Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris face off in the ABC presidential debate on Sept. 10, 2024.
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With the U.S. election less than a month away, the country and its corporations are staring down two drastically different options.
For airlines, banks, electric vehicle makers, health-care companies, media firms, restaurants and tech giants, the outcome of the presidential contest could result in stark differences in the rules they’ll face, the mergers they’ll be allowed to pursue, and the taxes they’ll pay.
During his last time in power, former President Donald Trump slashed the corporate tax rate, imposed tariffs on Chinese goods, and sought to cut regulation and red tape and discourage immigration, ideas he’s expected to push again if he wins a second term.
In contrast, Vice President Kamala Harris has endorsed hiking the tax rate on corporations to 28% from the 21% rate enacted under Trump, a move that would require congressional approval. Most business executives expect Harris to broadly continue President Joe Biden‘s policies, including his war on so-called junk fees across industries.
Personnel is policy, as the saying goes, so the ramifications of the presidential race won’t become clear until the winner begins appointments for as many as a dozen key bodies, including the Treasury, Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission, and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
CNBC examined the stakes of the 2024 presidential election for some of corporate America’s biggest sectors. Here’s what a Harris or Trump administration could mean for business:
Airlines
The result of the presidential election could affect everything from what airlines owe consumers for flight disruptions to how much it costs to build an aircraft in the United States.
The Biden Department of Transportation, led by Secretary Pete Buttigieg, has taken a hard line on filling what it considers to be holes in air traveler protections. It has established or proposed new rules on issues including refunds for cancellations, family seating and service fee disclosures, a measure airlines have challenged in court.
“Who’s in that DOT seat matters,” said Jonathan Kletzel, who heads the travel, transportation and logistics practice at PwC.
The current Democratic administration has also fought industry consolidation, winning two antitrust lawsuits that blocked a partnership between American Airlines and JetBlue Airways in the Northeast and JetBlue’s now-scuttled plan to buy budget carrier Spirit Airlines.
The previous Trump administration didn’t pursue those types of consumer protections. Industry members say that under Trump, they would expect a more favorable environment for mergers, though four airlines already control more than three-quarters of the U.S. market.
On the aerospace side, Boeing and the hundreds of suppliers that support it are seeking stability more than anything else.
Trump has said on the campaign trail that he supports additional tariffs of 10% or 20% and higher duties on goods from China. That could drive up the cost of producing aircraft and other components for aerospace companies, just as a labor and skills shortage after the pandemic drives up expenses.
Tariffs could also challenge the industry, if they spark retaliatory taxes or trade barriers to China and other countries, which are major buyers of aircraft from Boeing, a top U.S. exporter.
Big banks such as JPMorgan Chase faced an onslaught of new rules this year as Biden appointees pursued the most significant slate of regulations since the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
Those efforts threaten tens of billions of dollars in industry revenue by slashing fees that banks impose on credit cards and overdrafts and radically revising the capital and risk framework they operate in. The fate of all of those measures is at risk if Trump is elected.
Trump is expected to nominate appointees for key financial regulators, including the CFPB, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation that could result in a weakening or killing off completely of the myriad rules in play.
“The Biden administration’s regulatory agenda across sectors has been very ambitious, especially in finance, and large swaths of it stand to be rolled back by Trump appointees if he wins,” said Tobin Marcus, head of U.S. policy at Wolfe Research.
Bank CEOs and consultants say it would be a relief if aspects of the Biden era — an aggressive CFPB, regulators who discouraged most mergers and elongated times for deal approvals — were dialed back.
“It certainly helps if the president is Republican, and the odds tilt more favorably for the industry if it’s a Republican sweep” in Congress, said the CEO of a bank with nearly $100 billion in assets who declined to be identified speaking about regulators.
Still, some observers point out that Trump 2.0 might not be as friendly to the industry as his first time in office.
Trump’s vice presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance, of Ohio, has often criticized Wall Street banks, and Trump last month began pushing an idea to cap credit card interest rates at 10%, a move that if enacted would have seismic implications for the industry.
Bankers also say that Harris won’t necessarily cater to traditional Democratic Party ideas that have made life tougher for banks. Unless Democrats seize both chambers of Congress as well as the presidency, it may be difficult to get agency heads approved if they’re considered partisan picks, experts note.
“I would not write off the vice president as someone who’s automatically going to go more progressive,” said Lindsey Johnson, head of the Consumer Bankers Association, a trade group for big U.S. retail banks.
Electric vehicles have become a polarizing issue between Democrats and Republicans, especially in swing states such as Michigan that rely on the auto industry. There could be major changes in regulations and incentives for EVs if Trump regains power, a fact that’s placed the industry in a temporary limbo.
