Yahoo Finance

Right after the election, American business leaders were optimistic about the economic outlook. But most of that excitement has faded amid ongoing trade wars and geopolitical tensions. Yahoo Finance's Julie Hyman joins me now with a closer look at our chart of the day.

Thanks, Josh. It's not that CEOs are no longer confident. They're just not as confident and as optimistic as they were immediately following the election. At least that's according to the Business Roundtable's new survey. The Business Roundtable, a lobbying and advocacy organization, its membership is some of the top company CEOs. Coincidentally, these are the same CEOs who have been having a meeting over the past couple of days and met specifically with President Trump yesterday afternoon, both in a public part of the meeting and then a closed door meeting as well. Some 100 CEOs at that meeting from some of the largest companies in the country. Now, the backdrop of this, of course, is everything that we've been talking about recently, all of the back and forth on tariffs, which is causing a hit to consumer confidence and causing some companies to warn on their earnings. And also now to some extent, hitting the confidence of these CEOs as well. So the reading right now is 84, which, according to the Business Roundtable, is pretty much near the historic average of 83. But you did see that tick up a little bit before this ticked down, as we saw in the markets as well, the the initial enthusiasm and then the comedown. Specifically, the survey period for this was about mid-February through March 7. So it didn't include the last little bits of back and forth on the tariffs for what it's worth. It's also important to look under the hood on this index because there are sub-indices here. Plans for hiring, among them, decreasing 13 points within this survey. Plans for capital investment, decreasing three points and expectations for sales falling by five points. So it's interesting that the hiring plans going down by the most within this survey. So that is obviously something that continues to bear watching. Um, so we also heard from Chuck Robbins, excuse me, who, of course, is the CEO of Cisco. He also happens to be the chair right now of the Business Roundtable. And he says the survey results signal that our members are cautious about the next six months, but also see opportunities to improve growth. And he says we also have to work with Washington. He says to swiftly enact pro-growth policies that will drive domestic investment, innovation and job creation, even as perhaps behind those closed doors, those CEOs had something to say about the back and forth on tariffs.