How Goldman Sachs’ John Waldron is navigating “a more uncertain time”

This may be one of the most difficult environments for corporate decision makers ever. So how are leaders navigating this uncertainty, and are opportunities arising out of the volatility? I'm Allison Nathan, and this is Goldman Sachs Exchanges. Today, I'm sitting down with John Waldron, the president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs. He'll share how the firm's clients and Goldman Sachs are charting the path forward. John, welcome back to the program.

Thank you, Alison. Good to be here.

So, John, to say this year has been marked by uncertainty would be a huge understatement. So as we sit here today, what's your sense on where the economy is headed?

So I think that we are seeing tremendous resilience in The US economy to start in The US. Lots of predictions about recession and, you know, negative economic scenarios right on the back of the Liberation Day in early April. And, actually, the data thus far has been pretty okay. So we've seen the economy kinda hang in there. The US consumer is still essentially healthy and spending. Employment is strong. There's a lot of fiscal impulse, so the government continues to spend. Even though we talk a lot about DOGE and other elements of reduction and spend, the reality is the hard data shows you th

dig into both of those a little bit. So if we start with tariffs and trade, obviously, as you just said, very much in focus. There's been another round of headlines about US China tensions. There's other developments even over this past weekend. You spent a lot of time meeting with clients around the world. How are CEOs thinking about global global trade and all of this, ever changing tariff policy? And how is that really impacting how they're thinking about strategic

investments? So the best way I can characterize this is I think about how we at Goldman Sachs have been spending our time advising our corporate clients, CEOs, CFOs, boards, you know, etcetera. And I think Liberation Day was a big shock to the system. It was very, very disruptive. I don't think anybody really in any board meeting ahead of Liberation Day thought it would go to that extreme. And from that point forward, for the next several weeks, there were many board meetings, many management meetings of which we were fortunate to be a part of that were reevaluating business plans. So you thin

If you think about this globally, are managements in different countries responding differently to some of these factors?

I think the more US dependent you are, the more pronounced your pause and your reevaluation becomes. And, likewise, the more you're dependent on China for your sourcing and your supply chain, the more you're likely to be in a a mode of pause. If you've already moved your supply chain to some of the countries that were less and, you know, less affected, you can be a little bit more forward. But I one of the things I think is interesting is we've we've talked to a number of companies who had heretofore been much more, China sourced. And over the over the first Trump administration, moved their s

And as you said, the second major factor here, weighing on the outlook is where bond yields go, a lot of fiscal concerns in The US and in some other parts of the world as well. So talk to us a little bit more about that. How concerned are you?