assumption that the United States has other, more urgent national

security priorities, and domestic ones as well.”

On Silicon Valley

During his presidency and afterward, Trump frequently took aim at the US tech

industry. For much of that time, Twitter (now X) was his platform of choice for

venting displeasure with companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter itself,

preElon Musk. In 2020 he signed an executive order reducing legal protections for

social media platforms under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of

1996. And his government launched antitrust probes into Amazon, Apple, Facebook

and Google—actions carried on and expanded under Biden.

Trump’s attacks on Big Tech have never been ironclad statements of policy or

principle, exactly. Not unlike his tariff proposals, they’ve served at least as much as

leverage plays—his staking out negotiating positions that companies and CEOs must

respond to. The central complaint he and Republicans used to make was that tech

companies were biased against conservatives—shadowbanning them, deplatforming

them and (allegedly) suppressing right-leaning sources in search results. Today,

Trump’s focus is on a more broadly appealing charge: that out-of-control tech

companies are harming children—to the point, even, of causing a nationwide

epidemic of suicides. “They have become too big, too powerful,” he argues. “They’re

having a huge negative impact on, especially, young people.”

This position may stem from Trump’s understanding of how televised drama can

shape public opinion. In February, during a Senate hearing of tech executives,

Zuckerberg was effectively bullied into apologizing to families in the audience who

said social media abuse had driven their children to suicide. It was an arresting

moment, and Trump has harnessed the charge for his campaign. “I don’t want them

destroying our youth,” he says of the social media companies. “You see what they’re

(doing— including, even, suicides.”

Moments later, however, he’s defending many of these same platforms as vital

bulwarks against Chinese technological supremacy. Trump wants to personally

dominate the US companies, but he doesn’t want foreign competitors replacing

them. “I respect them greatly,” he insists of the companies he was just bashing. “If

you go after them very violently, you can destroy them. I don’t want to destroy

them.”

At Mar-a-Lago, the one exception to his claim to not want to harm US tech

companies, and to privilege domestic ones over foreign ones, is TikTok. Discussing

his recent embrace of the Chinese-owned social media platform, where he’s already

quite popular, Trump mentions that banning it in the US would benefit a company

and a CEO he has no desire to reward. “Now [that] I’m thinking about it, I’m for

TikTok, because you need competition,” he says. “If you don’t have TikTok, you have

Facebook and Instagram—and that’s, you know, that’s Zuckerberg.” It’s an outcome

he won’t abide. He’s still stung by Facebook’s decision to bar him indefinitely in the

wake of the Jan. 6 attacks. “All of a sudden,” Trump grouses, “I went from No. 1 to

having nobody.”

His reversal on cryptocurrency has been marked by similar

“Taiwan took our chip business from us. I mean, how stupid are we?”

dynamics. Not long ago he criticized Bitcoin as a “scam” and a “disaster waiting to

happen.” Now he says it and other cryptocurrencies should be “made in the USA.” He

frames this aboutface as a practical necessity. “If we don’t do it, China is going to

figure it out, and China’s going to have it—or somebody else,” he says.

Not coincidentally, the crypto industry—spurned by the Democratic Party, brimming

with cash and eager for friends in Washington—has now found its way to Trump.

“Thanks largely to the actions of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Biden

administration has stumbled into becoming anti-crypto,” says Justin Slaughter,

policy director at the crypto-focused investment firm Paradigm. “Given that about

20% of Democrats own crypto, per polling, and its ownership skews young and

nonWhite, this was politically unwise.” Trump has moved to fill the void, declaring in

a May speech that he would “stop Joe Biden’s crusade to crush crypto.” The following

month he reaped the benefits, raising money from Bitcoin miners at a Mar-a-Lago

fundraiser. Trump’s campaign then announced it would “build a crypto army,” and it

now accepts crypto contributions.

Some in Silicon Valley have learned that the best way to get Trump to alter his

position on something is to appeal to him directly. That was certainly the case for

Tim Cook. In 2019, Apple Inc. looked set to be a victim of Trump’s trade war with

China, with billions of dollars at stake, as the president announced 25% import

tariffs. He then publicly rejected Apple’s request for an exclusion. “Apple will not be

given Tariff waiver, or relief, for Mac Pro parts that are made in China,” he wrote on

(Twitter. “Make them in the USA, no Tariffs!”

At Mar-a-Lago, Trump speaks fondly of Cook and reveals how Apple’s CEO

persuaded him to relent. He recalls Cook reaching out privately and asking, “Could I

come in and see you?” Trump appreciated the gesture of respect from the head of

what at the time was the world’s most valuable company. “That’s impressive,”

Trump says. “I said, ‘Yeah, come in.’” Trump remembers that Cook was

straightforward. “He said to me, ‘I need help, you have tariffs of 25% and 50% [on

Apple products imported from China],’” he recalls. “He said, ‘It would really hurt our

business. It would destroy our business, potentially.’” (An Apple spokesperson

declined to comment.)

Trump wasn’t looking to do that—mainly, he wanted to demonstrate that he could

bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, as he’d promised to do. In his telling, he

prevailed upon Cook to expand domestic production. “I said, ‘I’m gonna do

something for you guys,’” Trump recalls, “‘but you have to build in this country.’”

Four months later, Apple announced it was beginning construction on a campus in

Austin. The press release quoted Cook saying: “Building the Mac Pro, Apple’s most

powerful device ever, in Austin is both a point of pride and a testament to the

enduring power of American ingenuity.” Cook then gifted Trump a $5,999 Mac Pro,

one of the first made at the Texas factory.

Had Trump forced Cook’s hand? Doubtful. Apple had originally announced a year

earlier that it would invest $1 billion in a new Austin campus, and Mac Pros had been

assembled at existing Texas facilities since the Obama era. Nevertheless, the episode

registered as a positive for Trump and established Cook at the opposite end of his

personal CEO continuum from Zuckerberg. It also created a potential road map for

how tech CEOs might navigate a second Trump term.

“I found him to be a very good businessman,” he says of Cook.

On the Uncertain Future

What Trump thinks about American businesses and the people who run them

suddenly matters more than ever. So do his views on the Fed, the economy and every

important issue around the globe. The shock of Biden’s faltering debate performance

on June 27 supercharged doubts about the president’s cognitive health and plunged

the Democratic Party into an existential crisis. It also gave Trump a measurable lead

in many polls—and, along with narrowly surviving the assassination attempt, may

have amplified his already formidable sense of political inviolability.

“The debate certainly had a big impact,” he says in a July 9 follow-up call, four days

before the shooting. “A lot of the states are just starting now to come out, and it

shows a very big swing.” Asked whether Biden should drop out of the race, he says,

“That’s a decision he has to make. But I do think our country is in great danger

whether he stays in or drops out.” On Vice President Kamala Harris, considered a

likely alternative at the top of a Democratic ticket, Trump says, “I don’t think it

(would make much difference. I would define her in a very similar [way] that I define

him.” With months to go before Election Day, there’s plenty of time for the dynamics

of the race to change.

But even back at Mar-a-Lago, a couple of days before Biden’s debate stumble, Trump

seemed to be riding this heightened sense of good fortune. When the resort’s

longtime managing director dropped by during the conversation, Trump noted with

pride that the club would increase its initiation fee from $700,000 to $1 million in

October, with four new slots open—a sign, presumably, of the increased value of

proximity to potentially the next commander-in-chief.

And at the conclusion of our interview, Trump, boastful to the very end, tried to send

Businessweek off with that new MAGA hat (“Trump Was Right About Everything”).

We politely declined. That’s ultimately for the voters to decide.