- 2025 Spring Seminar
Video Replay | Geopolitics: Business Implications on Major Elections, Security and World Order
March 13, 2025
Geopolitical events had a profound impact on businesses worldwide and shaped the global landscape for years to come. This panel discussion examined the critical business implications of major election outcomes, governmental shifts, security concerns and the evolving world order. Our panelists explored how companies could assess risks, adapt strategies and build resilient business operations to navigate the complexities of the volatile global landscape.
Panelists:
AI-generated, some errors may appear
My name is Reena Nainen. the founder and CEO of Control Productions, and we are going to take a look at the geo-political risks and the current landscape.
with this new administration and looking across the globe. I'm really excited to introduce our panelists. I'll start with you Martha and everyone could just do little intro.
be great to kick it off. Thank you. Thank you. I am Marta Delgado. I'm coming from Mexico, a former under Secretary for Multilateral Affairs on human rights, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico.
Fred Kemp, President and CEO of the Atlantic Council. done this since 2007. I know I look much younger than I'm going to give away right now.
But 25 years before that, was at the Wall Street Journal that whole time. So I'm also a recovering journalist.
Kristin Silverberg, I'm the President and COO of Business Roundtable, which is an association of about 240 CEOs of large U.S.
companies. I see some of our number of companies in the room, which is great. Well, there's a lot to talk about when it comes to business and communications and what feels like this new world order.
I'd love to kick it off first and kind of go around the horn here, Martha, starting with you to just talk about when you look from your vantage point, what are really the major political risk that you're most concerned about right now?
Well, Latin America is facing a cocktail of political risks right now because we are studying governments in Mexico, in Argentina, and also in Colombia.
And other governments are going to be elected next year. So, for Mexico, the main risks represent the policy continuity that we have with the new president of Mexico, but in very different circumstances with the Trump administration, the geopolitical landscape has changed a lot.
And right now, the escalation of the US protectionism and the impact of the supply chains of tariffs and the renegotiation of the US
as MCA is for sure the the most highest political risk that we are facing and the society that have been passed from a very poor country in the last century to a emergent economy that is at risk because we are relying of course on these amazing trade agreements that we have developed for the last 30 years.
actually I was mentioning you have a new president who was October, yes, Claudia shame bomb. So I want to get more into that a little bit later.
Fred we'll go on to you. So irrespective of who would have been elected president of the United States 2025 would have been maybe the most challenging geopolitical year of any of our lifetimes.
And so it's really the combination of risks all at the same time a perfect storm rather than an any one risk.
So war in the Middle East, you know, ceasefire, but that conflict will go on in one form or another war in Europe, which we're all watching how this unfolds with the Trump administration tensions with China and then the race for the commanding heights of technological change artificial intelligence.
This all comes together and so whoever was going to be present was going to pick up this really challenging situation.
But into this mix comes a president that also wants to shake things up and change things enormously and we'll get to more of this later.
But in my own view is that we'll either pay some rich dividends or introduce greater downside risks. Well, similar to what Fred said, you know, incredibly complicated environment.
geo-politically and geo-economically. But I think the most important events to watch will be here in Washington. You know, that's in a way that's not really surprising.
The US is always the biggest player geo-politically and geo-economically. But for most of the post-war period, the US has been in the role of trying to sustain or preserve an existing system.
And what's interesting, what's notable about this period is that the US has said, no, we want to be the change agent.
We want to be the disruptor of the current system. that's going to play out in a lot of different spaces.
But one in particular that we're watching is the effort to use tariffs to rebalance the international trading system. There was a lot of discussion when the president took office about how they would use tariffs.
Of course, President Trump has been pro-tariff for decades. He campaigned very much on this. But there was speculation about how he would use them, whether this would be sort of tactical as a way.
of using them for negotiating leverage to get other countries to make, you know, particular specific concessions, whether he'd use it to generate new revenues, and what the administration has really leaned into recently is they want to use tariffs to try to correct what they see as some fatal flaws in the global trading system, including kind of the role of a big non-market economy, China, in the way that that distorts trade, the use of some practices by market economies that are put the U.S.
in the position of perennially being a consumer of low-cost kids, but not having dominance in terms of manufacturing and production.
