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Day two of Semafor’s World Economy Summit kicked off Thursday in Washington, DC, featuring interviews with leading policymakers and CEOs discussing how fostering global innovation can encourage economic growth.

Semafor’s journalists are in conversation with newsmakers including FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam, US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Martin Makary, and Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Warden.

Views: Fostering Global Innovation

Ahmed Saeed Al Calily

Chief Strategy & Risk Officer, Mubadala

While some are curbing investment during a period of market volatility, Mubadala “will continue to deploy,” Al Calily said. “We deploy when people are pulling away,” he added.

“The US, despite everything that you see today, is still our number one destination for investment in innovation,” he said, noting the country’s “enabling environment” and “availability of talent.”

Rep. Mike Haridopolos

(R) Florida

Haridopolos stopped short of endorsing anyone in the race, but said Rep. Byron Donalds, who is on the Financial Services Committee with him, is “a great friend. Let’s leave it at that.” The congressman said Donalds had solidified a lot of the base and had President Donald Trump’s support. Casey DeSantis, the wife of current Gov. Ron DeSantis, is “very capable,” Haridopolos said. But policy matters, he said, calling Donalds “very accurate in describing what we need to turn this economy in the right direction.”

We need to offer certainty and stability to the new emerging crypto or blockchain market that we’re all talking about in the Financial Services Committee,” Haridopolos said. The US climate isn’t as welcoming as others, he said. “Because we’ve not offered stability, they’re going to places like UAE, Singapore, El Salvador.”

Haridopolos said that he wanted to reduce Federal Reserve funds flowing to CFPB from 12% to 5%, projecting the reduction will save $1 billion. “CFPB is a redundant system,” he asserted. “We have plenty of oversight on banks.” The Florida Republican called the bureau “just a government entity that has kind of outlived its usefulness.”

Paul Griggs

US Senior Partner, PwC

Despite reports that ESG efforts are subsiding , Griggs said that PwC recently found that more than 80% of companies still affirmed their sustainability commitments or were accelerating them. That wasn’t driven by compliance, Griggs said, “but rather viewing sustainability as a true value creator.” Companies “see meaningful returns on those investments when they’re putting sustainability attributes into what they do.”

“The backlog is still healthy,” Griggs said, but said that activity is “pushed out” one two quarters.

“As companies have absorbed the wave of this initial change, you have executives, boards, companies that are antsy to transact,” he said. “A bit of stability will certainly help us to do so.”

“The fuel is on the fire as it relates to AI,” Griggs said. He said PwC is working with more than half of Fortune 500 companies on the changes, citing airlines’ alterations in their crew management systems and getting helpful data to the healthcare industry. But companies are grappling with metrics. “What companies are continuing to struggle with is, how do I measure as I drop AI technologies into my product suite? How am I measuring the revenue returns?” he said.

John Santora

CEO, WeWork

Santora sees the economic uncertainty triggered by President Donald Trump’s tariff plans as a chance to pad his bottom line: “With all the uncertainty around tariffs, who’s prepared to commit to a 10- or 15-year lease with $50 [million] or $100 million spend?” he said. “The world business investments are all on a pause right now until you determine what impact it’s going to have on your company, on your supply chain,” he added. WeWork’s existing clients are extending their leases, new customers are looking for short-term spaces, and Fortune 500 firms want customized offices that don’t require a high cost of capital, he said.

Exiting bankruptcy rendered WeWork debt-free, according to Santora. “There was $4 or $5 billion of debt gone during that process,” he said. Now that it’s a private company, Santora said, WeWork has “the money to invest in our portfolio and our members and we’re also investing in our people.”

“This is a real estate company. When I first had the conversation about coming over, I said to the chairman of the board, ‘You know you just bought a real estate company.’ And he laughed and says, ‘That’s the first time anybody’s called it that.’”

Asked whether Neumann’s newest company, Workflow, could rival WeWork, Santora replied, “I wish him luck. He’s not at a competitive status at any point right now. He could be in the future, but who knows.”

“We have 220 AI firms within our spaces around the world.”

Raj Subramaniam

President and CEO, FedEx Corporation

“Things are changing by the minute. So far things are OK, but I can’t tell you what happens next week,” Subramaniam said. “The question is going to be whether the infrastructure’s available to actually physically clear all these packages and freight that’s going to come across from different parts of the world,” he said, adding, “It’s going to be a very different dynamic.” Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic has helped “prepare FedEx for this world where disruption seems to be the norm .”

“While nobody cared about supply chains before the pandemic, now supply chains are part of every boardroom conversation,” he said, “and so we have evolved our mission to make supply chains smarter for everyone.”

Kate Johnson

CEO, Lumen

Johnson said the current moment presents a “once-in-a-generation” need for network services. “The data centers of yesterday won’t serve the needs of the AI economy tomorrow,” Johnson said. “They’re not big enough, they’re not fast enough, they’re not secure enough.”

