Semafor World Economy Summit: Views from policymakers and CEOs on consumer confidence

On cigarettes vs. other nicotine products: Olzcak said Philip Morris International is “leaving the cigarette industry and going in a different direction.” PMI still depends on cigarette sales, but also offers smokeless nicotine products like Zyn, which has surged in popularity in recent years. With more than a billion smokers worldwide, the market for nicotine alternatives is growing, Olzcak added: “We don’t have a problem in a sense that the demand is disappearing.”

On how Tapestry approaches younger shoppers: Tapestry, which owns Coach, Kate Spade, and Stuart Weitzman, wants to win over younger shoppers who, according to Crevoiserat, increasingly seek out products made with more sustainable materials. But they also “want to be part of the creative conversation,” she said. That’s led Tapestry to launch a “beta community” of more than 100 consumers who actively give input into the design of Coach bags, for example. Tapestry has also introduced a Coach sub-brand made entirely of reused materials. “It’s made to be unmade,” Crevoiserat said.

On the role of artificial intelligence: Crevoiserat called AI “an incredible opportunity,” allowing the company to better predict demand and become more efficient. “If you’re better predicting demand, you can make your supply chain much more efficient… You reduce the need for discounting for things that you overbuy or underbuy. You’re positioning your inventory in the right place around the world. Those are all things that drive efficiency in our business.”

On how business leaders are approaching Donald Trump: Trump’s influence is perhaps most apparent in what business leaders will and won’t say in public, Rubenstein said. “People are reluctant in the business community to say critical things about the administration, so they tend not to do it in public,” he said. But, he added, privately they have been telling Trump “that there’s uncertainty and the tariff policy is not going to produce the kind of results that the president originally thought they would produce.”

On Trump’s reelection: Trump’s reelection marks the biggest comeback in history this side of Napoleon, Rubenstein said. “Napoleon was put into Elba, and nobody thought he’d ever come back, and he came back and ruled France again,” he said. “That Trump came back from Elba — Mar-a-Lago — and has run the country again and won the election, is astounding.”

On China and tariffs: Rubenstein suggested that a trade war with China may represent Trump’s “biggest challenge,” in large part because Rubenstein doesn’t think Chinese President Xi Jinping is easy to intimidate. “It’s hard to beat up on the president of the biggest country in the world, with the second-biggest economy in the world, and who’s going to be president for a long time after President Trump is president,” Rubenstein said, describing Xi as a “tough, tough man.”

On renewable energy: The focus on renewable energy is misplaced and puts the country’s economy and security at risk, Burgum argued. “If people are concerned about the environment, they would want to have every ounce of liquid fuels and every electron produced in America, not someplace else, because we do it cleaner, safer, smarter, healthier than anywhere in the world,” he said. Excessive regulation, he argued, “tried to drive out affordable reliable baseload energy from our country in favor of heavily tax-subsidized intermittent sources. That is the same mistake that Germany made. It’s a mistake that Britain’s made.” The secretary suggested that continuing down that path would be “catastrophic.”

On leveraging undersea resources: Burgum argued that the US has all the critical minerals and energy resources it needs, but it faces the challenge of accessing those resources. The department’s priority, he said, is, “as we say, to map, baby, map, because we’ve got undersea critical mineral assets. We’ve got undersea oil and gas.” Off the Southern US coast, he said, “there was just a report that came out that in one little survey area we may now have 23% more oil and gas than we thought.” Those assets, which he argued could equate to trillions of dollars in value, could bolster the US economy and help tackle the debt.

On getting rid of state income tax: Reeves said Mississippi plans to phase out its income tax for a simple reason: “Our belief is that government ought to take less so that individuals who earn the money can keep more.” He said the plan is to move from a 4% individual income tax to a 3% tax by 2030, then continue phasing down from there, “as long as revenues are greater than expected expenditures in the next fiscal year.” Reeves said the plan has “created a ton of excitement” and is encouraging “more people to get into the workforce.”

On Medicaid: Reeves said any plans to cut Medicaid should protect the program’s “traditional” population, people whom he described as “individuals that ought to be on Medicaid.” Instead, cuts should be targeted toward the “expansion” population of “able-bodied adults” allowed in by the Affordable Care Act. “My view is, if there’s going to be reductions in spending at the federal level, the best and smartest way in which to do that is to take that 90% match on the Affordable Care Act and reduce it back towards what the Feds pay on the traditional Medicaid population,” the governor said.

On making trade among African countries easier: Agboola said efforts to streamline trade on the continent represented a “very big opportunity” around enabling money to move more freely — and more efficiently — between countries. “You can move money directly from Nigeria to Ghana, not Nigeria to New York, New York to Ghana. And that helps to make the trade faster, that creates a lot less volatility in currency,” he said. It also generates fewer fees, he added.

On using AI to build a more global workforce: Caplan said his fintech company is investing more resources in artificial intelligence to be more efficient and compete on a global scale. “It’s an amazing thing to watch a team of six or eight people in Vietnam or South Korea, or in Morocco or Egypt, build a service business that… operates like a business that would have been 100 people a decade ago,” he said. Caplan added that AI, combined with global workforces and cross-border trade, “will be super positive for the global economy once we get past… this instant of macro disruption.”

On developing obesity drugs: Bradway said Amgen is developing an obesity drug that the company believes is differentiated from its rivals in a significant way: “Our competitors have advanced therapies that require weekly injections,” he said. “We’ve said that we will have a medicine that we think is monthly or less frequent, and that’s what we’re studying in clinical trials.” Amgen’s competitors Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have had massive success with their semaglutide medications Wegovy and Mounjaro, respectively, both of which require weekly injections.

On how to treat obesity: US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has made healthy eating a pillar of his agenda, arguing that three healthy meals a day could solve America’s obesity problem. But Bradway pushed back on the theory that diet is the answer: “Obesity exists at the intersection of genetics and our environment,” he said. “Many of us have genetics that program us to consume more calories than we need.” Bradway said he thinks new, targeted drug treatments like the one Amgen is working on can be part of the solution. “If [Kennedy] has a magic wand that he can wave over this challenge that we face in society, he should wave it,” he said.