All The CEOs And Economists Hate Trump And Think He's An Idiot
What do CEOs and economists know about business or economy?
The media is having a hard time saying things like “actually, the economy is doing great,” or even more nuanced things like “yes, we understand that cars and housing are too expensive, but overall, the economy is strong, and Joe Biden is the only one who has any desire or plans to fix the things that need to be fixed.”
Those are true facts, though.
And little indicators keep showing up to help remind us that Donald Trump would be an absolute wrecking ball for the economy.
For instance, Felix Salmon is reporting at Axios that out of all the Fortune 100 CEOs — AKA people who are as rich as they say they are — not a one of them has donated to Trump this cycle. This is significantly down from past presidential cycles, where some Fortune 100 CEOs would donate to the Republican presidential candidate. In 2004, over 40 of them! In 2008 and 2012? Almost 30 each time!
The other years since then, the ones named “Trump”? Uh, well. In 2020, two of them sucked it up and wrote a check. That’s it.
Salmon notes that this is a cohort where two-thirds are registered as Republicans. But we guess they just don’t love Trump enough.
Salmon links to an op-ed from Dr. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld from Yale, who put all these numbers together. He explains that it’s not that these CEOs just love Joe Biden (he keeps siccing the FTC on them! they find that annoying!), but:
The reality is that the top corporate leaders working today, like many Americans, aren’t entirely comfortable with either Mr. Trump or President Biden. But they largely like — or at least can tolerate — one of them. They truly fear the other.
And Sonnenfeld lists some of the things that make them feel better about Biden, despite misgivings about some other things (progressive things Biden has done, like antitrust enforcement and tyrannically taxing them at 28 percent):
[I]nvestments in infrastructure to rebuild highways and bridges, which will help reduce supply chain disruptions; government support for domestic chip making and electric vehicle production; record corporate profits and exuberant financial markets burying fears of a widely anticipated recession; the successful transformation of the United States into the world’s largest oil and natural gas producer.
Then there was that roundtable meeting Trump had a few weeks ago with CEOs, who found Trump remarkably stupid and ignorant, even for Trump. “Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said a CEO, according to CNBC. He didn’t have any plans or any ideas how he wanted to do anything he allegedly wanted to do. Plus:
Several CEOs “said that [Trump] was remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought [and] was all over the map,” Andrew Ross Sorkin, co-host of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” reported.
And this wasn’t woke CEOs from commie big businesses, as Sorkin explained. It was the regular kind of CEO, who leans Republican:
The same CEOs who were struck by Trump’s lack of focus “walked into the meeting being Trump supporter-ish or thinking that they might be leaning that direction,” Sorkin reported.
“These were people who I think might have been actually predisposed to [Trump but] actually walked out of the room less predisposed” to him, Sorkin said.
Also he was very low-energy.
Is there anybody in big business who loves Trump? Maybe these 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists, maybe they know something about “economy”?
Sixteen Nobel prize-winning economists are jumping into the presidential campaign with a stark warning: Former President Trump's plans would reignite inflation and cause lasting harm to the global economy if he wins in November. […]
"While each of us has different views on the particulars of various economic policies, we all agree that Joe Biden's economic agenda is vastly superior to Donald Trump," the 16 economists write in a letter, first obtained by Axios.
Very embarrassing Nobel-winning economists, not like Alan Dershowitz or Sean Hannity or whichever REAL (Fox News) economists are on the stack of printouts Trump will likely show up to the debate this week with.
Ah, the debate.
Have we mentioned that Trump’s team seems absolutely panicked about the debate?
“The economy” could be just reason 56,286 why.
[New York Times / CNBC]
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My brother is an economist. He worked for the Fed, a couple of investment banks, and a very big international bank.
When he was working, I would ask him questions about economic issues and the related politics, and he would expound at length, but with careful language, as economists are wont to do.
He retired last year, and now is writing a blog mainly for economists and various other wonks.
I started a conversation with him recently about economic stuff and what Trump has been saying.
OK, the gloves are off now :-).
Let's just summarize his analysis as "Trump is a fucking idiot and a disaster in the making." To be fair, he is also critical of the current Fed, which he considers chronically late to address bad trends.
I am not a CEO but I also think Trump is A IDIOT.
CEO material here!