Building connections between data centers has gone more slowly than she’d hoped, however, thanks to federal and state regulations that cause permitting issues.

A federal resolution to the fragmented approval process would enable “a way to copy-paste that [and] move fast in all those local municipalities,” she said. “The force multiplier of an aligned regulatory framework is very powerful.”

“You can’t afford to do nothing,” Johnson said. “Waiting to figure out what happens in the market — that’s a play-not-to-lose strategy. Playing to win is taking on some risk and rearranging how you allocate your capital in order to make bets that are sensible.”

Dr. Marty Makary

Commissioner, US Food and Drug Administration

Makary said he had “ no plans to take action ” to restrict the availability of mifepristone in the US. He still left the door open to future action on the medication. “There is an ongoing set of data that is coming into the FDA on mifepristone,” he said. “So if the data suggests something or tells us that there’s a real signal, we can’t promise we’re not going to act on that data.”

“Most Americans do not believe in the COVID booster shot for young, healthy children at this point,” Makary said. “So if he does something with the COVID vaccine in children, I think it’ll be warmly welcomed by a lot of Americans.” However, Makary diverged from Kennedy’s stance on vaccine effectiveness, saying, “Vaccines save lives, and any death from a vaccine-preventable illness is a tragedy.” He noted, however, that he had not taken any COVID boosters himself.

Makary asserted that expediting drug approvals is a top FDA priority, as part of a larger push toward efficiency. But “more medication is not the answer,” he cautioned. “We’ve got to start looking at root causes.”

In the coming weeks, Makary said, the FDA will announce a ban on two petroleum-based food dyes. That will total nine additives that the agency is working to remove from the market. “We’re asking industry to work with us,” he said, “because I don’t think any of us truly believe that they’re entirely safe.”

Makary defended the firing of Marks, saying that House Judiciary Committee testimony confirmed Marks had removed two career scientists from the agency. “They disagreed with him about the COVID shot in kids,” Makary said, “and as a result, he pushed them out.”

Ynon Kreiz

CEO, Mattel

Kreiz said there should be “zero tariffs” on toys, reiterating the Toy Association’s position. He said that Mattel is “well-positioned relative to our competition” to weather the tariff storm: It sources about 40% of its product from China, compared to the industry standard of 80-85%. Mattel also produces in seven countries, giving it more supply chain flexibility. Hiking prices for customers is seen as a “last resort,” he said.

Kathy Warden

Chair, CEO, and President, Northrop Grumman

Warden said the US needs to spend more on defense because the “national security environment is getting more challenging.” She said that “ China is closing the gap on the United States’ superiority, and so we do need to spend more, and we have seen bipartisan support from Congress to do that.”

Warden said the company had engaged in talks with Washington for a contract to help build President Donald Trump’s proposed missile defense shield called the “Golden Dome.” She touted the project — modeled after Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system — as a “bold new initiative” that when coupled with increased defense spending “will really make a difference on the battlefield.”

“Like every company, we are looking at the impact of tariffs on our operating costs,” Warden said. But Northrop Grumman has “less than 5% of our supply chain… sourced outside the US,” she said, with “many of our products built exclusively in America.”

Güliz Öztürk

CEO, Pegasus Airlines

The Turkish airline last year established an innovation lab in San Francisco and has since used AI to clone pilots’ voices and make them speak in different languages such as Arabic and Spanish, Öztürk said. “That’s good for the customer satisfaction,” she said, noting that surveys showed customers wanted more interaction from captains.

SAF production has a way to go, Öztürk said. “In the US, there is some, but in Europe it’s very limited.” These fuels are going to be a big component of the company’s plans to decarbonize in the coming years, and to reach net zero by 2050, there needs to be a “stakeholder-managed type of policy” for SAF, she added.

She said that while companies individually can make progress, they need higher-level help as well. “The governments should have some incentive programs,” she said. “We need a strategy and a more aggressive one.”

The low-cost airline is expecting second-quarter demand to be “strong,” she said. Demand should continue over the summer, she said, especially if there is any sort of recession. “The issue is affordability is important,” she said, as people look for cheaper ways to travel.

Phillip Buckendorf

CEO, Air Space Intelligence

AI is allowing customers to simulate what their operations will look like in the future — where their flights and cargo will be located, for example, and downstream effects on the company’s operations. “You can be more proactive in how you run the entire organization and that is absolutely critical in these complex operations,” Buckendorf said.

The Semafor View

Beijing is facing significant challenges to its economy, but how Chinese officials choose to navigate those risks could look quite different to other countries’ approach. Beijing wants to project influence abroad, and for global companies there is a need to balance supply chain shifts with China’s push into cutting edge technologies.

Read more in The Semafor View ->