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How CEOs deal with Trump: Praise, face time, remorse, and gifts made of gold all go a long way, experience shows

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Good morning. Over the past several months, I’ve noticed anecdotally that more global CEOs seem eager to meet with me in Washington or New York. The leader of one multinational admitted that my newfound popularity with his team was by design. It’s important to come to the U.S., he told me, and to be more visible while doing it. Some leaders come to announce new investments or new factories to build products in the U.S.; others prefer to meet with peers and policymakers through Fortune gatherings while staying below the radar for coverage. What unites them is a desire to thrive in the tricky tariff era of Donald Trump.

The president has made it clear that his priority is to rack up domestic wins but it’s not always clear who’s playing for Team America, in his view. Intel’s new CEO Lip-Bu Tan experienced that for himself when he was vilified by Trump in a Truth Social post last Thursday as “highly CONFLICTED” because of past investments in Chinese companies. The president urged him to resign. On Monday, the president actually met Tan and did a prompt turnabout, praising the Malaysian-born American citizen as an impressive leader with “an amazing story.”

What changed? Face time, for one thing. Determined to clear up what he described in a company letter as “a lot of misinformation,” Tan made a quick trip to the White House to talk about his 40-plus years of living, investing and innovating in the U.S. Judging from Trump’s comments and Intel’s statement, Tan also talked about his company’s current and future investments in making America great (again?).

Many CEOs have come to appreciate the need to develop a good rapport with the president and the power of public gestures of support. Apple CEO Tim Cook gave Trump a customized glass plaque mounted on a 24-karat gold stand last week, when he announced his company’s $100 billion investment in domestic production. OpenAI’s Sam Altman expressed remorse at falling into the “non-playable character” trap by criticizing Trump, announcing earlier this year that he’d developed a more positive view of POTUS after seeing him in action. And of course, Elon Musk’s relationship with Trump has run hot and cold in public, with subsequent impacts on his businesses.

Will the president’s praise for Intel’s Tan help the struggling chipmaker regain the ground it lost to rivals like Nvidia and AMD in recent years? It can’t hurt. It certainly beats incurring his wrath.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

Top news

Trump is going into his meeting with Putin without the help of experts: FT

“It’s safe to say that Trump does not have a single policymaking person who knows Russia and Ukraine advising him,” Eric Rubin, who was U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria in Trump’s first term, told the FT. More than 1,300 state department staff were laid off last month in Trump’s drive to reduce the federal workforce, and some of them were Russia and Ukraine analysts.

White House lowers expectations for Putin meeting

“This is a listening exercise for the president. Look, only one party that’s involved in this war is going to be present,” White House Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said.

Russia continues to make incremental gains in Eastern Ukraine

While the diplomats talk, Moscow is altering the facts on the ground in Russia’s favor.

Russian hackers breach U.S. federal court system

Hackers backed by Russia have found ways to view sealed court documents on PACER, the U.S. federal court system, according to the NYT. That potentially gives Moscow access to litigation that affects national security.

The reviews of Trump’s BLS pick are brutal

Conservative economists don’t respect E.J. Antoni, the president’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, according to multiple reports. “Even the people who may be somewhat sympathetic to his economic policy views don’t think he’s qualified,” said Stan Veuger of the American Enterprise Institute. Antoni’s “work at Heritage has frequently included elementary errors or nonsensical choices,” Veuger told Axios. “There are a lot of competent conservative economists that could do this job,” said Kyle Pomerleau of the American Enterprise Institute, “E.J. is not one of them.” “I’ve been on several programs with him at this point and have been impressed by two things: his inability to understand basic economics and the speed with which he’s gone MAGA,” said Dave Hebert of the American Institute for Economic Research. Antoni did not respond to the attacks.

Trump v Goldman Sachs

The president attacked the head of the venerable investment bank in a Truth Social post yesterday, arguing that “David Solomon and Goldman Sachs refuse to give credit where credit is due. They made a bad prediction a long time ago on both the Market repercussion and the Tariffs themselves, and they were wrong, just like they are wrong about so much else. I think that David should go out and get himself a new Economist or, maybe, he ought to just focus on being a DJ, and not bother running a major Financial Institution.” Goldman did not respond.

