Fortune Magazine: What Obama Means for Business

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What Obama means for business

He slammed big companies and free trade in the primaries, but Barack Obama insists he just wants to show corporate America some tough love. We go behind the scenes to see how he plans to make the U.S. a land of opportunity once again.

By Nina Easton, Washington bureau chief
Last Updated: June 23, 2008: 11:22 AM EDT

(Fortune Magazine) -- Barack Obama is shaking his head. "No, no, no, no, no." His slim figure had been bent forward in a folding chair (prime position to radiate outsized charm).

But my question - does he consider corporate America a destructive force? - prompts him to bolt upright to a more defensive pose. It's a purposely provocative query, but a fair one: When Obama talks about business, it's usually to complain about corporate tax breaks or trade deals or jobs shipped overseas. High-paid CEOs are the familiar villains in his stump speeches, including the one he has just given on this Raleigh fairground.

Free-market critics look at his varied plans to raise taxes and pronounce him hostile to wealth creation and market growth. And in a small but telling episode during the Indiana primary, his campaign used a 2007 Fortune cover story - "Business Loves Hillary" - to attack Clinton, as if "business" were a dirty word, not the nation's economic engine.

So? "There's a reason why the business community in Chicago as a whole has been very supportive of me," he says. "They know I am a pro-growth guy, and I'm a pro-market guy. And I always have been. What I do get frustrated with is an economy that is out of balance, that rewards a very few - with rewards that are all out of proportion to their actual success - while ordinary, hardworking Americans continue to get squeezed. Over the last decade or so, this economy grew substantially, and more than half of the total growth was captured by the top 1%."

Here, the great reconciler pauses, just briefly, to give due to forces that aren't easy targets of political blame. "Now part of that has to do with globalization and with global capital being able to move everywhere it wants. It has meant a winner-take-all environment."

But, he adds, quickly returning to Washington politics, "a lot of it has to do with tax policies" that favor the big winners. That means President Bush's policies, and by extension those of Obama's rival, John McCain.

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http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/20/magazines/fortune/easton_obama.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008062311