US President Donald Trump is pushing regulators to loosen reporting requirements for public companies, echoing his efforts to end quarterly earnings reports during his first term in the White House.
In a Truth Social post, Trump urged the Securities and Exchange Commission to shift away from requiring firms to report on a quarterly basis and instead adopt a semi-annual schedule.
Less frequent reporting, Trump argued, would “save money, and allow managers to focus on properly running their companies”.
Proponents of the shift say it could boost the number of publicly traded companies in the US, reversing a downward trend in recent years. But investors rely on regular reports for transparency.
The US has required public companies to report earnings every three months since 1970. Any effort to scale back the frequency of those reports is likely to face opposition from shareholders and other critics, who argue that the shift could threaten transparency and risk market volatility.
Trump had also called on the SEC to adopt semi-annual reporting during his first term, though his proposal failed to materialise. The regulator’s current leadership, including chair Paul Atkins, has been critical of disclosures that companies consider to be a burden.
The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a sign of growing momentum behind Trump’s proposal, the Long-Term Stock Exchange, a stock trading venue, said last week that it intended to ask the SEC to allow companies to report results twice a year instead of quarterly, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Veteran investor Warren Buffett and JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon have questioned the benefits of quarterly financial guidance, specifically, warning that a focus on short-term profits comes at the expense of long-term strategy.
In his post on Monday, Trump suggested that China’s reporting requirements for public companies were business-friendly, compared to those in the US.
“Did you ever hear the statement that, ‘China has a 50 to 100 year view on management of a company, whereas we run our companies on a quarterly basis???’ Not good!!!”, Trump wrote.
Allowing companies to report every six months would put the US more closely in line with practices in the UK and several countries in the European Union.