Cava and Chipotle invest in automation

Foodservice automation company Hyphen announced a $25 million Series B investment on Tuesday, led by Chipotle and Cava, signaling the onset of robots in the fast-casual chains. Cava CFO Tricia Tolivar told Fortune that Hyphen’s technology will be used to support human workers rather than replace them.

Perplexity makes bid for Chrome

AI company Perplexity made an unsolicited $34.5 billion bid for Google Chrome. The offer comes as a federal judge considers what to do with Google following an antitrust ruling last year that found the company maintained an illegal monopoly in online search.

Ford’s newest EV move

Analysts told Fortune that Ford’s $5 billion investment in EVs, announced on Monday, could run the company into the ground if it fails. The automaker’s previous failed EV projects have already cost it billions.

Financial markets plagued by deepfakes

Tianyi Zhang, a general manager of risk management and cybersecurity at Singapore-based Ant International, told Fortune, “In some markets, we have found that more than 70% of new enrolments may be deepfake attempts .. We’ve identified more than 150 types of deepfake attacks.”

The markets

S&P 500 futures ticked up 0.15% this morning, premarket, after the index closed up 1.13% yesterday, a new all-time high. STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.49% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.16% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 1.3%, another all-time high. China’s CSI 300 was up 0.79%. The South Korea KOSPI was up 1.08%. India’s Nifty 50 was up 0.69%. Bitcoin declined to $119.9K.

Around the watercooler

Trump’s BLS appointee suggests suspending jobs report entirely until methods of data collection are ‘corrected’ by Nick Lichtenberg

“Is MAGA going Marxist and Maoist? Trump’s assault on free-market capitalism” – commentary by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and John Pepper

Jerome Powell’s job just got a whole lot easier as inflation data sidesteps disaster by Eleanor Pringle

Apple has a new AI problem—this time from Elon Musk, who’s threatening ‘legal action’ if it doesn’t knock ChatGPT off the top of its App Store by Dave Smith

Self-made multimillionaire behind $4 billion Skims empire says she was ‘using AI like a 42-year-old woman’—until Mark Cuban gave her a wake-up call by Orianna Rosa Royle

Spirit Airlines warns it might not be able to survive the next year by Chris Morris

CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams and Jim Edwards.

This is the web version of CEO Daily, a newsletter of must-read global insights from CEOs and industry leaders. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.



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Kimberly-Clark exec says old bosses would compare her to their daughters when she got promoted

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Women have their own unique set of challenges in the workforce; the “motherhood penalty” can set them back $500,000, their C-suite representation is waning, and the gender pay gap has widened again. One senior executive from $36 billion manufacturing giant Kimberly-Clark knows the tribulations all too well—after all, she’s one of few women in the Fortune 500 who holds the coveted role. 

Tamera Fenske is the chief supply chain officer (CSCO) for Kimberly-Clark, who oversees a massive global team of 22,665 employees—around 58% of the global CPG manufacturer’s workforce. She’s in charge of optimizing the company’s entire supply chain, from sourcing raw materials for Kimberly-Clark products including Kleenex and Huggies, to delivering the final product into customers’ shopping carts. 

It’s a job that’s essential to most top businesses operating at such a massive scale; around 422 of the Fortune 500 have chief supply chain officers, according to a 2025 Spencer Stuart analysis. However, most of these slots are awarded to white men; only about 18% of executives in this position are women, and 12% come from underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds. It’s one of the C-suite roles with the least female representation, right next to chief financial officers, chief operating officers, and CEOs. 

In fact, Fenske is one of just 76 Fortune 500 female executives who have “chief supply chain officer” on their resumes. However, the executive tells Fortune it’s an unfortunate fact she “doesn’t think about” too often—if anything, it motivates her further.

“Anytime someone tells me I can’t do something, it makes me want to work that much harder to prove them wrong,” Fenske says. 

The first time Fenske noticed she was one of few women in the room

Fenske has spent her entire life navigating subjects dominated by men—something she didn’t even consider until college. 

Her father, aunts, uncles, and grandfather all worked for Dow Chemical, so she grew up in a STEM-heavy household. Naturally, she leaned into math and science as well, eventually pursuing a bachelor’s in environmental chemical engineering at Michigan Technological University. It was there that her eyes first opened to the reality that she was one of few women in the room. 