“Depending on the election in the U.S., we may have mandates; we may not,” Volkswagen Group of America CEO Pablo Di Si said Sept. 24 during an Automotive News conference. “Am I going to make any decisions on future investments right now? Obviously not. We’re waiting to see.”
Republicans, led by Trump, have largely condemned EVs, claiming they are being forced upon consumers and that they will ruin the U.S. automotive industry. Trump has vowed to roll back or eliminate many vehicle emissions standards under the Environmental Protection Agency and incentives to promote production and adoption of the vehicles.
If elected, he’s also expected to renew a battle with California and other states who set their own vehicle emissions standards.
“In a Republican win … We see higher variance and more potential for change,” UBS analyst Joseph Spak said in a Sept. 18 investor note.
In contrast, Democrats, including Harris, have historically supported EVs and incentives such as those under the Biden administration’s signature Inflation Reduction Act.
Harris hasn’t been as vocal a supporter of EVs lately amid slower-than-expected consumer adoption of the vehicles and consumer pushback. She has said she does not support an EV mandate such as the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act of 2019, which she cosponsored during her time as a senator, that would have required automakers to sell only electrified vehicles by 2040. Still, auto industry executives and officials expect a Harris presidency would be largely a continuation, though not a copy, of the past four years of Biden’s EV policy.
They expect some potential leniency on federal fuel economy regulations but minimal changes to the billions of dollars in incentives under the IRA.
Both Harris and Trump have called for sweeping changes to the costly, complicated and entrenched U.S. health-care system of doctors, insurers, drug manufacturers and middlemen, which costs the nation more than $4 trillion a year.
Despite spending more on health care than any other wealthy country, the U.S. has the lowest life expectancy at birth, the highest rate of people with multiple chronic diseases and the highest maternal and infant death rates, according to the Commonwealth Fund, an independent research group.
Meanwhile, roughly half of American adults say it is difficult to afford health-care costs, which can drive some into debt or lead them to put off necessary care, according to a May poll conducted by health policy research organization KFF.
Both Harris and Trump have taken aim at the pharmaceutical industry and proposed efforts to lower prescription drug prices in the U.S., which are nearly three times higher than those seen in other countries.
But many of Trump’s efforts to lower costs have been temporary or not immediately effective, health policy experts said. Meanwhile, Harris, if elected, can build on existing efforts of the Biden administration to deliver savings to more patients, they said.
Harris specifically plans to expand certain provisions of the IRA, part of which aims to lower health-care costs for seniors enrolled in Medicare. Harris cast the tie-breaking Senate vote to pass the law in 2022.
Her campaign says she plans to extend two provisions to all Americans, not just seniors: a $2,000 annual cap on out-of-pocket drug spending and a $35 limit on monthly insulin costs.
Harris also intends to accelerate and expand a provision allowing Medicare to directly negotiate drug prices with manufacturers for the first time. Drugmakers fiercely oppose those price talks, with some challenging the effort’s constitutionality in court.
Trump hasn’t publicly indicated what he intends to do about IRA provisions.
Some of Trump’s prior efforts to lower drug prices “didn’t really come into fruition” during his presidency, according to Dr. Mariana Socal, a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
For example, he planned to use executive action to have Medicare pay no more than the lowest price that select other developed countries pay for drugs, a proposal that was blocked by court action and later rescinded.
Trump also led multiple efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, including its expansion of Medicaid to low-income adults. In a campaign video in April, Trump said he was not running on terminating the ACA and would rather make it “much, much better and far less money,” though he has provided no specific plans.
He reiterated his belief that the ACA was “lousy health care” during his Sept. 10 debate with Harris. But when asked he did not offer a replacement proposal, saying only that he has “concepts of a plan.”
Top of mind for media executives is mergers and the path, or lack thereof, to push them through.
The media industry’s state of turmoil — shrinking audiences for traditional pay TV, the slowdown in advertising, and the rise of streaming and challenges in making it profitable — means its companies are often mentioned in discussions of acquisitions and consolidation.
While a merger between Paramount Global and Skydance Media is set to move forward, with plans to close in the first half of 2025, many in media have said the Biden administration has broadly chilled deal-making.
“We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to do even better,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said in July at Allen & Co.’s annual Sun Valley conference.
Media mogul John Malone recently told MoffettNathanson analysts that some deals are a nonstarter with this current Justice Department, including mergers between companies in the telecommunications and cable broadband space.
