What’s the next step for Big Law?
President Trump’s campaign to get business leaders to play by his rules has sowed confusion and outright concern in C-suites amid escalating attacks on corporate America. The case of Paul, Weiss could stand as Exhibit A.
The powerful firm has smoothed things over with the White House for now. But the question remains: What has it gained?
The latest: Brad Karp, the firm’s chairman and a prominent Democratic donor, sent a memo to employees on Sunday, explaining why he brokered his widely criticized deal with Trump. He argued that the firm was facing an “existential crisis” in the face of a Trump executive order that would have crippled its ability to work with clients.
Karp also made clear that he felt abandoned by his Big Law peers as he weighed his next step. “Disappointingly, far from support, we learned that certain other firms were seeking to exploit our vulnerabilities by aggressively soliciting our clients and recruiting our attorneys,” Karp wrote.
Karp said he feared for the firm. The Times recounted the events that led to the deal. Karp and some of the firm’s 200 partners decided to broker a deal with Trump, rather than engage in what would have been a drawn-out legal battle.
“Clients had told us that they were not going to be able to stay with us, even though they wanted to,” Karp wrote. “It was very likely that our firm would not be able to survive a protracted dispute with the Administration.”
Karp had Robert Kraft, a longtime client, reach out to Trump. Later, Karp and Trump met in the Oval Office, reaching an agreement on a number of concessions, including a pledge to provide $40 million in pro bono legal services on issues the president has championed.
The deal removes uncertainty — for now. Karp said concessions the firm offered Trump were in line with the firm’s culture and values. The pro bono work, for example, will focus largely on issues it already handles.
And he argued the deal “was unambiguously in our clients’ best interests.” He said that thousands of the firm’s clients had reacted with relief to the “resolution of this situation and the fact that, as the president publicly has acknowledged, our firm now has an engaged and constructive relationship with this administration.”
But the president has sowed confusion. Trump said on Truth Social last week that Paul, Weiss had agreed to drop some of its commitments on diversity, equity and inclusion. A copy of the agreement with Trump that he shared with Paul, Weiss said no such thing. So even while the deal presents a path forward for Paul, Weiss, it also may have set up a precarious relationship.
“Normally, when you settle, the two sides decide to walk away,” Ronald Barusch, a former partner at the law firm Skadden, Arps, told DealBook.
“Here, Paul, Weiss gave up its leverage to challenge a clearly improper executive order. But the other side seems free to needle them.”
The deal raises questions for the already fractured Big Law. Before the agreement, Karp said he had tried to persuade other firms to publicly support two others under fire: Covington & Burling and Perkins Coie. But most of Big Law has been fearful of doing anything that would attract Trump’s ire. (Some went further: Sullivan & Cromwell’s chair, Robert Giuffra, dialed in to Karp’s meeting with Trump.)
After the Paul, Weiss deal, Trump hasn’t backed down. On Friday, he issued a memo directing the government to “seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation against the United States.”
It’s not clear the firms are any more likely to unify now, despite pleas for them to defend the rule of law. While some smaller firms have come out, including those signing on to an amicus brief being prepared by Munger, Tolles & Olson, others remain largely silent.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
Canada heads to the polls next month. Prime Minister Mark Carney has made the call for snap elections to be held on April 28 as the country finds itself in the front lines of President Trump’s tariff wars. Trump has also threatened to make Canada “the 51st state,” part of a series of attacks on the U.S. trading partner that has given the ruling Liberal Party a lift in opinion polls.
Beijing rolls out the red carpet for C.E.O.s. Top executives from Apple, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Mastercard and others met with Vice Premier He Lifeng of China on Monday, who promised bolstered ties with the Western business community. China is striking a more reassuring tone hoping to attract more foreign investment, just as its sluggish economy faces a big hit from Trump’s trade war.
Bayer’s shares tumble as its Roundup woes deepen. The stock was down nearly 6 percent in Germany this morning after a jury in the United States ordered the agro-chemical giant to pay roughly $2.1 billion to a man who says the weed killer gave him cancer. It is the latest legal setback for Bayer, which has been hit with a string of lawsuits tied to the product since it acquired Monsanto, the Roundup creator, in 2018.
Some clarity on the next round of tariffs
Global markets are gaining this morning as investors cheer reports that the Trump administration is likely to forgo the nuclear option on tariffs.
Business leaders have been bracing for April 2 — which President Trump has called “Liberation Day in America” — when the United States is expected to introduce reciprocal tariffs on trading partners.
In recent days, the White House has been releasing some details about the measures. It appears as if Trump is leaning away from a worst-case scenario: sweeping tariffs that could sink global trade and accelerate inflation at home and abroad.
Here’s what the measures might look like:
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Trump is expected to refrain from blanket tariffs, imposing instead more industry-focused duties, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal report.
