‘Like driving through the fog’: CEOs discuss how to handle the 90-day pause in the tariff war

“We have looked at certain product categories and said, ‘Do we need to bring so much in right now?’ But these are temporary decisions,” said Lobo. “It’s not like I can just move products and create a new factory.” He added that while he’s “maintaining” the supply chain he has in effect today, “if we are routing product from Europe to America to then send to Latin America, we’re going to try to send it directly from Europe to Latin America,” he added. “Hopefully at the end of this 90-day pause, things will get better.” 

On the other end of the scale, there’s Brian Baker, who’s CEO of Sentry Equipment, a $70 million-a-year manufacturer of sampling and process equipment based in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, who recently lost a $300,000 order from a Chinese customer because of the tariff war. “We rushed the order but they controlled the logistics and couldn’t find a place to get it out in time,” said Baker, noting that some U.S. Customers have canceled orders because of the uncertainty. “The Administration keeps changing the rules,” he said. “This gives everybody a chance to catch their breath but, 90 days from now, we’ll still have uncertainty.”

Suzanne Clark, CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, says most of her members are optimistic that good times lie ahead. “Business was ready for a pro-business president,” she said.  “It just gets cloudy because of the tariff uncertainty, like driving through the fog. You have to pull over until you know where you’re going.”

More news below.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at [email protected]

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The markets

• The S&P 500 rose 0.72% yesterday, meaning it is now back in the green by 0.084% for the year to date. S&P futures were down 1% this morning, premarket. Coinbase rose 24% on news that it would be included in the S&P 500, which receives a vast amount of default institutional and retail buying. It was a strong day for other tech stocks, too. Nvidia was up 5.6% and Palantir was up 8%. Asia was mixed today, with the main indexes in China and India on the rise but Japan and South Korea both declined. The Stoxx Europe 600 was down 0.4% in early trading.

From the analysts 

• UBS on Trump’s climbdown: “While US tariff retreats have come earlier than expected, there are three lingering issues. Taxes are still high—one of the largest US consumer tax increases in modern times. Uncertainty about trade and other policies has hampered investment. The ‘de minimis’ tax exemption has not been reinstated for China, meaning consumers will face higher prices (which will probably not be captured in official inflation figures). These factors mean the US will have a slowdown this year, not a soft landing,” per Paul Donovan.
• Oxford Economics on GDP: “The temporary reduction in US-China tariff rates means tariffs between the two economies could settle at a significantly lower level than we assumed in our baseline forecasts. While this reduces the odds of the US and the world economies falling into recession, it's too early to make wholesale and large upward revisions to our growth outlook,” per Ben May.
• Goldman Sachs on China exports: “With a more dovish-than-expected result to last weekend's US-China trade negotiations, and relatively limited signs of a broader surge in protectionism beyond the US, we are increasing our forecasts for China's export growth for the second time in a week. We now expect real exports to be roughly flat in 2025, vs. -5% previously. We also expect a larger current account surplus of 2.3% of GDP in 2025, vs 1.7% previously,” per Andrew Tilton et al.
• BNP Paribas on the tariff war: “[The] announcement may be positive for sentiment but does not change our view that China’s exposure to international trade, especially with the US, is significantly less than often assumed, especially when compared to the rest of Asia. As we have noted before (Asia Strategy: Time for China AND India, not China OR India, 11 Mar), Chinese equities have the lowest foreign revenue exposure across Asia’s big five equity markets (even lower than in India). As such, in the same way we urged investors to view China as relatively insulated from the earlier deteriorating external frictions, we now caution on reading too much into this announcement,” per William Bratton.

Around the watercooler

Apple probes next frontier with new brain implant standard. But what it really needs is to sell more iPhones by Verne Kopytoff

Nvidia jumps more than 5% on chip deal with Saudi Arabia as S&P 500 erases 2025 losses by Alicia Adamczyk

Saudi Arabia wants to build its post-oil future with massive AI data centers — Trump and U.S. Tech have big incentives to oblige by Sharon Goldman

Norway Wealth Fund is freezing hiring to focus on AI use, despite research showing AI projects seldom offer a return on investment by Sasha Rogelberg

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says Gen Z and millennials are using ChatGPT like a ‘life adviser’—but college students might be one step ahead by Sydney Lake

CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams and Jim Edwards.