Business

➚ BUY: Brussels. The euro rose after the European Central Bank lowered interest rates and Trump’s tariffs signal-switching continued to unnerve US investors. The European STOXX 50 index is up 12% this year versus a 2% decline in the S&P 500.

➘ SELL: Berlin. Borrowing costs soared after Germany, long the model of frugality, said it would issue hundreds of billions of euros of new bonds to pay for a military buildup and infrastructure spending, its largest economic stimulus since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile, corporate giants Thyssenkrupp and DHL announced layoffs.

Trump pauses Mexico tariffs until Apr. 2… Female founders hit by DEI backlash… 7-Eleven’s stiff-arm spin-off… David Cameron and Jeb Bush have a PE firm… The man making literal chainsaws for Musk and Milei…

I’ll be interviewing BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, and Land O’Lakes CEO Beth Ford next week in Washington at BlackRock’s 2025 Retirement Summit, focused on bipartisan solutions to help people live better, longer. You can request an invitation here. And you can send me question suggestions by replying to this email.

Semafor is keeping tabs on the business community’s MAGA shift. The news is coming fast, and we’ll bring you updates in this newsletter.

Squeaky wheel: Ford CEO Jim Farley’s complaints last month about the “cost and chaos” of Trump’s economic plans risked political retaliation. Instead, the auto industry got what it wanted: a call with the president and a temporary reprieve from tariffs. The White House said cars and parts imported from Mexico and Canada will be exempt for a month from 25% tariffs that went into effect this week. General Motors assembles a third of its North American products across the two countries, and Ford assembles 17%, according to Morningstar.

Ad hominem attack: Democratic Senators have asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Musk is using his White House ties to bully corporate advertisers into returning to X, The Wall Street Journal reports. The billionaire “risks running afoul of criminal ethics laws,” the senators wrote in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi that is unlikely to spark much of a response. Ad agency execs have been encouraging companies to advertise on the platform to head off political pain, though some, like Amazon and Apple, appear to have returned enthusiastically. Companies have generally backtracked from “purpose”-driven ads toward more buy-our-stuff spots, Instacart’s chief marketing officer told Semafor’s Mixed Signals podcast last month.

It’s proxy season, when publicly traded companies throw their doors open to their shareholders. A big question in corporate boardrooms is how much power investor advisory firms ISS and Glass Lewis have. These companies make recommendations on how stockholders should vote on corporate matters, from board candidates to executive pay to the social issues that are increasingly crowding companies’ annual ballots — should it do a racial equity audit? Commit to net zero? Scrub DEI policies?

The influence of these firms is also of interest in Washington, which is on the hunt for hidden progressive hands. Congress has tried for years to regulate proxy firms, an effort that may get new life under the Trump administration. Conservative groups are urging a federal appeals court to reinstate a Securities and Exchange Commission rule that put more oversight on proxy firms.

So we wanted to know: How much do ISS and Glass Lewis matter?

A lot. Data collected by FTI Consulting on 80 contested board elections between 2019 and 2024 show that dissidents’ chances go up dramatically when they get the backing of both advisors. Glass Lewis and ISS recommended 31 times for dissidents, who went on to win at least one board seat 28 of those times.

Their support doesn’t necessarily mean victory. Nelson Peltz got partial support from both ISS and Glass Lewis in his fight at Disney last year but was still trounced at the polls. The biggest shareholders — Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street — don’t rely on ISS recommendations. In-house “stewardship” teams do their own research, and it’s rare that all three vote against management.

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The US trade deficit hit a record high in January as companies stockpiled supplies ahead of Trump’s tariffs.

Imports grew 10% while exports only rose 1.2%, leaving a $131 billion gap. A stronger dollar, which makes foreign goods cheap for Americans and US goods expensive for foreigners, also tipped the balance. The spike is driven by Trump’s tariffs and supplies more ammunition for them: He has often pointed to the deficit as a sign of other countries’ unfair restrictions on US goods.

Anthropic is calling on the White House to tighten chip export controls and oversee national security-related model testing as the AI race between the US and China heats up, Semafor’s Rachyl Jones reports. The startup is among the first tech companies to publicly respond to the Trump administration’s request for input on an action plan to make the US as the global AI leader.