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Some sectors and trading partners could be granted exemptions, although it’s unclear which ones.
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Targeted countries and industries are expected to be assigned a number designating the size of the “reciprocal” levy to be placed upon them.
Still, there will be little relief. The levies are expected to take effect soon after being announced. Countries that do not have tariffs on the U.S. — and which aren’t running a trade surplus with the U.S. — will be the only ones spared from the barrage, according to Bloomberg.
Watch the so-called “dirty 15.” That’s the percentage of nations — 15 percent — that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last week said were in the White House’s sights for running a persistent trade surplus with the United States.
They could be hit with the highest tariffs, Bessent said.
Wither U.S. exceptionalism?
The S&P 500 may have pulled off its first winning week in more than a month last week, but investors are increasingly giving U.S. stocks the cold shoulder as tariff fears grow.
President Trump’s trade war has ratcheted up corporate uncertainty, and stagflation fears continue to stalk the markets. That’s leading some on Wall Street to brace for a big flow of money out of the United States to other markets.
Investor jitters were summed up in a Bank of America report. “Top concerns include the end of U.S. exceptionalism,” Savita Subramanian, the bank’s head of U.S. equity strategy, wrote on Friday, referring to the bet among traders that the biggest market returns would come from the United States. “2025 has seen a shift in leadership from the U.S. to the rest of the world, with chinks in bullish U.S. sentiment starting to emerge,” she added.
Among the risks she sees: the questionable health of “corporate and consumer balance sheets” and a sagging dollar. The greenback has been a casualty of Trump’s trade war, falling more than 4 percent this year against a basket of currencies, according to the bank’s data. A weak dollar, which Trump has long championed, could weigh on the profit of American exporters.
Others are encountering similar concerns. “In our meetings with investors last week, we found a few common threads,” Lori Calvasina, the head of U.S. equity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a research note this morning. The big themes include:
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“Tariffs, and the challenges they posed to corporations, particularly those who had moved production to Mexico, remained highly in focus,”
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Uncertainty around the next round of Trump tariffs, to be announced on April 2, and
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Questions about consumers. Are they pulling back on spending, or just recalibrating?
The shift away from U.S. stocks has been swift. In early January, the assumption was that the U.S. economy would continue to outgrow its rivals, leading analysts at JPMorgan Chase to declare American exceptionalism as the big trading theme this year, The Wall Street Journal noted.
Trump’s trade war and Washington’s rift with Europe, which has forced European Union countries to consider big spending packages to build up their infrastructure and rearm, has upended that thinking. Investors have pushed into Europe while the big-cap U.S. tech stocks, last year’s big market catalyst, have tumbled.
In the past, Trump has pointed to stock rallies as a sign his policies are working. But so far in his second term, he has brushed off the slumping S&P 500. That suggests that volatile market swings won’t necessarily be a brake on his agenda.
The week ahead
Inflation, a big I.P.O., and other key economic data releases — here’s what’s in focus.
Tuesday: Investors will be closely watching the release of the Conference Board’s consumer sentiment report as recent household surveys show that concerns about inflation and economic downturn are on the rise.
Wednesday: Dollar Tree reports quarterly results, another data point on consumer spending after last week’s somewhat lackluster retail sales report.
Thursday: The Congressional Budget Office releases its long-term budget outlook, a much-scrutinized forecast with investors zeroing in on America’s public debt mountain. On the earnings calendar, H&M and Lululemon report results.
Friday: CoreWeave, the Nvidia-backed cloud computing company, is expected to begin trading in what’s seen as one the biggest I.P.O.s of the year. Before that, the Personal Consumption Expenditures, the Fed’s favored inflation gauge, is set for release. Economists expect the report to show a slight uptick in inflation, well above the Fed’s 2 percent target.
THE SPEED READ
Deals
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FuriosaAI, a Seoul-based chipmaker, is said to have turned down an $800 million buyout bid from Meta. (Bloomberg)
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23andMe, the genetic-testing company whose stock plunged below a buck last year, has filed for bankruptcy protection and announced the resignation of its C.E.O., Anne Wojcicki. (NYT)
Politics, policy and regulation
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European officials are weighing whether the Fed would provide dollar funding in the event of another financial crisis. (Reuters)
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Andrew Cuomo’s foes are beginning to zero in on a potential Achilles’ heel for the New York mayoral candidate: the Democrat’s political ties to Elon Musk. (Politico)
Best of the rest
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“How Marc Andreessen’s Longest Grudge Has Shaped the World We Live in Today” (Inc.)
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No C.E.O. of a publicly listed company has yet to land a $100 million pay package for 2024. If that holds up, it would break a decadelong streak. (WSJ)
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The post Trump, Big Law, and an ‘Existential Crisis’ appeared first on New York Times.