Still, it’s unclear how the regulatory environment could or would change depending on which party is in office. Disney was allowed to acquire Fox Corp.’s assets when Trump was in office, but his administration sued to block AT&T’s merger with Time Warner. Meanwhile, under Biden’s presidency, a federal judge blocked the sale of Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House, but Amazon’s acquisition of MGM was approved.
“My sense is, regardless of the election outcome, we are likely to remain in a similar tighter regulatory environment when looking at media industry dealmaking,” said Marc DeBevoise, CEO and board director of Brightcove, a streaming technology company.
When major media, and even tech, assets change hands, it could also mean increased scrutiny on those in control and whether it creates bias on the platforms.
“Overall, the government and FCC have always been most concerned with having a diversity of voices,” said Jonathan Miller, chief executive of Integrated Media, which specializes in digital media investment. “But then [Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter] happened, and it’s clearly showing you can skew a platform to not just what the business needs, but to maybe your personal approach and whims,” he said.
Since Musk acquired the social media platform in 2022, changing its name to X, he has implemented sweeping changes including cutting staff and giving “amnesty” to previously suspended accounts, including Trump’s, which had been suspended following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Musk has also faced widespread criticism from civil rights groups for the amplification of bigotry on the platform.
Musk has publicly endorsed Trump, and was recently on the campaign trail with the former president. “As you can see, I’m not just MAGA, I’m Dark MAGA,” Musk said at a recent event. The billionaire has raised funds for Republican causes, and Trump has suggested Musk could eventually play a role in his administration if the Republican candidate were to be reelected.
During his first term, Trump took a particularly hard stance against journalists, and pursued investigations into leaks from his administration to news organizations. Under Biden, the White House has been notably more amenable to journalists.
Also top of mind for media executives — and government officials — is TikTok.
Lawmakers have argued that TikTok’s Chinese ownership could be a national security risk.
Earlier this year, Biden signed legislation that gives Chinese parent ByteDance until January to find a new owner for the platform or face a U.S. ban. TikTok has said the bill, the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which passed with bipartisan support, violates the First Amendment. The platform has sued the government to stop a potential ban.
While Trump was in office, he attempted to ban TikTok through an executive order, but the effort failed. However, he has more recently switched to supporting the platform, arguing that without it there’s less competition against Meta’s Facebook and other social media.
Both Trump and Harris have endorsed plans to end taxes on restaurant workers’ tips, although how they would do so is likely to differ.
The food service and restaurant industry is the nation’s second-largest private-sector employer, with 15.5 million jobs, according to the National Restaurant Association. Roughly 2.2 million of those employees are tipped servers and bartenders, who could end up with more money in their pockets if their tips are no longer taxed.
Trump’s campaign hasn’t given much detail on how his administration would eliminate taxes on tips, but tax experts have warned that it could turn into a loophole for high earners. Claims from the Trump campaign that the Republican candidate is pro-labor have clashed with his record of appointing leaders to the National Labor Relations Board who have rolled back worker protections.
Meanwhile, Harris has said she’d only exempt workers who make $75,000 or less from paying income tax on their tips, but the money would still be subject to taxes toward Social Security and Medicare, the Washington Post previously reported.
In keeping with the campaign’s more labor-friendly approach, Harris is also pledging to eliminate the tip credit: In 37 states, employers only have to pay tipped workers the minimum wage as long as that hourly wage and tips add up to the area’s pay floor. Since 1991, the federal pay floor for tipped wages has been stuck at $2.13.
“In the short term, if [restaurants] have to pay higher wages to their waiters, they’re going to have to raise menu prices, which is going to lower demand,” said Michael Lynn, a tipping expert and Cornell University professor.
Whichever candidate comes out ahead in November will have to grapple with the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence sector.
Generative AI is the biggest story in tech since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022. It presents a conundrum for regulators, because it allows consumers to easily create text and images from simple queries, creating privacy and safety concerns.
Harris has said she and Biden “reject the false choice that suggests we can either protect the public or advance innovation.” Last year, the White House issued an executive order that led to the formation of the Commerce Department’s U.S. AI Safety Institute, which is evaluating AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic.
Trump has committed to repealing the executive order.
A second Trump administration might also attempt to challenge a Securities and Exchange Commission rule that requires companies to disclose cybersecurity incidents. The White House said in January that more transparency “will incentivize corporate executives to invest in cybersecurity and cyber risk management.”
Trump’s running mate, Vance, co-sponsored a bill designed to end the rule. Andrew Garbarino, the House Republican who introduced an identical bill, has said the SEC rule increases cybersecurity risk and overlaps with existing law on incident reporting.
Also at stake in the election is the fate of dealmaking for tech investors and executives.
With Lina Khan helming the FTC, the top tech companies have been largely thwarted from making big acquisitions, though the Justice Department and European regulators have also created hurdles.
