Trump Suggested Businesses Switch To Biannual Reporting

On September 15 2025, POTUS Donald J. Trump on Truth Social, posted his thoughts on the current quarterly business reporting. The President stated that companies should no longer do quarterly reporting on businesses and instead do biannual reporting, to save money, and to be ahead of other countries, such as People’s Communist Republic of China. The post stirred the teapot and got many to wonder what is a Quarterly Report, and if alternatives could have improvements to the current system.

A Financial Statement is a report by the corporation that summarizes the financial activities of the company. This includes the company's balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement. Briefly speaking, balance sheets are what the company owes and owns, income statement is the income and expenses of the company, and the cashflow, is the deposits, withdraws, and other forms of cash movement. All of this information is summarized and is reported to internal, and external stakeholders, to tell how valuable the company is. Shareholders like Financial Statements, as it lets them know if the company is over, or undervalued, to let shareholders know if they should sell their shares.

Typically, a company reports their financial statements 4 times a year, to show the value of the company. In recent years however, the quarterly report has fallen under scrutiny. According to Chairman of SEC Paul Atkins on CNBC, “There’s been a lot of discussion in the past few years about how this quarterly reporting kind of emphasizes a short term type of thinking.” This sentiment of quarterly reports causing short term thinking, is mirrored with Donald Trump's own beliefs about quarterly reporting. The rationality comes from how shareholders want to not lose money, so if the financial statements are bad, it causes panic so they sell their shares, and the company gets devalued. This may cause the company to start focusing on getting quick profits, before the report to shareholders, so shareholders do not sell. This short term thinking leads to layoffs, to cut expenses, which leads to rising unemployment.

Nonetheless, there have been those against this Idea, such as Gunjun Banerji, Lead writer from the WSJ states that Companies are focussed on the long term, and that stretching it out would cause volatility in the market, making 401ks more risky. In addition, Twitch Personality, and Co-host of Business Podcast Lemonade Attic, claims that the issue is not with Quarterly Reports, but rather with quarterly guidance. Additionally, removing quarterly reports, could increase the advantage of insider traders.

Photo from Unsplashed | Trump questions U.S.’s traditional quarterly reports.