And so the way we're reading this is actually the tariff strategy is going to be a big part of Trump administration agenda.
This will not be like the first Trump administration where tariffs was kind of one part of what we all were watching.
We think tariffs are going to be a big part of what our companies are watching, what all of your companies are grappling with.
so that's, anyway, I'm sure we'll talk more about that. You know, great point, Kristin. I want to pick up, right, exactly where Kristin left off on Harris and sort of this new world order and restructuring.
We're talking in the back a little bit about these old schools, I should say old school, they were foundational systems, Bretton Woods, some things that we have always had that have we've taken maybe for granted.
I know you've been to Davos recently. You've been into the Middle East. Does President Trump have leverage? That's what President Trump understands better than anything else is leverage.
He has leverage of economy that's 27,% of global GDP, but 76% of global equity investment is in the United States.
Energy dominance. So you talk about the Middle East, won't name the person, but I was talking to one of the leaders in the Middle East on a trip that I made recently.
And he said, look, geopolitics is generally seen as a chess match, even three-dimensional chess, where you have grandmasters like Henry Kissinger moving pieces around carefully and maybe over many, many years you can move pieces here or there.
And this Middle East official said, what Trump has done, he's thrown the chessboard on the floor. And he's rearranging the pieces.
And this gets to what Kristen was talking about, where there's a Bretton, the pieces of our chessboard, what has never been questioned in the United States since the end of, shortly after the end of World War II and the end of World War II, has been Bretton Wood's system, which introduced low tariffs, introduced the kind of thinking that we had, Bretton Wood's institutions, trading system, cetera.
In 1943, we have now reached tariff levels of 1943. was Bretton Wood's negotiated during the World War II, brought all that down, NATO 1949.
So he's questioning, it's almost, when you talk to people inside the Trump world, which I do quite that, they say, Fred, why are you questioning the economic logic of terrorism?
you questioning, you know, the geopolitical logic of backing Putin? This is a revolution. And maybe there's going to be a recession, and maybe people are going to lose jobs, maybe federal workers who are really good federal workers are going be out of jobs.
we're executing a revolution. The endpoint of the revolution isn't so easy to figure out, but they know what they're against, and they believe this Bretton Wood system, this tariff system is unfair to the United States.
They think the NATO system has been unfair in terms of costs and burns the United States. So just to finish with this Middle Eastern leader, because he was very thoughtful on this, and I said, well, do you see more risks, or do you see more opportunities?
Well, we see both. The opportunity is he truly can deconflict major power tensions for right now. So he, because he's transactional, because he'll go in and have a talk with Ivan Reput and a talk with Xi Jinping, maybe even a talk with the Iranians, he could bring the tensions down in these really fraught geopolitical relationships.
He what we worry about is he doesn't understand the secondary consequences of tariffs, the secondary consequences of all the refugees from Gaza ending up in Egypt and Jordan, which would destabilize those two countries, the secondary consequences of giving our allies doubts about whether we can be reliable or responsible or not.
You know, Germany is now talking about, well, where am I going to get my nuclear umbrella? And in the Far East also.
So, I think this is a really really fascinating time to watch, what I'm picking up in my travels, Davos, Middle East, is in a world that was already uncertainty, and the U.S.
was sort of the glue holding things together. There's now uncertainty on the United States, but it could land in a really positive place.
But the secondary consequences, they worry that the Trump administration is not paying enough attention to. Thinking of secondary consequences, Martha, I'm thinking of Mexico, and you know, Fred was talking little bit about revolution, and Latin America knows revolution very well.
When you look at sort of who the heroines and the heroes are, and it's very hard, even for a CEO, somebody in a company, who are the people that are sort of getting out there standing for principles, sticking up, and the president of Mexico actually was one of the first people to come out and say, well, if you're going to do this, here's what we're going to do.
Tell me what you I believe are the biggest risks right now for Mexico right now. I'm not just regarding the tariffs and economic risks, but also, for example, migration.
have these high amount of people entering in Mexico, high level, skilled on working force. So there are risks, but in Latin America, we are used to manage risks every day.
So we have to take these also opportunities. And I know that, Theo, and here in America, you see these as a threat and these uncertainties are damaging the way that you make decisions here.
