Despite last week’s Arctic blast, a buoyancy filled the air as if spring had arrived after a four-year freeze. U.S. businesses have emerged from a great depression. They are excited to invest and see better days ahead.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, business leaders hailed a revival of animal spirits. “There is a tremendous amount of optimism,” said New York Stock Exchange President Lynn Martin. The pipeline of initial public offerings that froze under Joe Biden’s regulatory onslaught has thawed.
Liquefied natural gas exporter Venture Global, whose projects were stuck in Mr. Biden’s permit freeze, went public on Friday. “The Trump administration has made very clear they support growing LNG exports,” CEO Mike Sabel said.
More broadly, President Trump has made clear that he supports American businesses and economic growth, a stark contrast to the Biden administration. “I’ve been here as many times before, and I’m really struck by the level of optimism about the U.S.,” Katie Koch, CEO of asset manager TCW Group, said in a Davos interview. “It is around deregulation.”
Automaker Stellantis last week announced plans to reopen an Illinois plant it closed in February 2023 and increase investment at three other U.S. factories. It will also revive its popular Jeep Cherokee SUV and Dodge Charger, which it scrapped while ramping up electric vehicles to meet government mandates. Hurrah! Automakers will be free to focus on making cars that consumers want rather than those progressives want them to buy.
Small businesses are especially celebrating the prospect of deregulation. According to the National Federation of Small Business Optimism survey, the net percent of owners expecting the economy to improve rose in December to its highest level since the fourth quarter of 1983. The share who believe it is a good time to expand their business was the highest since February 2020. “Expectations for economic growth, lower inflation, and positive business conditions have increased in anticipation of pro-business policies and legislation in the new year,” said NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg.
Bank executives are chirping on earnings calls about a surge in business investment. “There’s no question that there’s a significant amount of increase of optimism in the overall environment,” JPMorgan Chase finance chief Jeremy Barnum said recently. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon echoed: “There has been a meaningful shift in CEO confidence, particularly following the results of the U.S. election” and “increased appetite to deal making supported by an improving regulatory backdrop.”
At last, Lina Khan’s reign of terror is over. Businesses are optimistic that they will face fewer regulatory hurdles to deals and projects. No more “you can’t build that.” Instead, “how can we help you build that?”
Drugmakers are hopeful the new administration will ease the Biden Medicare price controls, stop threats to confiscate their patents, and green-light acquisition of biotech startups, which could accelerate new medications. The Trump administration has “a very deep belief, across the board, that to make America great again, they need business to be great. They need the private sector to be great. They need entrepreneurship to be great,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla observed this month.
He added that the “extreme left,” which dominated the Biden administration, “not only hate business, they particularly hate us. . . . That, to me, is more dangerous than people that think ‘we are going to create a business environment that would [have] incentives to create innovation, that would [have] incentives to beat China in the race.’ ”
Doubtless CEOs are trying to curry favor with Mr. Trump to help their business interests, but an open line of communication between the White House and business would be a positive development. Executives often kvetched to me that the Biden administration gave them the cold shoulder and didn’t understand how business and markets worked.
That’s because most Biden officials spent their careers in politics and government, which bred disdain for people in business. By contrast, Trump nominees have run successful businesses—Scott Bessent (Treasury), Doug Burgum (interior), Chris Wright (energy) Linda McMahon (education) and Elon Musk (government efficiency).
Despite a mostly sunny forecast for businesses, a chance of storms remains. Some Trump nominees share the political left’s hostility toward U.S. businesses, especially Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (health and human services) and Lori Chavez DeRemer (labor). Tariffs could instigate a trade war that boomerangs on U.S. businesses and slows investment.
Failure to deliver on his promises of renewing American prosperity and lifting wages could set Democrats up to take control of Washington in 2028. They might then jam through an even more left-wing agenda, including a restructuring of the Supreme Court that would remove a crucial check on their overreaching policies. Pray that Mr. Trump doesn’t steal his own sunshine.