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Donald Trump told a gathering of top US CEOs on Thursday that he would slash taxes and regulations while pushing up tariffs, as he tried to win backing for his populist economic agenda from the country’s business leaders.
Trump made the remarks at a Business Roundtable event in Washington, which was attended by about 100 corporate leaders, including Citigroup’s Jane Fraser, Apple’s Tim Cook, Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan and longtime JPMorgan Chase boss Jamie Dimon.
The meeting came just weeks after Trump became the first former president to be convicted of a felony when a jury found him guilty in a New York “hush money” trial. He also met Republicans on Capitol Hill.
In a roughly hour-long conversation with his former National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow, Trump discussed his right-wing economic agenda and bashed President Joe Biden’s handling of global events, from the US’s withdrawal from Afghanistan to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s attack on Israel.
The former president told his audience he would consider lowering the 21 per cent corporate tax rate even further, after cutting it from 35 per cent in 2017, according to one person who attended.
“I thought he came across as solid, almost business-like, and not something else like we sometimes see,” said an executive who was in the room.
Another CEO in attendance said: “It was the same Trump we have seen and heard a hundred times but more subdued.”
Trump’s economic adviser Stephen Moore said the former president had stressed deregulation and the use of tariffs on imports as a “negotiating tactic” with foreign countries. He said Trump would extend his 2017 tax cuts, some of which are due to expire in 2025.
The former president also mentioned his plan to remove taxes on tips, and drew laughter from the audience when he said he had spoken to a waitress and golf caddies who liked the idea.
The Business Roundtable invites both presidential candidates to address its 200 chief executive members ahead of every US election.
Among those who gave the event a miss were Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, who has already endorsed Trump, as well as Darren Woods of ExxonMobil and Bill Thomas of KPMG.
Biden’s chief of staff Jeff Zients stood in for the president, who is at the G7 summit in Italy, and warned the CEOs they should not take political stability for granted, according to some people who were in the room. He praised several chief executives including Apple’s Cook.
Circling outside the Business Roundtable headquarters was a mobile advertisement paid for by the Democratic party, blasting out footage from Trump’s recent fraud conviction in New York and the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol by a mob of his supporters.
Corporate America has enjoyed record profits under Biden but many business leaders are wary of some of the president’s budget proposals, including higher taxes for rich individuals and corporations, as well as on capital gains and stock buybacks.
Trump has won growing support among Wall Street bosses in recent weeks, with hedge fund titans including Bill Ackman saying they are likely to support him in this year’s White House race.
The Business Roundtable will launch an eight-figure ad campaign ahead of the election advocating to keep the 21 per cent corporate tax rate and low taxes on income earned abroad and on intellectual property.
Many business leaders said they were sceptical of both Biden and Trump. One Business Roundtable member told the Financial Times: “We are facing the most disastrous combination of presidential candidates in the history of the United States.”
“No matter whether it’s Trump or Biden [who wins in November], I think we’re in a period of heightened regulatory scrutiny,” added a chief financial officer of a Business Roundtable company. “When it’s all said and done we’ll play the game.”
Additional reporting by Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, Stephen Foley and Brooke Masters
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