But believe that this value shifting is not just here and it is not going to be temporal. a lot of places in the world where these value shifts are presented and the recommendation for us is trying to learn from these and having for example the opportunity to test the stress of the organization is a very good way of reacting on these being resilient, adapt the different reactions of the company in this environment, trying also to know and to partnering with other companies that are facing the same problems.
Now it's a risky thing to voice yourself as a company so it's a very good opportunity right now also to to organize conditions to find the way of um organize the argument
and for the administration and try to appeal on the benefits of a societal change on these difficult situations. I think that also there's opportunity for encourage innovation and I recently read an fragile book and there's a barber strategy that I really think that it is good for these kind of situations that we are facing at least in Latin America.
It's combining extremely safe positions or the organization where we have a lot of risk for example for losing clients or losing financial stability or losing the ability of paying credits to have the opportunity to speculate with the new clients with new supply chain providers and also be flexible on the agreements.
And we can find opportunity also in this crisis. If we see the customer's role, because sometimes we are just looking what president or not president of authorities of regulation changes are impacting in our companies.
losing sight of the customer you're saying, having good communications and having a plan can really make a difference when you're in the middle of all this.
Yeah, Kristin, I wanna turn to I hope all of you guys have some questions for us. Kristin, wanna talk a little bit, we've talked about risks.
I wanna look at the other side of the coin here. What about opportunities? What are the potential opportunities in working with this administration and Congress at the moment?
Well, roundtable is focused on domestic economic policy. That's not disconnected from geopolitics. Actually our US economic strength is a core, maybe the core source of US geopolitical strength.
It's the thing that cements. are ties to other countries that funds are military and so on. And we think there are lots of opportunities to work with the administration, including around increasing US economic strength and power.
I'll just, you know, a couple of them that we're very focused on. One is the 2025 tax rate. A lot of you live through the 2017 tax reforms, which you'll remember combined a lower corporate tax rate, along with a broader base.
tax increases, some areas, tax decrease around the rate, but in a way that made the US a lot more competitive.
It was an overwhelming success. It brought two and a half trillion in capital, came back to the US because of it.
Domestic investment increased 20%. Corporate inversion stopped, stopped seeing companies incorporating overseas for tax reasons. So enormously successful. Most of that expires by the end of this year.
so a big part of what we'll be doing, a lot of your companies will be doing, is trying to make sure that that those provisions get extended.
We're feeling pretty good about where things are headed, but that's going to be a big focus. And then there are some other opportunities, things that have been sitting on the table for a long time could really kind of juice the U.S.
economy. One is permitting reform, so the Trump administration has made it a focus to revitalize U.S. manufacturing to make this an easier place to build.
And one of the biggest obstacles to that is this really guaranteeing and unwieldy permitting system that companies have to navigate.
We think that's an opportunity, probably require bipartisan action. There's an effort to get some permitting reform into the reconciliation bill, which will be partisan, but probably the real reforms will require 60 votes in the Senate and a bipartisan bill.
so we think that real opportunity to work with administration and bipartisan members of Congress to try to get something really important done for the U.S.
economy. It realized there's a big tax here. When it was present aware, before 1,200 people were fired from the IRS at this point, though.
Well, thankfully, this, yeah, well, thankfully, what we're talking about is the underlying tax code, not tax enforcement. it's a very good point.
absolutely right. I want to open up the panel here to questions. Yes, why don't we start over here. you would mind just identifying yourself and telling us who you are.
Sure. Andrew Cole from FGS Global. Thank you. Fascinating panel. I think that's another question for you. I know the Business Roundtable hosted the President just on Tuesday with your CEO members.
And I'm just curious. You mentioned sort of areas or topics of engagement, but I'm curious how are your CEO members thinking about the actual engagement.
If they want to address a tax issue, do they have to come in thinking, what can I give the administration, should I commit to building a plant or investing or?
So we've all heard about the transactional element. think we've got some clients who are trying to think through this too of sort of what's my give when I get in there, when I'm trying to address tariffs or what have you.
Thank you. Yeah, we did have, we had a big member meeting, this year actually was the BRT's largest meeting in history.
We had about 150 CEOs of large U.S. companies there. We hosted the president on Tuesday night, some other administration officials yesterday.