Tech transaction volume peaked at $1.5 trillion in 2021, then plummeted to $544 billion last year and $465 billion in 2024 as of September, according to Dealogic.
Many in the tech industry are critical of Khan and want her to be replaced should Harris win in November. Meanwhile, Vance, who worked in venture capital before entering politics, said as recently as February — before he was chosen as Trump’s running mate — that Khan was “doing a pretty good job.”
Khan, whom Biden nominated in 2021, has challenged Amazon and Meta on antitrust grounds and has said the FTC will investigate AI investments at Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft.
Cybersecurity and enterprise software stocks have been market dogs in 2026, with fears that AI will wipe out a wide range of companies in the enterprise space dominating the narrative. But they snapped a brutal losing streak this past week, joining in the broader market rally that saw all losses from the U.S.-Iran war regained by the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500.
Cybersecurity has been “a victim of some of the AI-related headlines,” Christian Magoon, Amplify ETFs CEO, said on this week’s “ETF Edge.”
It wasn’t just niche cybersecurity names. Take Microsoft, for example, which was recently down close to 20% for the year. Its shares surged last week by 13%.
A big driver of the pummeling in software stocks was a rotation within tech by investors to AI infrastructure and semiconductors and some other names in large-cap tech, Magoon said, and since cybersecurity stocks and ETFs are heavily weighted towards software companies, they were left behind even as those businesses continue to grow on a fundamental basis.
But Wall Street now has become more bullish with the stocks at lower levels. Brent Thill, Jefferies tech analyst, said last week that the worst may be over for software stocks. “I think that this concept that software is dead, and then Anthropic and OpenAI are going to kill the entire industry, is just over-exaggerated,” he said on CNBC’s “Money Movers” on Wednesday.
“Big Short” investor Michael Burry wrote in a Substack post on Wednesday that he is becoming bullish about software stocks after the recent selloff. “Software stocks remain interesting because of accelerated extreme declines last week arising from a reflexive positive feedback loop between falling software stocks and changes in the market for their bank debt,” he wrote.
The Global X Cybersecurity ETF (BUG), is down about 12% since the beginning of the year, with top holdings including Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Akamai Technologies and CrowdStrike. But BUG was up 12% last week. The First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR) is down 6% for the year, but up 9% in the past week.
Piper Sandler analyst Rob Owens reiterated an “overweight” rating on Palo Alto Networks which helped the stock pop 7% — it is now down roughly 6% on the year. Its peers saw similar moves, including CrowdStrike.
Performance of Global X cybersecurity ETF versus S&P 500 over past one-year period.
Magoon said expectations may have become too high in cybersecurity, and with a crowding effect among investors, solid results were not enough to to push stocks higher. But the down-and-then-back-up 2026 for the sector is also a reminder that when stocks fall sharply in a short period of time, opportunity may knock.
“Once you’re down over 10% in some of these subsectors, you start to see the contrarians start to say, ‘well, maybe I’ll take a look at this,'” Magoon said.
He said AI does add both opportunity and uncertainty to the cybersecurity equation, increasing demand but also introducing new competition. But he added, “I think the dip is good to buy in an AI-driven world,” specifically because the risks to companies may lead to more M&A in cyber names that benefits the stocks.
For now, investors may look for opportunity on the margins rather than rush back into beaten-up tech names. “I think investors are still going to remain underweight software,” Thill said.
But Magoon advises investors to at least take the reminder to keep an eye on niches in the market during pronounced downturns. “The best-performing are often the least bought and do the best over the next 12 months versus late-in-the-game piling on,” he said.
While that may have been a mindset that worked against the last investors into cybersecurity and enterprise software in mid-2025 when the negative sentiment started building, at least for now, it’s started working for the stocks in the sector again.
Meanwhile, this year’s biggest winner is also a good example of what can be an extended trade in either a bullish or bearish direction. Last year, institutional ownership of energy was at multi-year lows, Magoon said, referencing Bank of America data. “Reverse sentiment can be a great indicator,” he said.
But he cautioned that any selective buying of stocks that have dipped does have to contend with the risk that there is a potentially bigger drawdown in the market yet to come in 2026. That is because midterm election years historically have been marked by large drawdowns. “If you think it is bad right now, it could get a lot worse,” Magoon said. But he added that there’s a silver-lining in that data, too, for the patient investor. The market has posted very strong 12-month returns after midterm election drawdowns end. So, for investors with a longer-term time horizon and no need for short-term liquidity, Magoon said, “stick in there.”
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New innovation in the exchange-traded fund industry could come at a cost to investors during extreme conditions.