“It definitely was going to Michigan Tech, where I first realized the disparity,” Fenske said, adding that there was around an eight-to-one male-to-female ratio. “As you continue through the higher levels and the grades, it becomes even more tighter, especially as you get into your specialized engineering.” 

Once joining the world of work, it wasn’t only Fenske who noticed the lack of women in senior roles—some bosses would even point it out. 

The Fortune 500 boss is paying it forward—for both men and women

After Fenske graduated from Michigan Tech, she got her start at $91 billion manufacturer 3M: a multinational conglomerate producing everything from pads of Post-It notes to rolls of Scotch tape. Fenske was first hired as an environmental engineer in 2000. Promotion after promotion came, but all people could seem to focus on was her gender.

“It would come to light when I moved relatively quickly through the ranks. Some of my bosses would say, ‘You’re the age of my daughter,’ and different things like that. ‘You’re the first woman that’s had this role at this plant or in this division,’” Fenske recalls. Over the course of 2 decades, she rose through the company’s ranks to the SVP of 3M’s U.S. and Canada manufacturing and supply chain. 

And anytime she was asked about her gender? She’d flip the questions back at them while standing her ground. “I would always try to spin it a little bit and ask them questions like, ‘Okay, so what is your daughter doing?’…I always try to seek to understand where they are coming from, but then also reinforce what brought me to where I am.”

Now, three years into her current stint as Kimberly-Clark’s CSCO, the 47-year-old is paying it back—but not just to the women following in her footsteps.

“I never saw myself as necessarily a big, ground-breaker pioneer, even though the statistics would tell you I was,” Fenske says. “I tried to give back to women and men, to be honest. Because I think men [are] one of the strongest advocates for women as well. So I think we have to teach both how to have that equal lens and diverse perspective.”



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SpaceX to offer insider shares at record-setting $800 billion valuation

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SpaceX is preparing to sell insider shares in a transaction that would value Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite maker at as much as $800 billion, people familiar with the matter said, reclaiming the title of the world’s most valuable private company. 

The details, discussed by SpaceX’s board of directors on Thursday at its Starbase hub in Texas, could change based on interest from insider sellers and buyers or other factors, said some of the people, who asked not to be identified as the information isn’t public. SpaceX is also exploring a possible initial public offering as soon as late next year, one of the people said. 

Another person briefed on the matter said that the price under discussion for the sale of some employees and investors’ shares is higher than $400 apiece, which would value SpaceX at between $750 billion and $800 billion. The company wouldn’t raise any funds though this planned sale, though a successful offering at such levels would catapult it past the record of $500 billion valuation achieved by OpenAI in October.

Elon Musk on Saturday denied that SpaceX is raising money at a $800 billion valuation without addressing Bloomberg’s reporting on the planned offering of insiders’ shares. 

“SpaceX has been cash flow positive for many years and does periodic stock buybacks twice a year to provide liquidity for employees and investors,” Musk said in a post on his social media platform X. 

The share sale price under discussion would be a substantial increase from the $212 a share set in July, when the company raised money and sold shares at a valuation of $400 billion. The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times earlier reported the $800 billion valuation target.

News of SpaceX’s valuation sent shares of EchoStar Corp., a satellite TV and wireless company, up as much as 18%. Last month, EchoStar had agreed to sell spectrum licenses to SpaceX for $2.6 billion, adding to an earlier agreement to sell about $17 billion in wireless spectrum to Musk’s company.

Subscribe Now: The Business of Space newsletter covers NASA, key industry events and trends.

The world’s most prolific rocket launcher, SpaceX dominates the space industry with its Falcon 9 rocket that lifts satellites and people to orbit.

SpaceX is also the industry leader in providing internet services from low-Earth orbit through Starlink, a system of more than 9,000 satellites that is far ahead of competitors including Amazon.com Inc.’s Amazon Leo.

Elite Group

SpaceX is among an elite group of companies that have the ability to raise funds at $100 billion-plus valuations while delaying or denying they have any plan to go public. 

An IPO of the company at an $800 billion value would vault SpaceX into another rarefied group — the 20 largest public companies, a few notches below Musk’s Tesla Inc. 

