Corporate America confident Trump's 'One Big Beautiful Bill' will be passed: CFO survey

CNBC

2 days ago

One thing has been true about both the Republican and Democratic parties on Capitol Hill in recent decades — even as the partisan divide has widened. No matter how much they may talk about the deficit and reining in spending, that's never stopped either party in power from passing bills that don't exactly add up when it comes to balancing the books of the federal government.
Will this time be different?
Chief financial officers are betting it won't when it comes to President Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill."
A majority (86%) of CFOs at companies across the economy surveyed by CNBC say there will be significant changes made to the bill, but it will become law. And they expect the corporate tax breaks temporarily made law by Trump's 2017 tax act to still be on the books as they face expiration at year-end.
The quarterly CNBC CFO Council Survey is a sampling of views from its members who represent organizations across the economy. The Q2 2025 survey fielded responses from 30 CFOs.
President Trump has demanded lawmakers pass the bill by July 4, and this week, he said no lawmaker could go on vacation until they did so. Meanwhile, House members are pushing back on the already significant changes the Senate has made to their version of the bill, such as extending some clean energy tax breaks on a temporary basis, and there are divisions in both chambers over cuts to social safety net programs and treatment of the SALT taxes. And some Republican senators, led by Wisconsin's Ron Johnson, who called the bill "immoral," are balking at the price rag.
Nevertheless, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he was pushing for a vote this week, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he expected the Senate to be able to vote by Friday.
In end end, there may be more time for lawmakers to iron out their differences beyond July 4 if needed, according to tax experts, and it would be no surprise if they take every opportunity to maximize their leverage. It was not long ago that headlines proclaimed the since-passed House version of the bill as being on the ropes and similar headlines have emerged about the Senate effort. Words like "revolt" and "mutiny" are still in the headlines about the bill's fate in a fractious Capitol Hill environment.
Congress, as the old saying goes, has never been good about getting its homework in on time.
In this case, even as deficit concerns and an estimated trillions that the bill would add to it are more widespread — within the GOP, in the C-suite, and on Wall Street, where bond traders have pushed their weight around this year in the form of higher interest rates — it's possible the real deadline for the legislation would not arrive until what is known as "X date." That's the date on which the U.S. would not be able to pay its debt to bondholders without raising the debt ceiling.
Congress has tied the legislation's fate to the debt ceiling issue — though some lawmakers including Sen. Rand Paul have called for stripping it out. If it remains part of the legislative package, it is a plus in giving lawmakers motivation to pass the bill, and giving them wiggle room to work out differences and continue to be vocal in pushing for their preferred legislative projects past the July 4 deadline.
Bessent warned this week that the X date could arrive sooner than expected (the estimated date is in early August, though no more specific date is given) but he said potential court decisions requiring the government to refund tariff payments made under emergency acts could move that date up. There is also the issue of the budget math, with fiscal 2025 set to end in September, meaning if Congress didn't make this law before then, it would have to start over with fiscal 2026 numbers.
So there is still room for Congress to kick the can down the road, keep negotiating, and use whatever leverage they have, especially in a narrowly divided Congress, and as a result gives each member more leverage over their vote.
The big risk for corporations isn't that business tax rates go up — it's the difference between making the corporate tax cuts enacted in 2017 permanent rather than extending them on a temporary basis again. The Senate is pushing for permanent cuts. In addition, the legislation aims to bring back a trio of preferred business tax items on bonus depreciation, interest expense, and full expensing treatment for research and development costs, which has been a political football in recent years and subject to multiple failed attempts by Congress to revive it, even with bipartisan support.
Corporations have said all year that despite President Trump's comments about bringing down business tax rates as low as 15%, their idea of a "win" is not seeing rates go up at the end of the year if the current 2017 tax cuts were to expire — any loss of a permanent extension in the legislation would still be a win, if arguably less than a game-changing one. What corporations say they need right now is for the tax cut certainty to help de-risk the environment for business, especially as tariffs are expected to serve as headwind for the economy in the months ahead.
The CFO survey found the majority of CFOs (64%) saying tariffs will hurt the economy. Meanwhile, 100% of CFOs taking the survey said current policy uncertainty is affecting their ability to make business decisions, with about one-third saying it is having a "significant impact."
The threat of automatic tax increases set to kick in next year would be what the corporate world sees as a self-inflicted injury in beginning of 2026 on the part of the GOP, and according to the survey, businesses expect the GOP to avoid that.
In other survey findings of note:
Bond yields: As Congress battles over tax cuts and the deficit, and some Fed officials say they are open to rate cuts as soon as July, CFOs expect yields on the 10-year Treasury to remain elevated, with 86% of the CFOs surveyed saying rates will remain between 4% and 5% at year-end. It is currently near 4.3%, and a third of CFOs expect it to be even higher by December even as the Fed is expected to enact at least a few rate cuts later this year.
Inflation: CFOs are more optimistic about the inflation outlook, even as they say tariffs will weigh on the economy. Only a few CFOs cited inflation as the biggest current risk to their business, with consumer demand and trade policy the more feared factors.
But nearly 60% of CFOs surveyed say the Fed will not be able to get inflation back down to the target rate of 2% before the second half of 2026, at earliest.
The stock market: As stocks have rallied back from the April lows, CFOs have like investors gone back into a more bullish mode consistent with recent years. Each quarter, we ask CFOS which sector will perform the best over the next six months. In recent quarters, there was rare division among CFOs, and a relatively high percentage of respondents not citing technology as the best sector for growth. That's now back to what has been the norm in recent history, with close to 60% of CFOS saying tech is the sector best positioned for growth.
But the recent volatility is still weighing on overall market confidence, with almost half of CFOs surveyed saying they think it is more likely the S&P 500 falls back below 5,500 than reach above 6,500 for the first time. The index has been flirting with an all-time high in recent trading.
The economy: A recession is still in the cards, according to the CFOs, with over half (55%) saying they expect a downturn either in the second half of this year, or in 2026. Most of that pessimism is geared to the second half of this year, and is likely tied to tariffs and CFO concerns about consumers who they believe are not fully prepared for price hikes, as well as concerns about the labor market softening.
And when it comes to a gut check on the overall direction in the economy, the CFOs are close to evenly split, with a little under half saying they are "somewhat optimistic" about the economy, but still a slight tilt to the "pessimistic" camp.
On a recent call of CFO Council members regularly scheduled to discuss the economic outlook on weeks when the Federal Reserve's FOMC meets to set rate policy, one retail CFO told their peers, "my main concern is that the consumer feels like the pricing that they're seeing today, it's already impacted by tariffs … and so they're breathing a sigh of relief that they've already seen the impact of tariffs, what it's going to cost them. ... it's August and beyond where we're really going to see those issues. … My big concern is the consumer thinks that they're in great shape … that they've seen the impact, and they haven't seen it yet."
Another CFO added, "I feel like the Fed has an especially difficult job right now, given that we are starting to see some cracks in the economic data, but the impacts of tariffs in reality may not come until a much, much later point in time."
Seventy-two percent of CFOs said tariffs will cause resurgent inflation.