According to MFS Investment Management’s Jamie Harrison, ETFs involved in increasingly complex derivatives and less transparent markets may be in uncharted territory when it comes to violent downturns.
“Those would be something that you’d want to keep an eye on as volatility ramps up,” the firm’s head of ETF capital markets told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “As innovation continues to increase at a rapid pace within the ETF wrapper, [it’s] definitely something that we advise our clients to be really front-footed about… Lack of transparency could absolutely be an issue if we’re going to start seeing some deep sell-offs.”
His firm has been around since 1924 and is known for inventing the open-end mutual fund. Last year, ETF.com named MFS Investment Management as the best new ETF issuer.
“It’s important to do due diligence on the portfolio,” he said. “Having a firm that has deep partnerships, deep bench of subject matter experts that plays with the A-team in terms of the Street and liquidity providers available [are] super important.”
Liquidity as the real issue?
Harrison suggested the real issue is liquidity, particularly during a steep sell-off.
“We’ve all seen the news and the headlines around potential private credit ETFs. That picture becomes much more murky,” he added. “It’s up to advisors, to investors [and] to clients to really dig in and look under the hood and engage with their issuers.”
He noted investors will have to ask some tough questions.
“What does this look like in a 20% drawdown? How does this liquidity facility work? Am I going to be able to get in? Am I going to be able to get out? And if I’m able to get out, am I able to get out at a price that’s tight to NAV [net asset value], and what’s the infrastructure at your shop in terms of managing that consideration for me,” said Harrison.
Amplify ETFs’ Christian Magoon is also concerned about these newer ETF strategies could weather a monster drawdown. He listed private credit as a red flag.
“If your ETF owns private credit, I think it’s worth taking a look at, kind of what the standards are around liquidity and how that ETF is trading, because that should be a bit of a mismatch between the trading pace of ETFs and the underlying asset,” the firm’s CEO said in the same interview.
Magoon also highlighted potential issues surrounding equity-linked notes. The notes provide fixed income security while offering potentially higher returns linked to stocks or equity indexes.
“Those could potentially be in stress due to redemptions and the underlying credit risk. That’s another kind of unique derivative,” Magoon said. “I would very closely look at any ETF that has equity-linked notes should we get into a major drawdown or there be a contagion in private credit or something related to the banking system.”
Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., right, departs the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026.
Graeme Sloan | Bloomberg | Getty Images
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Tuesday that while artificial intelligence tools could eventually help companies defend themselves from cyberattacks, they are first making them more vulnerable.
Dimon said that JPMorgan was testing Anthropic’s latest model — the Mythos preview announced by the AI firm last week — as part of its broader effort to reap the benefits of AI while protecting against bad actors wielding the same technology.
“AI’s made it worse, it’s made it harder,” Dimon told analysts on the bank’s earnings call Tuesday morning. “It does create additional vulnerabilities, and maybe down the road, better ways to strengthen yourself too.”
When asked by a reporter about Mythos, Dimon seemed to refer to Anthropic’s warning that the model had already found thousands of vulnerabilities in corporate software.
“I think you read exactly what is it,” Dimon said. “It shows a lot more vulnerabilities need to be fixed.”
The remarks reveal how artificial intelligence, a technology welcomed by corporations as a productivity boon, has also morphed into a serious threat by giving bad actors new ways to hack into technology systems. Last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent summoned bank CEOs to a meeting to discuss the risks posed by Mythos.
JPMorgan, the world’s largest bank by market cap, has for years invested heavily to stay ahead of threats, with dedicated teams and constant coordination with government agencies, Dimon said.
“We spend a lot of money. We’ve got top experts. We’re in constant contact with the government,” he said. “It’s a full-time job, and we’re doing it all the time.”
‘Attack mode’
Still, the CEO warned that risks extend beyond any single institution, given the interconnected nature of the financial system.
“That doesn’t mean everything that banks rely on is that well protected,” Dimon said. “Banks… are attached to exchanges and all these other things that create other layers of risk.”
JPMorgan Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Barnum said the industry has long been aware that AI cuts both ways in cybersecurity.
“These tools can make it easier to find vulnerabilities, but then also potentially be deployed by bad actors in attack mode,” Barnum said on the earnings call. Recent advances from Anthropic and others have simply intensified an existing trend, he said.
Dimon also said that while advanced AI tools are important, old-school cybersecurity practices remain essential.
“A lot of it is hygiene… how do you protect your data? How do you protect your networks, your routers, your hardware, changing your passcode?” he said. “Doing all those things right dramatically reduces the risk.”
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said Monday during an earnings call that his bank was testing Mythos, though he declined to comment further.
