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.
Who says they supported Trump in the first place? Business 101 teaches that a stable, predictable market is good for business. First go-round was bad enough, but this time Trump campaigned on massive tariffs. And again, they knew damned well that would be bad for the economy.
If my dumbass knows all this, I can hardly imagine a top-level CEO would not. Small-time CEOs can be dipshits, but stupid CEOs are rare at major companies. We just don’t hear about regular competency because it’s only news when they say or do something wildly stupid.