Corporate America's Embrace of Trump 2.0

0:05After Donald Trump won the presidency in November, a flood of money started pouring into his inauguration fund. We've seen one company after another really kind of follow a similar playbook for how to deal with this administration. And it starts by opening their wallets. These donations are helping pay for stuff like galas and balls at the inauguration. And our colleague Chip Cutter has been following the money. One executive after another has all decided to give a million dollars, sort of name the company, named the big brand. McDonald's. McDonald's gave money to this fund. Toyota. Joining other major auto companies like Ford and General Motors in making$1 million donation to President Obama.

0:52Boeing. Boeing gave money to this fund. Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg, is also giving$1 million to the fund. Uh, Walmart. Walmart gave money to the fund. Uber, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, the list goes on and on.

1:10What are these companies getting for this money? So these companies get some tickets to the inauguration. There is a candlelit dinner that will be attended by Trump and Melania Trump. Actual things? Actual things. Spending that kind of money isn't unusual for companies to get in with a new administration. But this time feels a little different. because some companies that had once slammed Trump are now cozying up to him. I think what has been striking this time is the level of shape-shifting that's happening. From what companies have done and said in the past and what they're saying now, companies see an opportunity.

1:53They realize that they need to be in Trump's ear, that now is the time. If you want to get your views in front of him, you need to do it now. And as one person told us, the billionaires are coming around the mountain. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Kate Leinbaugh. It's Friday, January 17th.

2:22Coming up on the show, corporate America comes around to Trump.

2:44Back in 2016, many business leaders were caught off guard by Trump's victory. Most of corporate America really didn't have a relationship with Trump then. You know, he was kind of a political unknown. And so a lot of executives didn't know what to expect. You might remember one of Trump's early moves was to ask CEOs to join so-called business councils, panels meant to advise him on economic matters. The bosses of companies like IBM and Pepsi signed up, but the relationship was shaky. And almost from the very beginning, there were issues. Companies like Ford and others all pushed back against sort of Trump's early immigration moves in 2017.

3:25Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. CEOs quickly got out there to say how much they objected to this, what was oftentimes called a Muslim travel ban. Nearly 100 companies are joining the legal fight against President Trump's executive order on immigration. Here's a rundown of many of the major ones. Nike, General Electric, Microsoft. And Charlottesville was the big one. You will not replace us. It was a weekend of street battles and stark displays of racism, exploding into a deadly act of domestic terror. And it was Trump's comments that there were fine people on both sides, essentially, that really got CEOs upset.

4:12And after that happened, CEOs were almost tripping over themselves to get off of these councils and to distance themselves from Trump. This just in tonight, too. Another CEO has quit the president's job council. Ryan Krasanich of Intel said he was resigning to call attention to the, quote, divided political climate. Merck's CEO, Kenneth Frazier, is resigning from the president's American Manufacturing Council. In response to those resignations, Trump attacked some of the CEOs and eventually shut down the business councils. Also during his first term, Trump was quick to strike out at companies that did things he didn't like.

4:55He was willing to be threatening. I mean, he would make jabs at Amazon's Jeff Bezos, calling him Jeff Bozo, for example. Trump calling for a boycott of Major League Baseball and threatening Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola after their stand on Georgia's new voting law. One company in particular really drew Trump's ire. Facebook, now known as Meta. Trump had accused its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, of steering Facebook against him. Trump published a coffee table photo book of his first term that showed him meeting with Mark Zuckerberg in the Oval Office. And that photo carried an ominous warning. The caption said, quote, we are watching him closely.

5:35And if he does anything illegal this time, he will spend the rest of his life in prison. Because it's like with Trump, if things sour, all of a sudden you get a nickname and you get mentioned in the tweets and you get turned on. You get turned on. That's what companies are afraid of. If Trump can sort of whip up a large segment of the American public against a company or change sort of a public view of a company, that freaks executives out. They do not want consumers to turn against them either.

6:10Then came Election Day last November. Trump won both the Electoral College and the popular vote. So corporate America started looking for some advice. One person they've turned to has a lot of experience on either side of Trump. She was both his one-time UN ambassador and later his political rival. So Nikki Haley is now advising companies, CEOs, and boards on how to navigate this next administration. Okay, so she's like taking her experience of working with Trump and making it a job for herself. That's right. She's telling CEOs if they are about to meet with Trump, here's how to handle that. Here's what to say.

6:56And so what is she saying? Well, she says companies and CEOs should try to be more like Dolly Parton.

7:07Dolly Parton? Yes, the beloved country music star. Nikki Haley said Dolly Parton is a good example for how CEOs should operate. Even though Dolly Parton has for years supported gay rights and COVID-19 vaccine research and other efforts, Her personal politics aren't really that well known. I'm not being political. I don't do politics. I'm not getting into any of that because I have a lot of fans out there and I don't want to offend anybody. And besides, I just don't get into that. And so if you are deciding you may want to ask me something more serious, don't because I'm not going to answer it.

7:41And Nikki Haley says this should be the model that, you know, basically CEOs should shut up. This is the advice Nikki Haley says will position companies well. So that's the Dolly Parton strategy. when it comes to having opinions in public. And then there's dealing directly with Trump. And one big business leader thinks he cracked the code during Trump's first term. So, for example, Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, has developed a real approach. And that's when he has dinner with Trump or he has a meeting with him, he will just bring one topic up. He knows that he doesn't want the conversation to wander or go in all different directions.

