Trumpenomics
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The Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute’s CEO forum gathers top political leaders with Fortune 500 CEOs for a Chatham House rules discussion where direct quotes are off the record. In Washington DC this week at the 155th gathering, as clouds swirled around the Capitol building just steps away, senators from both parties and some top Trump administration officials joined us. They had to face down the near unanimous verdict from over 100 top business leaders, representing some of the world’s largest companies and most iconic brands: Trump’s policies aren’t working. These opinions were all about business results, by the way: the reasoning was independent of personal politics or industry sector, it always came back to the bottom line.
Business leaders at our forum worry that Trump is undermining an economic system that took decades to build and has long benefited the U.S. more than any other country, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, all for short-term gains. They see what’s happening as a hollowing out of U.S. economic foundations and institutions. In this free-to-speak environment (a loaded topic these days), they said that while they approve of bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. and bolstering economic and national security, they fear for America’s international standing amid the degradation of national security at the FBI, the CIA, and the Pentagon.
