M&A Bankers Hoping for Banner Year Run Into Reality Under Trump

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 ...