Our meetings are totally off the record, although there are cameras in the room for first few minutes of the president, but other than that, it's off the record.
So I won't go into the details except to say it was a great session. The CEOs asked him very direct questions.
He answered them very forthrightly and directly. And so I think we learned a lot about kind of where they're headed on some key issues, including this tier of discussion.
was just referencing. We have found the administrations so far to be very open to business visitors. We had a bunch of CEOs go from our meetings up to see different officials at the White House, the key cabinet agencies.
So far our impression is they want to hear from business. They really want to hear, okay, this is what this is going to mean for my pricing or for my supply chains.
They're good listeners, actually. I think they really want to absorb the data. We're going to disagree with the administration sometimes.
I don't think there's any question about that, that also find lots of ways to work with them. I have not heard this about the transactional point.
mean, I think the members have had, have had good opportunities to go in and just talk about, we understand what you're trying to do in this area.
Let me tell you what that's going to mean for our business and have, you know, they've been able to have the conversation on those terms, I think, so far, which is great.
I will say that in addition to white health employees, are lot of key agencies officials. They're spending time with Jameson Greer at USTAR, obviously, highly qualified person who they're spending time with, Lutnik, Bessent, who was at our meeting.
I'm sure some of them will go see Inter Ferguson at the FTC and so on. It's a good point, Kristen.
The fact that accessibility with this White House is unlike both with media and with business in the private sector.
I feel like this is a president where there has been more access and ability from Mar-Ago to Washington, D.C.
that the doors are open in a way that we haven't really seen before. I agree with that. mean, this was the second time we hosted the president.
We had him, I think it was last September, we've had him twice in that period of time. Yeah, right.
Yeah, let me, I make my business to talk to a lot of CEOs abroad when I'm traveling and also here.
It's worth looking at front page story of the Wall Street Journal today about CEOs being more and more wary of what's going on in the administration.
I talked to two very powerful CEOs Republicans last week, big donors to the Trump administration, and they were really positive at the time of the election and even time of the inauguration about deregulation, about growth, about everything going on.
Access is absolutely right. Not just with CEOs, also with foreign officials. That was also true in the first Trump administration.
was a lot of access into the White House. They are signaling through when they have direct conversations now, but they're signaling directly to the president.
When they don't have direct, they're going through senators and others, and they're saying, look, we can't operate in this chaos.
We expected and clarity on deregulation. We expected some clarity on growth. We bring manufacturing back. But this chaos, we can't operate in this chaos.
We need more certainty. they certainly don't like the tariffs. I talked to one of the most important Republicans CEOs I talked to is involving real estate and building.
And their cost for aluminum steel went up even before these tariffs came into place. And they've had to shut down a couple of projects already because they no longer make economic sense.
And so the real question for me is will the markets reopen? The president or will the quote unquote revolution be the driving force where he ultimately everyone thinks the president looks at the markets as a scorecard.
But as we want to disrupt things so badly that he's willing to take the recession, he's willing to take the inflation.
I think that's what to watch. But in terms of messages that I'm getting from CEOs and also heads of Saint government, the message is, came in three words from a senior European official I talked to, this is, there's a lot of hand-wringing in New York right now.
There are also a couple of senior European officials that are doing what this person says. He says, three words, I'm giving advice to everybody, all my fellow heads of state heads of government, engage, engage, And so, you know, if you just look at what's going on in the Ukrainian situation, what did Zelinsky, what did Ukraine do after this disastrous meeting in the Oval Office, they kept engaging.
Now they, from the Riyadh meeting this week, things have turned around quite a bit. And so, and so I think it's just really, and this gets to the transactional part of things, I think more you engage, the more you, and then if you show up as a foreign CEO, come with some jobs, come with some investment, and the bigger the numbers, the better.
And so, let me rest it there. But I just think this is a moment where individual engagement with people that are influential around Trump and Trump himself makes difference and the administration's use that is much more porous than I would say the Biden administration was in terms of being able to engage directly with the president.
And I'm hearing this, too, in Jetta, the talks in Jetta, that there is real significant progress in a way kind of always surprising.
want to ask you, though, you honored, when you look across the globe in Europe, you honored someone who I've become recently obsessed with, Prime Minister of Italy, Meloni.
