Trump vs. The Business Community
By Steve Chapman
Most business executives fumed and groused for the eight years Barack Obama was in the White House. He was a former community organizer who had never met a payroll, and those in the corporate boardrooms thought he was no friend of free enterprise.
In 2010, New York real estate and media tycoon Mortimer Zuckerman said Obama’s “demonization of business” was discouraging investment, sapping job growth and generally creating an “economic Katrina.” Gary Shapiro, head of the Consumer Technology Association, called Obama “the most anti-business president” in his lifetime. Former General Electric Chairman Jack Welch implored the president, “Stop it. You can’t go industry by industry … through intimidation, business by business by business.”
As ordeals go, though, theirs was notably mild. The stock market soared; corporate profits nearly tripled; and the unemployment rate declined from 7.8 percent to 4.8 percent. From the depths of the Great Recession, the economy began what is now the third-longest expansion on record. When it came to the economy, the Obama years looked more like Mardi Gras than Hurricane Katrina.
Now, instead of a liberal lawyer in the White House, CEOs have one of their own. And they’re finding it’s not everything they hoped. The stock market and other economic indicators look about the same as they did before Donald Trump took office. In Obama’s final six months, the economy added an average of nearly 181,000 jobs per month. In Trump’s first six months, it added 179,000 per month. GDP growth has even slowed a bit.
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