TOAfter the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, US business leaders strongly criticized Donald Trump. Now – as the Harris campaign calls Trump a “fascist” and Trump threatens retaliation against “the enemy within” – there appears to be a conspiracy of silence.
Indeed, as the nation heads to the polls in an election that is too close to call, some of America’s most powerful chief executives appear to be warming up to Trump again.
Publicly, only a small handful of business leaders back Trump. In private it’s a different story. At least that’s how Trump tells it.
Over the past few weeks, he has boasted about the warm reception he is receiving from CEOs. At a recent rally, he said Google boss Sundar Pichai had called him to praise him for his photo shoot at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania. Apple boss Tim Cook reportedly called him to discuss the company’s legal problems in Europe. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg is said to have called him over the summer after his assassination attempt.
And then, after years of being attacked by Trump over his ownership of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos blocked the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris. Bezos said the newspaper would not endorse, as it had for half a century, to avoid perceptions of bias in the media.
Everything seems like a radical change compared to a few years ago, when the same executives were praising Joe Biden’s victory and openly criticizing Trump for the January 6 attack.
And Trump is much the same person: He has continued to insist that the insurrection was actually a “day of love” and has made clear that he will not accept the election results if he loses. “That’s the only way we lose, because they cheat,” he said at a rally in September.
But what may seem like silence from America’s chief executives is actually restraint, according to some members of the business community.
“They have an obligation to work with whoever the president is, so they don’t want to appear hostile and unable to work with him,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale professor who tracks the policy preferences of top executives. “But what is an undeniable historical fact is that there has never been a president in the history of the United States less popular among the country’s business leaders than Donald Trump.”
in a open letter In support of Harris, a dozen former CEOs gathered by Sonnenfeld said Trump was “anti-business.”
“While each of us has different political affiliations, we will come together to vote for Kamala Harris in this presidential election, and we believe most incumbent CEOs will do the same,” the letter reads.
Sonnenfeld noted that executives historically support Republican candidates. But only one Fortune 100 CEO has publicly endorsed Trump: Elon Musk.
“He has one. That’s pretty telling,” Sonnenfeld said. “John McCain and Mitt Romney had half the business community. In 2016, it fell to zero.”
Trump’s first term was a boon for corporations, which saved $240 billion between 2018 and 2021 thanks to the former president’s cuts to the corporate tax, which he says he will reduce again in a second term.
But Sonnenfeld said many business leaders were not supporters of Trump’s plans for mass tariffs and deportations, two major policies he has been touting during the election campaign, along with a possible politicization of the Federal Reserve.
“They hate the way Trump creates divisive issues and false propaganda to divide the nation, whether it’s his personal values…in institutions, or simply the belief that the free enterprise system cannot work if there is no residual trust.” in the communities”. said.
Daniella Ballou-Aares, executive director of the Leadership Now Project, said many of Trump’s wealthy supporters are not actually sitting executives.
“The press narrative focuses on a very short list of men on both sides who are simply not indicative (of the climate),” Ballou-Aares said. “There are many, many different types of groups coming together on the business side” that support Harris, he said.
But leaders have to walk a fine line, especially since Trump is known to be unabashedly transactional. In May, he stunned a group of oil and gas executives when he told them they should donate $1 billion to his campaign, which would actually be a “deal” considering it would roll back environmental regulations and lower taxes. During his previous term, he rewarded his closest supporters with a direct line to the White House.
Trump has promised to unleash retaliation against those who speak out against him if he takes office again, and executives do not want their company to be the victim of a Trump backlash. Some have already experienced the wave of abuse that can be unleashed simply by appearing “woke”: confronting Trump head-on is a business gamble they have so far avoided.
“If it were these billionaires who just invested their own wallet, then you could be more extravagant. But they have custodial oversight for all stakeholders in their communities, their workforce and their customers,” Sonnenfeld said. “They know this is a very divided country and they don’t want to provoke anything unnecessary.”
It is also a different political environment compared to the 2020 election, when the Covid pandemic was still keeping many under lockdown and the summer’s Black Lives Matter protests had forced a racial reckoning across the business world. When Biden became president, companies saw fewer demands from consumers and employees to speak out. Instead, companies have seen more backlash from conservative groups.
Corporations are people too – at least according to the Supreme Court – and it appears that Trump’s intimidation has silenced them.
“I think the danger of the last few years is that it’s been more than just silent, it’s been cold,” said Elizabeth Doty, director of the corporate political working group at the University of Michigan’s Erb Institute. “Companies have been really concerned about making commitments… that they couldn’t stand behind or that would expose them to legal and reputational attacks.”
Doty said that while companies once reacted to politics, leaders are trying to make their companies more adaptable to the political climate, an evolution that still makes people wonder what many companies stand for.
“They are trying to position themselves as politically neutral as a principled stance, but it seems opportunistic. It invites them to become more of a political football,” Doty said. When thinking about how companies can speak out on political and social issues, Doty and other researchers have found that it is important for companies to emphasize defending institutions, such as government and the electoral process, even as they try to remain politically neutral.
When Bezos published his opinion article In explaining why he blocked the Post’s presidential endorsement less than two weeks before the election, he called it a “principled decision.”
“I assure you that my opinions here are, in fact, based on principle,” he wrote. But in the op-ed, Bezos didn’t make clear what exactly his principles are, only that he believes Americans distrust the media.
“Being principled means being clear about what you are for, not who you are against,” Doty said. “There’s always a way to do it that’s not antagonistic to a candidate.”
While the pre-election period is a delicate time for political posturing, the post-election story – once the results start to become clear – will be different for business leaders.
“They are all primed and prepared to spring into action, as they have before, should a catastrophic tantrum occur,” Sonnenfeld said.
Ballou-Aares with the Leadership Now Project collected signatures from dozens of business leaders calling on candidates to comply with election laws and accept the legitimacy of the election.
“We need to make sure that there is a very broad coalition to support the legitimacy of the electoral process itself,” Ballou-Aares said. “If we are in a situation where we are in a closely contested election, there will be efforts to weaken the coalition.”
Public silence and private politicking now make business sense. If Trump wins next week, American businesses will face a bigger test.