The Trump administration sent a clear message this week to the thousands of financial operators and investors gathered at Beverly Hills this week for the annual pilgrimage to the Milken Institute meeting.
During the private drinks, dinner of the world’s largest money manager at a fashionable Los Angeles restaurant, during the main ballroom of the meeting, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bescent tried to return home to investors who had a playbook to attack new deals with the country’s most important trading partners as the president and his team began to grow and attack new deals.
The full court media by Bessent highlighted the Trump administration’s driving force to soften the world’s biggest investors. The world’s biggest investors blanched when new tariffs were unlocked earlier this year, causing a massive market sale after the White House overturned the course.
It’s important to put the Titan on Wall Street aside as Donald Trump is about to carry out his trade agenda. A massive sale will reduce the administration’s ability to play hardball with China and other major trading partners. These negotiations will begin with evacuation with Bescent to begin trade talks with Chinese officials on Thursday to fly to Geneva.
“Scott Bescent is here to tell everyone that everything is fine,” said Matthew Chablan, co-founder of private investment group Tikehau Capital. “He knows there’s a leak and that foreign investors aren’t rolling like they used to.”
Receptions for the past week have not always been warm. Bescent outlined the administration’s plans on Sunday at a private dinner at Wolfgangpack’s Spago restaurant in downtown Beverly Hills, according to three people attending the event.
Munuchin was surprised when investors warned that investors might be pulled back from the US, said those familiar with the issue. Munuchin fought back: Where else can we invest the same opportunity?
Takeout, head of infrastructure investment firms, is “growth,” and “the Trump administration was not here to bail out investors.”
The Treasury declined to comment, but Munuchin did not respond to a request for comment.
Hedge fund boss Bill Ackman has had a fierce exchange with former Donald Trump trader ©Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
The next evening, the conversation with attendees, including former Trump trade representatives Robert Lighthizer and Bill Ackman, came to heat, according to several people familiar with the exchange.
A dinner hosted by Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser – a bank declined to comment – the lighthouse has boosted the rollout of tariffs and how taxation can torpedo the economy and market. Because he missed the role of the cabinet, Lighthizer is now a senior adviser to the City of Trade.
Large investors are already working on a more tenuous relationship with the White House than the first Trump administration. At the heart of the administration are senior financial executives well known to investors, such as Gary Kohn and Munucin of Goldman Sachs, who previously served under Trump. Wall Street elite companies feel they don’t have the same influence and connection they once did.
The attention directed at former hedge fund manager Bessent has been raised as investors are asking him for signs that tariffs will not damage the economy as originally envisaged. In the private session, the financiers pitched the case where the way taxation was unfolded in Trump’s so-called “liberation day” announcement hit consumers hard, causing a recession and knocking on the dollar and finances.
Bescent and his team are very aware of the impact of market sales on Trump White House public opinion and how the market genocide will hinder the country’s negotiating stance in trade negotiations.
“No doubt, Bescent is trying to calm the market right now,” said Ted Koenig, chief executive of private credit lender Monroe Capital. “He said a lot of good things, but there were no details.”
“People were excited to have (bescent) here,” said the head of a large hedge fund. “But I don’t know if they came out knowing something new. No one had a ‘aha’ moment. ”
Michael Milken, left, speaks with Treasury Secretary Scott Bescent at this week’s meeting in Beverly Hills ©Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
The obvious friction in the closed room was not much visible in public places. When Bescent found an argument with Milken himself, he stuck to the script. The packed ballroom audience was hanging out on any statement that could shed new light on where the US president stood on his tariff policy as Bescent laid out the Trump administration’s “golden age economy.”
“Taxes are designed to encourage businesses like you to invest directly in the United States,” he said. “We’ll hire your workers here, we’ll build your factory here, and we’ll make your products here, not only because we have the most productive labor in the world, but because we have the most favorable tax and regulatory environment right away.”
At private dinners and meetings, several takeover executives bump into the administration’s approach to trade policy, attacking American businesses and warning that they cannot meet their goals of reducing deficits. However, publicly few people criticize the president for fear of retaliation.
“This is the most self-censored Milken meeting I’ve ever been,” said one asset management executive.
Despite the meeting overflowing from Beverly Hilton’s range, Blackstone and Goldman both take over the full floor of next door Waldorf Astoria, but the atmosphere on the ground was clearly chilly. Several asset managers pointed out the fact that there was one delegation, a large investor from China, who was completely missing from the meeting.
“It has a volatile quality. People are stealing themselves in a tentative way,” said the founder of the credit investment company. “Last year, I felt like I was, baby, I’m going.
A senior partner at European shopping stores added that he knew that executives across the industry had “resigned” and “resigned” with “the golden age behind us.”
Last year, dealmakers were betting that a merger and initial public boom loomed, offering the first substantial window to end investments that had been sitting in the private equity industry for years.
That happiness was magnified by Trump’s White House sweep and rallies in markets where stocks reached record highs. But it all began to be clear as this year’s trade war swayed in sight and investors began to understand how they misunderstood Trump’s agenda.
“People have become optimistic about Trump and the entire American exceptionalism, and it’s gone,” said the chief executive of one private equity company. “It’s still dark – when you get a little hope and it goes away, you’re even more depressed.”
