'It was a stark contrast': Teams Trump & Biden pitch CEOs

The battle for big business is on today teams. Trump and Biden made dueling campaign pitches to the Business Roundtable, an influential group of CEOs. Donald Trump promised corporate tax cuts if he wins, while the Biden White House touted the economic recovery from the pandemic and urged CEOs not to take political stability for granted. Ron and Sana is here. He's a CNBC senior analyst and the CEO of IFIAI. He has been a business reporter for 40 years. He celebrated his anniversary just two days ago. And CNN political finance reporter Brian Schwartz is here. Brian, you've been reporting on this meeting all day. Give us the Trump side first. Would you learn at Trump side? It was basically a pitch to about 80 CEOs today. And the idea was that, you know, Trump says excited, if he's elected, there's going to be a 20% corporate tax rate dropped from the 21% federal rate. He's talking about slashing the income tax. He's talking about broad strokes. Not many details on this part, which is really key cutting back on business regulations. He did not go into too many details. And that's important in terms of what he did not say, did not get into what that meant. And that's really, but that was really the key from him. And it was a stark contrast kind of what you just mentioned before with what Jeff Zions, who's the chief of staff to President Biden said to the crowd there as well. We'll get to him in a second. And let's be clear, even when Trump's did the big, did the big tax cut when he was president and knocked it down to 21%, CEOs weren't even looking for that. They only said, let's get 28. And and, of course, the sweet sound of deregulation, it's what they all want to hear. But Ron, my question to you is, we heard a lot of pushback from folks saying these CEOs shouldn't attend the meeting. Donald Trump is a convicted felon, but come on, he might be president. He might be president. No one in that room is publicly endorsing him, and the BRT hosts the nominees. They have for decades. Yeah, I, I think it's unfair to criticize a group of businessmen who know potentially whether bread might be buttered. I don't want to be that crude about it. But look, if he is going to be president of the United States, they're going to have to interact with him for another four years. So it is in their best interest to at least attend whether or not they agree with it, whether or not they want that one percentage point reduction in the tax rate, which by the way they could get with some additional deduction somewhere else. It's not that hard to do. But they do want deregulation, 2 years. They are expiring in the next two years, but if they are extended, they will cost another $4.9 trillion after the Trump administration added $7 trillion to the national debt before year period. Republicans used to care about the deficit. They used to. Let's talk about Jeff Science, the president's chief of staff, who was there, who has actually has very deep relationships with many of the CEO's in that room. He comes from the business community because the president could not be there because he's at the G7. We know that as the days pass, President Trump will former President Trump will likely try to spin this. I was the guy they met with. They're they're backing me. That wasn't the case. What does Zeinz tell them? Well, you know someone who was familiar with what he said. It was much more forward-looking. It was talking about the idea that if there's another four years of Joe Biden, you're not going to see what Trump is also teed up with teed up for if he's president. No mass deportations, right? You're not going to have as this kind of strict trade war that that Trump is saying will happen if he becomes president again, much more forward, much more kind of a positive remarks to these CEOs in contrast with Trump, which is well, basically, you know, well, the four years of me you're going to have again thus was all those years ago. So again, it it really is fascinating to see how how these two people presented themselves to these CEOs. And, you know, if you're Jeff Zients, you have to be thinking, you know, you don't necessarily, of course, or Trump, you don't really need their their money, but it's not bad. Have some of these CEO's in your corner going forward and you'd like to have their money and the massive influence that they have. I know corporate America is not a monolith, right? I know the corporate tax cut is great. The idea of deregulation is delicious. But why don't we hear from more business leaders talking about how strong the economy has been, how good it's been under President Biden? I mean, look at how the stock market's performing forgiveness. Well, it's not just the stock market. Some of the economy is fine. Inflation is coming down. Household net worth has exceeded $160 trillion. That is an all time high. For all the concerns about deregulation, we produce more oil than any other country on earth, 13 and a half million barrels per day more natural gas than any other country on earth. And you have, you know, banks that are soundly regulated that are doing quite well in this environment. And so I don't I don't know what the argument for further deregulation from this point would be, given they just think Lena Kahn is a thorn in their side and they don't want to hear at the Federal Trade Commission. Yeah, talking about preventing mergers from taking place. It's such a small part of the economy. M&A if, if you will put it in business terms, I think, look, you could talk about deregulating the oil industry and and letting methane flare into the atmosphere, which is what Donald Trump did and Joe Biden rolled back in a President Obama had in place before that. You can talk about all those different things. Most of them were not that good for the environment and weren't that great for the economy. Bingo. People always say like, oh, we want, we want a strong economy or you're going to care about the environment. They are intertwined. Trump might give them a tax cut, but he pitched another idea today that was bananas. OK, CNBC is reporting that he floated the idea of eliminating eliminating US income tax and replacing it with tariffs on imports. Can we just start with talking how this would even work? So first of all, we'd launch a global trade war because you get retaliatory tariffs from every other country. Peter Navarro from from inside jail or Bob Lighthizer could have been somebody like that who was former trade representative in prior administrations. But look, we import $3.8 trillion worth of goods. We take in 2 1/2 trillion dollars in revenue from individual income taxes, so do the math. You'd have to basically almost put 100% tariffs on all imported goods coming to the United States, which would exacerbate inflation, launch a global trade war, possibly spark a recession or worse, be a rough spot to be in. It's it's not gonna happen. I mean, let's just say what it is. I mean, maybe it could happen, but the likelihood of this actually being enacted, even if he does become president seems so far fetched. But it's also just a dumb idea. Well, that's what I mean. It gets to a point where, listen, you can. Well, there's that. Yeah. But you can debate them. But that's kind of where I'm going with this. You can debate the merits of it really another day. But the point of this is any rational economic advisor, whoever he surrounds himself with, again, I don't think they're going to say, hey, let's roll with this plan. I just can't. I just, I don't care where they're coming from. There's a two pronged problem #1 the president has unilateral authority for all intents and purposes to oppose tariffs. He does not have the authority to to alter the income tax because doesn't have constitutional authority or power of the purse.