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Susie Wiles, the unassuming operative powering Donald Trump’s campaign

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SUSIE WILES cannot control everything. Take Donald Trump, her boss: his rants on the campaign trail, his unvetted social-media posts, his questionable guests at Mar-a-Lago. Some of these over the past three years, made her job harder. The Democrats, too, are beyond her reach—their decision to replace Joe Biden, around whom Ms Wiles had designed a campaign, scrambled her plans.

But Ms Wiles, a 67-year-old grandmother who has spent decades helping Republicans get elected in Florida, works hard to control what she can. She is level-headed, highly organised and a problem-solver. With her boxy blazers, mirrored shades and hair so blond it sometimes appears silver, she can seem severe—but is by all accounts warm and affable. She has developed a powerful network of politicians, policy types, lobbyists and reporters. The loyal staffers she has brought over to the Trump campaign are known as the “Florida mafia”.

Her success as de facto manager of Mr Trump’s campaign will depend on what voters do on November 5th. But the low-key Ms Wiles, who avoids photo ops and is reportedly quick to give others credit, has already achieved a lot. Mr Trump left the White House in 2021 as a political pariah. He is on the verge of a triumphant return.

She has acknowledged to Politico that she sees similarities between the former president and her late father, Pat Summerall, an American-football player, who became a famous sports broadcaster, and an alcoholic. Like Mr Trump he was a very hard man to manage. Her mother ensured that the home functioned well in spite of him, before finally convincing him to get treatment.

Ms Wiles grew up prosperous in New Jersey, playing tennis and basketball. She got her start in politics by working for Jack Kemp, a Republican congressman from New York who had been her father’s teammate. She worked for Ronald Reagan, on his presidential campaign and in the White House, and in 1985 moved to Florida with her then husband.

Ms Wiles started a political-consulting firm in Jacksonville and raised two daughters. She worked for three Republican mayors and developed a reputation as a smart, pragmatic and well-connected operative. She helped an unknown businessman named Rick Scott win the governorship (he is now in the Senate). She seems to be motivated more by the challenge of winning a campaign than by ideology. None of her previous bosses, however, has been as challenging as Mr Trump.

Florida was a swing state in 2016, considered by some a bellwether. Mr Trump cold-called her to head up his operation in Florida, where he lived part-time at Mar-a-Lago, his resort in Palm Beach. “As a card-carrying member of the [GOP] establishment, many thought my full-throated endorsement of the Trump candidacy was ill-advised—even crazy,” Ms. Wiles told the New York Times in 2016. After a polling dip he nearly fired her that autumn (a dressing down reportedly delivered while he was eating a steak at Mar-a-Lago), but she insisted she could deliver.

As Florida went, so went the country—for Mr Trump. Ms Wiles then worked for Ron DeSantis, a little-known congressman whose bid for governor was salvaged when Mr Trump endorsed him. He won, but made the unwise decision to cut ties with her. She helped Mr Trump win Florida in the 2020 election, though he lost the presidency. After his defeat, and the January 6th Capitol riot, it was far from certain that he would run again. But in early 2021, when few others would have taken the gamble, she agreed to join the board of a fund-raising committee he was setting up to channel money to midterm races. Within weeks she took control of a chaotic post-White House operation, which was endorsing down-ballot Republican candidates, covering Mr Trump’s allies’ legal fees and charting the ex-president’s next steps. .

By November 2022 he had declared he would run again. Ms Wiles and Chris LaCivita, her campaign co-manager (though in practice not her equal), developed a strategy that would play to their candidate’s strengths. At first Mr DeSantis, who aspired to be the Republicans’ presidential candidate, had more money and a bigger operation in Iowa, where the first Republican primary takes place. So rather than knock on endless doors, they used a lean, targeted plan to identify Trump fans who might not even be registered to vote. They won Iowa in a landslide. In the general election they pushed—successfully, according to poll numbers from July—an utterly simple narrative: Mr Biden was weak, and Mr Trump was strong. They similarly pushed for a bare-bones party platform—no more “textbook-long” treatises, they wrote. The resulting 16-page document bore Mr Trump’s signature policy proposals, rendered in his style (“We are a Nation in SERIOUS DECLINE”).

Ms Wiles has claimed to have convinced her boss to do some practical things: for example, urge his supporters to vote by mail and tone down the stolen-election comments. In reality he remains paranoid about election integrity, cannot help but insist that he won in 2020 and has never stayed “disciplined” for long. But his message still resonates, his delivery still thrills, his character flaws still leave many Republicans undeterred and either enthusiastic supporters or ready to hold their noses and vote for him. If enough of them do, Ms Wiles might be heading for an even harder Trump-management job. He may well offer her the job of White House chief of staff.