If SpaceX sold 5% of the company at that valuation, it would have to sell $40 billion of stock — making it the biggest IPO of all time, well above Saudi Aramco’s $29 billion listing in 2019. The firm sold just 1.5% of the company in that offering, a much smaller slice than the majority of publicly traded firms make available.

A listing would also subject SpaceX to the volatility of being a public company, versus private firms whose valuations are closely guarded secrets. Space and defense company IPOs have had a mixed reception in 2025. Karman Holdings Inc.’s stock has nearly tripled since its debut, while Firefly Aerospace Inc. and Voyager Technologies Inc. have plunged by double-digit percentages since their debuts.

SpaceX executives have repeatedly floated the idea of spinning off SpaceX’s Starlink business into a separate, publicly traded company — a concept President Gwynne Shotwell first suggested in 2020. 

However, Musk cast doubt on the prospect publicly over the years and Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen said in 2024 that a Starlink IPO would be something that would take place more likely “in the years to come.”

The Information, citing people familiar with the discussions, separately reported on Friday that SpaceX has told investors and financial institution representatives that it’s aiming for an IPO of the entire company in the second half of next year.

Read More: How to Buy SpaceX: A Guide for the Eager, Pre-IPO

A so-called tender or secondary offering, through which employees and some early shareholders can sell shares, provides investors in closely held companies such as SpaceX a way to generate liquidity.

SpaceX is working to develop its new Starship vehicle, advertised as the most powerful rocket ever developed to loft huge numbers of Starlink satellites as well as carry cargo and people to moon and, eventually, Mars.



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National Park Service drops free admission on MLK Day and Juneteenth while adding Trump’s birthday

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The National Park Service will offer free admission to U.S. residents on President Donald Trump’s birthday next year — which also happens to be Flag Day — but is eliminating the benefit for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth.

The new list of free admission days for Americans is the latest example of the Trump administration downplaying America’s civil rights history while also promoting the president’s image, name and legacy.

Last year, the list of free days included Martin Luther King Jr Day and Juneteenth — which is June 19 — but not June 14, Trump’s birthday.

The new free-admission policy takes effect Jan. 1 and was one of several changes announced by the Park Service late last month, including higher admission fees for international visitors.

The other days of free park admission in 2026 are Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Constitution Day, Veterans Day, President Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday (Oct. 27) and the anniversary of the creation of the Park Service (Aug. 25).

Eliminating Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth, which commemorates the day in 1865 when the last enslaved Americans were emancipated, removes two of the nation’s most prominent civil rights holidays.

Some civil rights leaders voiced opposition to the change after news about it began spreading over the weekend.

“The raw & rank racism here stinks to high heaven,” Harvard Kennedy School professor Cornell William Brooks, a former president of the NAACP, wrote on social media about the new policy.

Kristen Brengel, a spokesperson for the National Parks Conservation Association, said that while presidential administrations have tweaked the free days in the past, the elimination of Martin Luther King Jr. Day is particularly concerning. For one, the day has become a popular day of service for community groups that use the free day to perform volunteer projects at parks.

That will now be much more expensive, said Brengel, whose organization is a nonprofit that advocates for the park system.

“Not only does it recognize an American hero, it’s also a day when people go into parks to clean them up,” Brengel said. “Martin Luther King Jr. deserves a day of recognition … For some reason, Black history has repeatedly been targeted by this administration, and it shouldn’t be.”

Some Democratic lawmakers also weighed in to object to the new policy.

“The President didn’t just add his own birthday to the list, he removed both of these holidays that mark Black Americans’ struggle for civil rights and freedom,” said Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada. “Our country deserves better.”

A spokesperson for the National Park Service did not immediately respond to questions on Saturday seeking information about the reasons behind the changes.

Since taking office, Trump has sought to eliminate programs seen as promoting diversity across the federal government, actions that have erased or downplayed America’s history of racism as well as the civil rights victories of Black Americans.

Self-promotion is an old habit of the president’s and one he has continued in his second term. He unsuccessfully put himself forwardfor the Nobel Peace Prize, renamed the U.S. Institute of Peace after himself, sought to put his name on the planned NFL stadium in the nation’s capital and had a new children’s savings program named after him.

Some Republican lawmakers have suggested putting his visage on Mount Rushmore and the $100 bill.



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