And there was, I don't know if guys remember, there was this whole thing, musk in Meloni, and people were talking about it.
I are you surprised at how strong she has come out in the way she has supported Ukraine, but also recently talking about removing Starlink from us above as well.
The Starlink prizes me. The Ukraine didn't. Part of the reason we gave her the award is she was as pro-Ukraine as she was.
and pro-European as she was, but let me tell you a really brief story about the dinner. So this was our once dinner in New York's Global Citizen Awards dinner, and we were honoring the Prime Minister of Greece, the Prime Minister of Italy, the president of Ghana, and a very famous entertainment mogul, Mickey Lee.
Maloney says, said, I want Elon Musk to introduce me. And so we had a little bit of Maloney and say, well, he might overshadow you.
She didn't say this herself, but her people said, well, you don't know our Prime Minister. He won't overshadow her.
And then my team said, oh my god, he's going to use it as a campaign pulpit. And he's going to say all these things that are going to be so outrageous.
And won't you please, Fred, as CEO, talk to Musk and try to get him on the right page. I said, you must be kidding.
Talk about communication. Nothing would have occurred. of a more disastrous evening than me talking to Elon Musk and trying to censor him.
And so he came and he spoke for one minute. he spoke glowingly about, you know, about Maloney, much more honest than most politicians.
She's even more beautiful on the inside than the outside. And New York Post took this beautiful photograph of the tomb together and started the rumor of them having an affair.
Nothing could have been better for the Atlantic Council. The rumor happened. so by the way, Musk, X's, tweets, whatever you call it, got more followers than God.
The next day, I'm not having an affair with Maloney. So for 24 hours, we're in the global news. He's not having an affair.
In fact, I came with my mother to the dinner, which was true. He came with his mother. Whose mom weighed in and said, she's a lovely lady.
Oh, this was the best part. This was best. So 48 hours later, the mother. chimes in on X and says, it's true that I was with my son and we didn't bring Maloney back to the hotel with us, but I do find you awfully attractive.
So for all of you who are trying to earn media, there's a risk in inviting Musk and Maloney to your event, but there's also an upside.
Look forward to seeing who you honor in July. Yes, over here. Hi, good morning. Eddie Langshin from Big Valley Marketing.
You touched on Europe, US, and Latin America. I was wondering if you maybe talk about your or share your perspective on Asia Pacific.
Specifically, what advice do you have for a technology company that are in the semi-conductor business, trying to balance the tension between China and Taiwan?
important topic. Very relevant. Kristen, do you want to take that? Yeah, know, there's been a big, even outside of, you know, semiconductors more broadly, there's been a big focus in our membership on resiliency of their supply chains.
This started well before this administration for lots of reasons. One is just geopolitical tensions, particularly for any, any that's really thinking about risk around conflict over Taiwan or just, you know, increasing kind of trade tensions.
COVID zero was a big wake-up call for a lot of companies, realizing how vulnerable they were to supply chain disruption coming out of China.
And just more broadly, the kind of focus on resiliency. So we saw a lot of the move towards China plus one strategies, more companies saying we're going to stay in China for purposes of
into the Chinese market, but we're going to have alternate supply chains other, you know, for purposes of selling to other markets.
So far, up until now, that's been happening, but it's pretty narrow, focused on a few sectors and pretty targeted, so focused on places where they're, you know, places like Mexico, where we have a free trade agreement.
I think that's going to get super charged in this environment. There'll be more pressure from the Trump administration. I think to do more of that, including onshoring, going back to the domestic investment point.
I think a few things would help them do that. One is the certainty point that Fred very correctly raised, that it's really hard.
There's certainty, as I said, among companies that there will be a very serious tier of strategy, but still a lot of questions about what those tariffs will look like and what the focus will be.
And I think when there's more certainty on that, it will be easy. you're for companies to make decisions and major investments around their supply chains.
Two, a proactive trade strategy would make a big deal in terms of that. As I mentioned, the places where we have free trade agreements, it's even easier for companies who have investor protections and intellectual property protections to think about making a major investment moving something out of China to another market.
So I think the administration has said that it does intend to cut some trade deals. I think that could be enormously helpful.