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Germany’s economy chief Reiche sets out roadmap to end turmoil

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09 May 2025, Bavaria, Gmund Am Tegernsee: Katherina Reiche (CDU), Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, takes part in the Ludwig Erhard Summit. Representatives from business, politics, science and the media are taking part in the three-day summit. Photo: Sven Hoppe/dpa (Photo by Sven Hoppe/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Picture Alliance | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

Germany needs to take more risks and boost its stagnant economy with a decade of investment in infrastructure, German Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Katherina Reiche said Friday.

“The next decade will be the decade of infrastructure investments in bridges, in energy infrastructure, in storage, in maritime infrastructure… telecommunication. And for this, we need speed. We need speed and investments, and we need private capital,” Reiche told CNBC’s Annette Weisbach on the sidelines of the Tegernsee summit.

While 10% of investments could be taken care of with public money, the remaining 90% relied on the private sector, she said.

The newly minted economy minister also addressed regulation coming from Brussels, warning that it could hinder companies from investments and start-ups from growing if it is too restrictive. Germany has had to learn that investments comes with risks “and we have to kind of be open for taking more risks,” she said.

Watch CNBC's full interview with German Economy Minister Katherina Reiche

“This country needs an economic turnaround. After two years of recessions the previous government had to announce again [a] zero growth year for 2025 and we really have to work on this. So on the top of the agenda is an investor booster,” the minister added.

Lowering energy prices, stabilizing the security of energy supply and reducing bureaucracy were among the key points on the agenda, Reiche said.

Germany’s economy contracted slightly on an annual basis in both 2023 and 2024 and the quarterly gross domestic product has been flipping between growth and contraction for over two years now, just about managing to avoid a technical recession. Preliminary data for the first quarter of 2025 showed a 0.2% expansion.

Forecasts do not suggest much of a reprieve from the sluggishness, with the now former German government last month saying it still expects the economy to stagnate this year.

This is despite a major fiscal U-turn announced earlier this year, which included changes to the country’s long-standing debt rules to allow for additional defense spending and a 500-billion-euro ($562.4 billion) infrastructure package.

Several of Germany’s key industries are under pressure. The auto industry for example is dealing with stark competition from China and now faces tariffs, while issues in housebuilding and infrastructure have been linked to higher costs and bureaucratic hurdles.

Trade is also a key pillar for the German economy and therefore uncertainty from U.S. President Donald Trump’s changing tariff policies are weighing heavily on the outlook.

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Economics

Andrew Bailey on why UK-U.S. trade deal won’t end uncertainty

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Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey attends the central bank’s Monetary Policy Report press conference at the Bank of England, in the City of London, on May 8, 2025.

Carlos Jasso | Afp | Getty Images

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey told CNBC on Thursday that the U.K. was heading for more economic uncertainty, despite the country being the first to strike a trade agreement with the U.S. under President Donald Trump’s controversial tariff regime.

“The tariff and trade situation has injected more uncertainty into the situation… There’s more uncertainty now than there was in the past,” Bailey told CNBC in an interview.

“A U.K.-U.S. trade agreement is very welcome in that sense, very welcome. But the U.K. is a very open economy,” he continued.

That means that the impact from tariffs on the U.K. economy comes not just from its own trade relationship with Washington, but also from those of the U.S. and the rest of the world, he said.

“I hope that what we’re seeing on the U.K.-U.S. trade side will be the first of many, and it will be repeated by a whole series of trade agreements, but we have to see that happen of course, and where it actually ends up.”

“Because, of course, we are looking at tariff levels that are probably higher than they were beforehand.”

Trump unveils United Kingdom trade deal, first since ‘reciprocal’ tariff pause

In Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Report released Thursday, the word “uncertainty” was used 41 times across its 97 pages, up from 36 times in February, according to a CNBC tally.

The U.K. central bank cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point on Thursday, taking its key rate to 4.25%. The decision was highly divided among the seven members of its Monetary Policy Committee, with five voting for the 25 basis point cut, two voting to hold rates and two voting to reduce by a larger 50 basis points.

Bailey said that while some analysts had perceived the rate decision as more hawkish than expected — in other words, leaning toward holding rates elevated than slashing them rapidly — he was not surprised by the close vote.

“What it reflects is that there are two sides, there are risks on both sides here,” he told CNBC.

“We could get a much more severe weakness of demand than we were expecting, that could then pass through to a weaker outlook for inflation than we were expecting.”

“There’s a risk on the other side that we could get some combination of more persistence in the inflation effects that are gradually working their way through the system,” such as in wages and energy, while “supply capacity in the economy is weaker,” he said.

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Economics

Trump knocks down a controversial pillar of civil-rights law

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IN THE DELUGE of 145 executive orders issued by President Donald Trump (on subjects as disparate as “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness” and “Maintaining Acceptable Water Pressure in Showerheads”) it can be difficult to discern which are truly consequential. But one of them, signed on April 23rd under the bland headline “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy”, aims to remake civil-rights law. Those primed to distrust Mr Trump on such matters may be surprised to learn that the president’s target is not just important but also well-chosen.

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