Deals
Dealmakers Are Losing Ground as Hopes of Trump Rally Fade Fast
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The worst enemy of a booming market for mergers and acquisitions has always been uncertainty. That’s a problem for dealmakers, who were expecting a banner year under Donald Trump but have instead crashed into the harsh reality of the US president’s market-rattling trade wars and geopolitical clashes.
Little more than $470 billion in global transactions have been announced so far in 2025, down about 17% from the same period last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It doesn’t bode well for the rest of the year: not once in the past two decades has dealmaking rebounded from a negative first quarter to beat the previous year’s tally, the data show.