I think successful sunset review of USMCA would make a big difference in that. And then all the things I mentioned earlier are competitive tax code and some permitting reform, which would help companies make some bigger investments here in the US.
Martha, I'm curious, when you're in a politically unstable environment or a country, how do you remain neutral, protect your company, not get into the think of it.
I think that right now, It's difficult for companies to act with a cult mind because they're companies that are targeted or products or interests that are really right now under a lot of pressure.
But it's important to be because both in my perspective, for example, in Mexico and also here, the presidents are really getting engaged with the specific companies or motives for doing specific policies.
I was thinking regarding the chess example and what we are facing is that we are changing not the three-dimensional chess.
Maybe we're not playing chess anymore. We are playing something else and we do not understand what are the rules of this new game and that is why we have these uncertainties.
And the fact that the rules are changing is what makes us nervous. And for CEOs, think that the planning for shifting scenarios, the, of course, compliance measures is very important right now, more than ever, because all the tracking of this behavior is going to be registered and also the engagement, as Fred said, engagement is more important than ever.
How to get engaged? Which your president does better almost than anybody? Exactly. It's very different approach than what Canada does today.
We can learn from that. know, you can go and react. And you can just say, okay, let me adapt.
Let us defend the sovereignty or ideas. And we are going to adapt it to this new situation. So you feel.
wasn't aggressive in attacking, but didn't the way that she was able to defend her country, but not in a way that was isolated.
Yes, and of course, the fact is that the economy is completely integrated. So right now, damaging the Mexico on damaging the trade is out of damage for the U.S.
And I want to say that right now, the pressure of a Mexican government to U.S. is not just full.
The policy is not going to work. Lobby of Mexican industries neither. What is going to be important for us right now is American companies, U.S.
based here to defend their own interests, because in the secondary effect is going to a good renegotiation of But if I'm a CEO of a company and I want to protect that business in Mexico, I'm worried about what Donald Trump could do to my corporation and my company if I am the loud voice standing up.
I assume that's why we're not seeing a big wave of CEOs and executives. I think communications executives are struggling with how to balance that.
How do we go forward and communicate our message without isolating this administration and becoming a target? So how do you do that?
The last thing that you feel, I think that not really allowed in the media, but having conversations with the administration, with people that is having influence in the administration and also talk to the constituencies.
Because if something is important right now for US presidency is to have this majority of the team congress. And that is gained.
I because teachers support the congressmen and women. So also talk to them because even you have a republicans and democrats congress acted.
every voting can change the landscape matters, those connections matter. Yes, right here. Thank you for this insightful panel. This question is for Martha.
I want to get deeper into Claudia Shambown. You know, she has surprised many people inside Mexico and outside Mexico.
Her approach to this tariff negotiation is very different than the leaders of Canada, my friend and we were talking about this very different than Trudeau and the mayor of Toronto and the new elected prime minister.
tell us how Claudia Shambown is. seen from within Mexico, in terms of her role in this negotiation, and how she's the leader, she's the spokesperson for Mexico.
Of course, it's the person, but she's really the solo spokesperson for Mexico. And she seems to be speaking to both external audiences and internal audiences.
And you can tell us about her approach, even though she comes from a very different ideological perspective than Donald Trump.
Yeah, for people who might not be familiar, give us a background on Claudia. So there was a mayor of Mexico City.
She's a scientist. She was working on the environmental agenda back on the 90s and the early 21st century. And though she's continuing the left wing administration of Andres Manuel Lopez over in Mexico, she studied in
knows how the mindset of American people works. And I also think that Claudio Shambam is right now trying to one hand communicate with the constituency.
And right now she's 85% approved by Mexicans. This is very high, this is the highest, very different of connecting with or negotiating with with not just Trump but other political leaders.
And as you may know here the the vision of Mexico is different that we can expect. Mexico is seen as right now a country that have lost the jobs and might allow migrants to to get in the United States.
And also allowing drug trafficking. In my perspective, right now, we have the very good reaction of the shame bomb to these policies of tariffs and so on.
And they are working silently in security arrangement. But this can be broken tomorrow because the reaction of President Trump is very difficult to foresee.
And I think that having the first president, that a women president in Mexico is now a gift for us.
