Last week, 30 chief executives of America’s top 100 largest companies hastily came together in an online dawn meeting to discuss President Donald Trump’s unsupported claims that the US election had been “stolen” from him.
The executives were trying to figure out how to best leverage their personal and organisational influence to ensure a peaceful transition of power, a hallmark of the US political system. Some participants felt that worries of a potential coup were overblown. Others thought they weren’t. Most just wanted an end to election turmoil. Within days, other groups, like the US Chamber of Commerce, were calling for Mr Trump to stop delaying the transition. Business, as always, hates uncertainty.
Reading the news, I had conflicting feelings. On the one hand, I was glad that business leaders were thinking about the importance of liberal democracy in America and how to defend it. I also couldn’t help but feel that some of the corporate concern was a bit “too little, too late”. Most big business trade groups had been supportive of the Trump administration when it was getting ready to pass what turned out to be the largest corporate tax cuts since the George W Bush