The Key Issues for Business in a Likely Trump-Biden Rematch

After beating Nikki Haley in New Hampshire on Tuesday, Donald Trump reaffirmed his position as the leading candidate to win the Republican nomination. That has business leaders facing the possibility of another Trump presidency, and their investors trying to figure out what it could mean for their bottom lines.

The questions are, perhaps not surprisingly, coming from seemingly every corner of the economy.

During Blackstone’s quarterly earnings call Thursday, an analyst wanted to know if uncertainty over who would win a likely Biden-Trump matchup could freeze deal flow. (“I’d say transaction activity is going to be more tied to the Fed’s activities,” said Jonathan Gray, the company’s president and chief operating officer.)

Elsewhere, on a call with the financial services company Bread, an analyst wondered out loud whether a second Trump administration might overturn a proposed rule on credit card late fees. (“Hope is not a strategy,” the company’s CEO, Ralph Andretta, replied.) And Jeff Arnold, the CEO of the digital health company Sharecare, responded to a question at a conference about whether the election could threaten the Affordable Care Act. (“At the end of the day, do you think he’s going to be more interested in attacking the ACA or something else?” he said of a potential Trump presidency. “ I think it’s probably going to be something else.”)

The November election is still many months away, and executives are certainly not eager to talk about it. “Most business leaders are trying to stay away from politics, particularly in this presidential election year, as much as possible,” said Lori Esposito Murray, the president of the Committee for Economic Development at the Conference Board.

But here are some of the key issues that are at the top of their minds.

On some topics, neither Trump nor President Joe Biden has the answer that businesses want. In a survey of about 1,200 C-suite executives by the Conference Board, the executives said their biggest risk was the rising national debt. While Haley has made reducing government spending part of her campaign, neither Trump nor Biden has made it a priority. “I don’t think there’s a candidate that is particularly encouraging on that issue,” Murray said.

On corporate taxes, a second Trump administration would most likely have less effect than the first, which signed into law a cut to the corporate tax rate, to 21% from 35%, said Andy Laperriere, the head of U.S. policy at Piper Sandler. “I think it’s going to be a big enough challenge just to extend the individual tax cuts that are in place today that expire at the end of 2025,” he said.

Trump has vowed to shake up trade — but how? Biden has kept many of the Trump administration’s tariffs in place. He has restricted the sale of some technology to China, and he is considering new protectionist measures to help U.S. companies compete with Beijing. Trump has proposed much further-reaching trade policies, like putting a 10% tariff on all imports.

“There’ll be a lot of uncertainty about how this is going to work out,” Laperriere said. “Do we get this 10% tariff across the board? Does he really have authority to do that? Does he try to do that? Does he just withdraw from the World Trade Organization?” He added, “I do think that what investors should bet on is that Trump is serious about all this. “

Climate incentives may be under threat. It would take congressional action to make wholesale changes to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which set aside $370 billion in spending and tax credits for renewable energy investments. Jeff Navin, who was a deputy chief of staff at the Department of Energy during the Obama administration and co-founded the government affairs firm Boundary Stone Partners, said a Republican administration (even one that previously rolled back more than 100 climate rules, as Trump’s did) was unlikely to spend the political capital required to do that. “I don’t see people campaigning on it,” he said.

Another factor that may make repealing the IRA a low priority: Most of its renewable energy investments are flowing to red states.

Even so, federal agencies, which are directed by the White House, could interfere with the law’s implementation, for example by holding back loans or changing the eligibility requirements for grants. “They’re going to go kind of provision by provision and attack things,” Navin said of a potential Republican administration. Some companies that benefit from the IRA face more risk than others. “The politics around clean energy power production deployment are very different than the politics around solar manufacturing, which are very different than the politics around electric vehicles,” Navin said.

Uncertainty is on the ballot. In the Conference Board survey, geopolitical conflict ranked high in the list of U.S. executives’ top risks. War in the Middle East came in third, the war in Ukraine spilling over into a broader NATO conflict came in fifth, and a takeover of Taiwan by mainland China came in sixth. “Both Biden and Trump pose a lot of risks to the markets that historically we just haven’t seen,” said Laperriere. He added, “I think with Trump, risks are higher in terms of trade and geopolitical instability.”

Closer to home, Trump faces several lawsuits and 91 felony charges. He has continued to make baseless claims that elections have been rigged, which poses another kind of risk to businesses. “Democracy is so critical to a free-market economy,” Murray said. “They really are enmeshed as one.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .