Jeff Raikes: the midterms’ real business risk are not which party wins, but whether the rules hold

Jeff Raikes is the co-founder of the Raikes Foundation, which works to ensure every young person in America has an opportunity to thrive. He is the former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and former President of Microsoft's Business Division.

I grew up on a farm near Ashland, Nebraska. My family dealt with plenty of things outside our control, from the weather and crop prices to the costs of seed and fertilizer.

Farmers learn to plan around uncertainty. But there’s a difference between not knowing what the weather will bring and not knowing what the rules will be. When much of your crop is sold overseas, a sudden change in trade policy can undo a season’s planning before the crop is out of the ground. Nebraska farmers have spent much of the past two years learning that lesson again. Even after a deal brought Chinese buyers back, the tariff fight over soybeans still isn’t settled, and prices slipped to a two-month low this month.

I’ve been thinking about those farmers as Election Day, Nov. 3, draws closer. For business leaders, the same question applies: can you plan around the rules?

Most business coverage of the midterms focuses on forecasting: which party will control Congress, what will happen to taxes, and which regulations might change. Those are reasonable questions. But in my opinion, the biggest business risk this year isn’t who wins. It’s whether the rules hold: whether we can count on them to stay in place long enough to plan, and on the institutions that set them to enforce them fairly.

Uncertainty has a cost

Economists have long understood that uncertainty can discourage investment. A March 2025 survey of economists by the Financial Times and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business found that 98% of them expected rising policy uncertainty to slow U.S. economic growth, separate from the effects of the policies themselves. When companies can’t see what’s coming, they hold off on investment and hiring.

The logic is simple. A company weighing a new plant, a........

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