- In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady talks to Prologis CEO Hamid Moghadam about inventory stockpiling amid tariff-induced chaos.
- The big story: Stocks implode—and it’s not over yet.
- The markets: Blood on the streets.
- Analyst notes from UBS on recession, JP Morgan on ‘ugly’ US exceptionalism, Evercore ISI on stagflation, and Barclays on DOGE.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. As investors and business leaders brace for a possible tariff-induced recession, some may wonder if there are opportunities amid the chaos. Meet Prologis Chairman and CEO Hamid Moghadam. The company, No. 463 on the Fortune 500, is a leader in building and managing 1.2 billion square feet of warehouses and logistics facilities in 20 countries. And Moghadam is seeing the impact of the trade wars firsthand.
“When any kind of disruption happens that raises havoc with the supply chain—meaning the predictable supply chain that's been optimized by engineers goes out the window—people want to have all kinds of extra inventory everywhere to deal with the uncertainty,” Moghadam says. “In the short term, it’s a demand booster for our business, but I don't like to make our money that way.”
Who’s in or out of the White House also doesn’t matter much in terms of traffic. While tariffs have prompted some Fortune 500 companies to shift manufacturing from China to other Asian countries and Mexico, they have not led to an explosion of domestic manufacturing jobs—for reasons I’ve explored in earlier columns. The Federal Reserve recorded 12.4 million manufacturing jobs at the start of the first Trump Administration in 2017 and 12.2 million jobs in January 2021. Boosting the production of goods that are made and consumed by Americans has been a struggle for every president.
“We’re consumption dependent, not production dependent, and, in the interim, tariffs are inflationary and growth-reducing,” says Moghadam. “If we were to have more domestic manufacturing, that would be music to my ears because more demand and more economic activity leads to more consumption.” And while he might not agree with the current trade war, his investors certainly aren’t complaining: Amid a market rout Prologis stock is up 13% year to date.
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Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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