Wednesday, August 13, 2025

How CEOs deal with Trump: Praise, face time, remorse, and gifts made of gold all go a long way, experience shows

In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady on how CEOs are learning to deal with Trump.
The big story: Trump’s imminent meeting with Putin.
The markets: New all-time highs.
Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. Over the past several months, I’ve noticed anecdotally that more global CEOs seem eager to meet with me in Washington or New York. The leader of one multinational admitted that my newfound popularity with his team was by design. It’s important to come to the U.S., he told me, and to be more visible while doing it. Some leaders come to announce new investments or new factories to build products in the U.S.; others prefer to meet with peers and policymakers through Fortune gatherings while staying below the radar for coverage. What unites them is a desire to thrive in the tricky tariff era of Donald Trump.

The president has made it clear that his priority is to rack up domestic wins, but it’s not always clear who’s playing for Team America, in his view. Intel’s new CEO Lip-Bu Tan experienced that for himself when he was vilified by Trump in a Truth Social post last Thursday as “highly CONFLICTED” because of past investments in Chinese companies. The president urged him to resign. On Monday, the president actually met Tan and did a prompt turnabout, praising the Malaysian-born American citizen as an impressive leader with “an amazing story.”

What changed? Face time, for one thing. Determined to clear up what he described in a company letter as “a lot of misinformation,” Tan made a quick trip to the White House to talk about his 40-plus years of living, investing and innovating in the U.S. Judging from Trump’s comments and Intel’s statement, Tan also talked about his company’s current and future investments in making America great (again?).

Many CEOs have come to appreciate the need to develop a good rapport with the president and the power of public gestures of support. Apple CEO Tim Cook gave Trump a customized glass plaque mounted on a 24-karat gold stand last week, when he announced his company’s $100 billion investment in domestic production. OpenAI’s Sam Altman expressed remorse at falling into the “non-playable character” trap by criticizing Trump, announcing earlier this year that he’d developed a more positive view of POTUS after seeing him in action. And of course, Elon Musk’s relationship with Trump has run hot and cold in public, with subsequent impacts on his businesses.

Will the president’s praise for Intel’s Tan help the struggling chipmaker regain the ground it lost to rivals like Nvidia and AMD in recent years? It can’t hurt. It certainly beats incurring his wrath.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

Top news

Trump is going into his meeting with Putin without the help of experts: FT

“It’s safe to say that Trump does not have a single policymaking person who knows Russia and Ukraine advising him,” Eric Rubin, who was U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria in Trump’s first term, told the FT. More than 1,300 state department staff were laid off last month in Trump’s drive to reduce the federal workforce, and some of them were Russia and Ukraine analysts.

White House lowers expectations for Putin meeting

“This is a listening exercise for the president. Look, only one party that’s involved in this war is going to be present,” White House Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said.

Russia continues to make incremental gains in Eastern Ukraine

While the diplomats talk, Moscow is altering the facts on the ground in Russia’s favor.

Russian hackers breach U.S. federal court system

Hackers backed by Russia have found ways to view sealed court documents on PACER, the U.S. federal court system, according to the NYT. That potentially gives Moscow access to litigation that affects national security.

The reviews of Trump’s BLS pick are brutal

Conservative economists don’t respect E.J. Antoni, the president’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, according to multiple reports. “Even the people who may be somewhat sympathetic to his economic policy views don’t think he’s qualified,” said Stan Veuger of the American Enterprise Institute. Antoni's “work at Heritage has frequently included elementary errors or nonsensical choices,” Veuger told Axios. “There are a lot of competent conservative economists that could do this job,” said Kyle Pomerleau of the American Enterprise Institute, “E.J. is not one of them.” “I’ve been on several programs with him at this point and have been impressed by two things: his inability to understand basic economics and the speed with which he’s gone MAGA,” said Dave Hebert of the American Institute for Economic Research. Antoni did not respond to the attacks.

Trump v Goldman Sachs

The president attacked the head of the venerable investment bank in a Truth Social post yesterday, arguing that “David Solomon and Goldman Sachs refuse to give credit where credit is due. They made a bad prediction a long time ago on both the Market repercussion and the Tariffs themselves, and they were wrong, just like they are wrong about so much else. I think that David should go out and get himself a new Economist or, maybe, he ought to just focus on being a DJ, and not bother running a major Financial Institution.” Goldman did not respond.

Cava and Chipotle invest in automation

Foodservice automation company Hyphen announced a $25 million Series B investment on Tuesday, led by Chipotle and Cava. This investment signals the onset of robots in fast-casual chains. Cava CFO Tricia Tolivar told Fortune that Hyphen’s technology will support human workers rather than replace them.

Perplexity makes a bid for Chrome

AI company Perplexity made an unsolicited $34.5 billion bid for Google Chrome. The offer comes as a federal judge considers what to do with Google following an antitrust ruling last year that found the company maintained an illegal monopoly in online search.

Ford’s newest EV move

Analysts told Fortune that Ford’s $5 billion investment in EVs, announced on Monday, could bankrupt the company if it fails. The automaker’s previous failed EV projects have already cost it billions.

Financial markets are plagued by deepfakes

Tianyi Zhang, a general manager of risk management and cybersecurity at Singapore-based Ant International, told Fortune, “In some markets, we have found that more than 70% of new enrolments may be deepfake attempts ... We’ve identified more than 150 types of deepfake attacks.”