The Washington Post
Even after all the alarming antics former president Donald Trump has engaged in over the past decade, it was jarring to learn what he said to about two dozen oil company executives at an April 11 dinner in his Palm Beach, Fla., mansion, Mar-a-Lago.
As The Post reported, Mr. Trump responded to one executive’s complaint about the burdensome regulations the industry faces under President Biden, despite spending $400 million on lobbying against them. He told them they should instead donate $1 billion to his presidential election campaign, in return for which they would get lighter regulation and lower taxes — a much better “deal.”
To be sure, it’s impossible to know whether this was a serious quid pro quo or just another case of the former president’s off-the-cuff bombast. Perhaps we’ll learn more if an inquiry by House Democrats gains traction. The troubling appearance, so consistent with Mr. Trump’s generally unprincipled approach to politics and government, is evident, though.
Mr. Trump’s placing of a “for sale” sign on his administration’s tax and regulatory policy — however seriously — raises the question of how U.S. business leaders generally view the upcoming election. The oil and gas industry is a special case, since it is unusually dependent on federal environmental policy and many industry leaders are known for ultraconservative politics.
Still, the CEOs at Mar-a-Lago represented part of a broader private sector that will soon face the same choice that all voters do: Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden. This, despite the fact that traditional Republican private sector leaders tried to promote alternatives to Mr. Trump, such as former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, in the GOP primaries.
They face this choice at a time when the two parties are no longer so clearly distinguishable on some key economic policies, largely because Mr. Trump has injected a note of populist protectionism into what was once a free-market Republican ideology. Meanwhile, the private sector itself is less coherent and its collective self-interest less clearly defined. Entrepreneurial billionaires such as Elon Musk, who recently hosted an “anti-Biden” dinner party for other executives and investors, set their own agendas.
Business advocates have understandable grievances with Mr. Biden. Not only has he kept the vast majority of Mr. Trump’s tariffs, but he has also added more. His regulatory and antitrust push has also gone too far at times, especially in his ban on liquefied natural gas exports. Still, the president has overseen strong macroeconomic performance. Despite inflationary challenges, the United States has recovered from the pandemic much more robustly than other leading economies. The stock market is at record levels. Corporate profits hit an all-time high in 2022 under Mr. Biden and have remained elevated.
Then there’s the fact Mr. Biden has shepherded bipartisan legislation that spends billions to resurrect U.S. manufacturing and repair the nation’s infrastructure. And, yes, U.S. oil production also soared to a record, even if the industry doesn’t give him credit — and even if the president, deferring to environmentalists in his coalition, is reluctant to take any.
There is little guarantee a second Trump term would be a net benefit for the private sector in terms of policy. His first term resulted in the largest corporate tax cut in U.S. history and many regulatory rollbacks, to be sure. But he’s openly talking about a 10 percent tariff on all imports — “a ring around the country,” as he puts it, which would be inflationary and chaotic. He is clear that he wants to not only restrict immigration but also deport millions of people, a recipe for social conflict and scarcer labor. Mr. Trump’s followers seem interested in trimming the Federal Reserve’s political independence.
More fundamentally, another four years of Mr. Trump would be hard to square with business’s usual preference for social and political stability, at home and abroad. His denigration of institutions such as NATO harmed U.S. standing in the world and sowed uncertainty about Asian and European security. His hostile words about Muslims and immigrants, along with occasional shots at iconic American brands, fueled culture wars. And all of that was before the violent disaster on Jan. 6, 2021. Like other Americans, many executives probably hoped Mr. Trump would give way to a more conventional Republican nominee in 2024. That has not happened. He’s running neck and neck with Mr. Biden even as his language and behavior get more extreme.
The strengths of American business have always been innovation and flexibility, leavened, in politics, by a sense of enlightened self-interest. The 2024 election poses a test of those strengths.
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