8:19He wants to bring up one thing and try to use that time to really advocate for his positions and try to get Trump to understand what Apple is doing. Do you think there's something that companies learned from Trump 1.0 that they're applying now? I think they learned that they need to have a relationship with him. I think they realized that Trump is someone who values those one-on-one connections. They kind of know what Trump stands for now. They know how he operates. And many have come to the conclusion that it's better to engage. It's better to be sort of in his ear than it is to be on the sidelines quietly criticizing him.

9:00Or sort of publicly much more or loudly criticizing him. After the break, what companies are actually doing.

9:12Nach der Krise beginnt nicht die Ruhe, sondern die Veränderung. But it's happening online. zulantwortlich. It's similar. That's showing the겁 because of the data and experts. In this episode of the five, the maximum passion will come out of itself. In this episode, every way, there are podcasts.

9:46Not long after Election Day, a lineup of private jets landed in Palm Beach, Florida. CEOs descended on Mar-a-Lago to have an audience with Trump. We've had everybody. Jeff Bezos came. Bill Gates came. Mark Zuckerberg came. Many of them came numerous times. The bankers have all come. Everybody's coming. I haven't had anybody saying anything bad about me. I'm not used to it. And executives have been making real changes that align with Trump's vision for the country. We've seen companies roll back some of their DEI efforts. After the election, for example, Walmart did this. We've seen McDonald's walk back some of its DEI policies.

10:29We saw a number of big banks pull back from a U.N.-backed climate coalition. Over at Meta, the company ended fact-checking on Facebook. It donated that million dollars to Trump's inauguration fund. And it also named Dana White, chief executive of the UFC and a friend of Trump's, to its board of directors. So those were just like real moves it made that could be seen as trying to make Trump happy. There are also little things companies have done. Take Coca-Cola. The company has had a strained relationship with Trump. But this week, Coke gave Trump a gift. The Coca-Cola company gifted Trump this special bottle commemorating his second inauguration.

11:13Look at that smile on the president-elect's face. Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, he's kind of loving it. The first term, everybody was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend. I don't know. He's basking in all this attention and all these CEOs wanting to get his time. It's not yet clear how these strategies of playing nice with Trump will work out for companies in the long run. You know, how is the right going to view all of these moves by CEOs and by companies? And are companies really going to be as effective as they think they are? And, you know, in donating to this fund and trying to shape policies in a way that they think Trump will appreciate.

11:55Like, we'll see how that's all received. He must see their shape shifting. I think he does. And so that's partly why some question just whether this is all going to work or not.

12:12How does that make the statements that CEOs made those years back about their values sound today? Well, I think some are looking at those and trying to kind of square all this and wondering, like, where do CEOs really stand? They actually care about any of these issues they've talked about in the past. And I think many executives, when you talk to them quietly, would say like, yeah, we do actually. We do still care about climate change. We do still care about equality. We just don't feel like this is a moment politically where we can speak out about those. Are there issues where you could see CEOs taking a stand?

12:47Yes. And so I keep asking about this. Like, give me the scenario where you might speak out this time. And one person who leads communications for a big multinational, he said the bar is so high right now that he says I could see us putting out a public statement if Trump does something that is just seen as so egregious, so sort of against the law that we have to take a stand because we can't do business otherwise. It's like I could see us weighing in there. But otherwise, if it's just sort of policies that we don't like, we're not going to say anything. And I think there's a lot of companies that are in that boat.

13:25Do you think we'll see companies take a stand or speak out about Trump policies that could impact their businesses pretty directly? Like maybe mass deportations? I was with a bunch of HR executives at a small breakfast, and they were all saying that they are preparing for this exact scenario. Like, if there are mass deportations, what do we do? How do we respond? And the answer was, well, our lawyers have been advising us to have our paperwork ready, to know where our employees are. You know, if there are immigration raids, for example, we better be prepared for that. It was not, well, we're just all going to band together and there's going to be a really forceful public letter.

14:12I just think that those days are kind of past us. On Monday at Trump's inauguration, the corporate charm offensive will be on full display. A bevy of high-profile CEOs and business leaders have snagged tickets to be with Trump. Google boss Sundar Pichai is planning to be in the crowd, along with Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Tim Cook. And of course, Elon Musk. What are the risks of these kinds of moves for companies? Well, I think the risk is that companies go too far and that they anger consumers, employees, other stakeholders. Many have said that there's just this risk that companies appear too cozy with the incoming administration.

14:57And that's, you know, this view among some employees, some consumers, that these companies are what some have described to us as spineless, that they're just willing to blow in whatever way the political winds blow, that they're not willing to stand up for broader principles. I mean, there are a lot of consumers, for example, that feel deeply concerned about climate change. They really do worry about the state of equality in the workforce, and they want to see companies show that they care about these things. And so I think the cost here is that you turn off employees, you turn off consumers, and you just frustrate a lot of people.

15:41That's all for today. Friday, January 17th. Additional reporting in this episode by Eric Schwartzel. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. The show is made by Catherine Brewer, Pia Godkari, Rachel Humphries, Ryan Knudsen, Sophie Codner, Matt Kwong, Colin McNulty, Jessica Mendoza, Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez de la Rosa, Sarah Platt, Alessandra Rizzo, Alan Rodriguez Espinosa, Heather Rogers, Pierce Singhi, Jivaka Verma, Lisa Wang, Catherine Whalen, Tatiana Zamis, and me, Kate Leinbaugh. with help from Trina Menino. Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapok, and Peter Leonard.

16:27Our theme music is by So Wiley. Additional music this week by Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord, Emma Munger, Nathan Singapok, Griffin Tanner, So Wiley, and Blue Dot Sessions. Fact-checking by Mary Mathis.

16:48Thanks for listening. See you Monday.