President Trump has been saying that he's America's first business president. What do you expect him to do for American businesses? Well I'm counting on a pro business environment here. We've got a lot to do as a company and to the degree our administration can facilitate that Let's see how it plays out. Obviously, one of the things we're looking at as a company most is tax reform. That could be beneficial to us. But everybody's got an opinion on how that's going to play out right now. There will be some good things, I suppose, or maybe some takeaways. What we've all gotta see is how As it [ UNKNOWN ] Out. President Trump has been saying that he could double the growth rate of the US economy, and maybe go even as high as 5 % or 6 %. Do you think he can hit those numbers? I'm optimistic, I think the American economy will be stronger, I I believe we will move in the right direction. In a political race you're always going to get prognostication such as goes with the territory. But, I'm in a place right now and I think you see this across a lot of the CEO community where there is a lot of hope. And there is optimism. But, there's also desire to see some real tangible clarity on how we're going to finalize some of these policies and exactly what are we going to do. And we're gonna learn that pretty quickly. Mm- hm. This is the year that we're also expecting the Federal Reserve to begin a process of raising interest rates. Do higher interest rates help or hurt your company? The outlook we've got is that we will see an uptick in our inflation. Which means the ingredients we buy To make our products will become more expensive. It's been a benign inflation environment, we think we'll see inflation tick up to a little above 2 %. As that happens, and even if it becomes more inflationary, we will have to raise prices on our products. And as we raise prices on our products We need to make sure our consumers stick with us. And the way we do that is by having strong exciting contemporary brands. What are you finding are consumer attitudes about spending these days? How confident are they about spending? Well, consumers are incredibly discerning. They wanna spend their money on products that are exciting and provocative. And if they see a product. That is not exciting and not provocative. They'll choose the lowest priced alternative. So our job is to make sure our products are exciting and contemporary, and win those consumers hearts and minds. As you know Sean, President Trump has been reaching out to a lot of business leaders and CEO's and trying to get their advice on policies and actions that they'd like to see That would really grow the US economy and really help American businesses. If you were called upon, what advise would you give President Trump? Well the key to growth is innovation. So anything we can do that will really entice companies to invest back in the consumer, to invest back in their business, that would drive Better growth for the corporations. Better growth will drive more jobs. It'll be great for the economy. But in an environment where you're not continuously aggressively innovating, you see a malaise come over the business and you'll see less growth. And that's not what we need.

ConAgra’s CEO Is ‘Counting on a Pro-Business Environment’