We're going to go around the horn and sort of get your final thoughts shortly. I wanted to share I was anchoring the CBS Evening News during Trump's first administration.
Saturday was a fascinating window for communications for Donald Trump. And I don't know if many of you know this, but he really understood the cycle through the New York Post.
He would drop things on Friday night that would get front page. Virgin New York Post because Friday night is a total news vacuum and I reflecting back on his first term.
Saturday was an explosive day for news. We did incredibly well when traditional Saturday night is one of the lowest rated for the TV news landscape and if you look back at some big initiatives he launched the Muslim ban for instance I remember coming into our meeting at 8 a.m.
a activist people started coming to all the airports JFK or Gordia and it created this whole situation but I don't think we've ever had president of the United States with an understanding of how media works how to get your message across how to communicate effectively and clearly you know he really communicates clearly.
Fred I just want to ask you what is your advice to all the truth indicators here. How do you counter that when you've got such an effective president?
I don't want to come to messaging. One of the things is provide light not heat and don't respond to every event every day.
Wait to see where things land. I'm a contributor to CNBC. And just by luck of the draw, I was on live during the whole breakdown in the Oval Office between Zelensky and Trump.
And suddenly they come to me and say, well, it looks like this is a disaster. Things are falling apart.
It's going to be the worst relationship with Ukraine ever. I said, well, what you've just witnessed is the highest stakes of politics as reality TV.
That was my instantaneous response. And I said, so let's hold on for the next episode. And then they kept going, and he leaves the White House.
And it's really broken down. And so I'm wrong, right? And they come back to me again. I said, Oh, just another episode.
And now we see in Rihanna's another episode, we have a 30-year-piece fire that Putin is probably going to reject.
Maybe Ukraine will now get armed up. Maybe this will land in a situation that's really favorable to Ukraine, where you actually get a lasting piece and a secure piece.
We don't really know. But what you've got to do is, I worry the Atlantic Council, we're very in favor of Ukrainian sovereignty, independence, favor of NATO.
If we responded to every exit and every tweet, it would drive our staff crazy, and it wouldn't be useful.
It wouldn't be useful to our readership, and it wouldn't be useful to our relationship with the administration. It wouldn't actually shed light on the situation.
So I think you have to really understand the nature of what's going on in the administration. To the best that you can, engage as much as you can.
And then when you communicate, let me give you one of the other examples, don't need to go on too long.
But at the Atlantic Council, we get some of our funding through federal grants and we've lost some of those grants through staff, work orders and terminate work orders.
So who am I communicating with during this period of time? I'm communicating with the Trump administration, saying, you know, our grants are for acting against aligned Chinese-Iranian-Russian influence.
We think what we've been getting from the federal government is aligned with the Trump administration. And so instead of going anti-Trump administration, I'm just saying, look, take another look at these things and see if you agree.
At the same time, communicating to staff and say, you know, we're gonna have to absorb some cost cuts because we just have the money to do some of this work any longer.
And then you have to communicate with that delegation and explain to them, you know, the enduring non-partisan nature of the Atlantic Council, where we engage with whatever, you know, for 13 presidents, we engage with whatever president has been elected.
And so it's different communication with different audiences, but it's always sometimes stop yourself when you're going to hit send.
Sometimes stop yourself before something comes out of your mouth. It's hard, Greg. And just say, and just say, is this serving, and does this really understand the situation?
And the fact that Zelensky's been able to do this over the last couple of weeks, Zelensky can do it, so can I.
Great. That's great. We've got about 30 seconds. wanted to get your take as well to wrap it up. Well, I think that we have to embrace uncertainty is the new normal right now.
And companies are going to grow a lot on this experience. As I said, in my perspective, it's not going to be temporal.
And also to organize more partnerships and exchange more ideas amongst all your pairs. And also look to the south, because in Latin America we have a lot of things to share with our colleagues here in the United States.
And Kristin, final thoughts? If you are not deep on tariffs, you need to be able to talk in a smart and factual way.
I think using the tone that Fred just advised about what this means in terms of your customers, in terms of your pricing, what it means in terms of your share price.
And I 100% endorse Fred's view. This is partly advice to your GR colleagues, but lots and lots of engagement so that when you feel like it's necessary to say something publicly, it's.
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