Why Big Business Isn't Backing Trump & the GOP

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Donald Trump went golfing. The President-elect played a round with Tiger Woods, then walked into the clubhouse at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he bumped into Stanton Anderson.

Florida senator Marco Rubio backed a unionization drive at an Amazon plant. Tennessee senator Marsha Blackburn is urging the Biden administration to crack down on Ticketmaster and other online ticket brokers who gouge consumers and jack up prices for Taylor Swift concerts and other events. Iowa senator Chuck Grassley wrote a bill to give federal regulators more tools to combat monopolies in the meat and poultry industries.

But as the economy faltered in the 1970s, things changed. Liberalism lost its luster. Labor unions withered. The Reagan Revolution ushered in a new era of conservative dominance—and thanks in part to the rising influence of corporate lobbyists and campaign contributions, lawmakers and officials in both major parties worked to reduce government authority and maximize economic efficiency.

Early in the campaign, Donohue said during a television interview that Trump had “very little idea about what trade really is.” Later, after Trump clinched the GOP nomination, the Chamber warned that millions of jobs would be lost if Trump’s vision for the economy were implemented. The next day, at a campaign rally in Bangor, Maine, Trump returned fire, saying the Chamber was “controlled totally by various groups of people that don’t care about you whatsoever.

“Cancel order!” the President-elect demanded in a tweet. “Costs are out of control.” That prompted Boeing’s CEO to call Trump to congratulate him on his election win—and promise to lower costs. Since the 1990s, Republicans and Democrats alike had taken a mostly hands-off approach to regulating the internet, helping the tech giant grow to spectacular size and influence. During the Obama years, Google executives met regularly with the President and top administration officials while its lobbyists and lawyers defeated an antitrust probe and secured favorable rules on net neutrality, online liability, and copyright issues.

Yet only a few months later, Google suffered its first major policy loss. For years, the company and other internet firms had enjoyed broad legal immunity from lawsuits related to the content that people post on their platforms—even content related to child sex trafficking. When Google made it clear it opposed any effort to change the liability protections, Portman and Blumenthal asked the company if there were changes they could make to the bill in order to win its support. Google refused to entertain a discussion. The senators kept pressing. Google dispatched a lobbyist who used to work for Portman to meet with his chief of staff in July 2017.

In late 2022, for instance, nearly 40 House Republicans joined with more than 200 of their Democratic colleagues in voting to enact legislation giving federal antitrust regulators more resources to block corporate mergers deemed harmful to consumers.

On Capitol Hill, when grocery-store companies Albertsons and Kroger announced plans to merge in 2022, several GOP lawmakers joined Democrats in criticizing the nearly $25 billion deal. During a key Senate hearing that fall, Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton questioned Kroger’s CEO about why the company had fired two employees who refused to wear an apron with a gay-pride insignia.

Florida senator Marco Rubio backed a unionization drive at an Amazon plant. Tennessee senator Marsha Blackburn is urging the Biden administration to crack down on Ticketmaster and other online ticket brokers who gouge consumers and jack up prices for Taylor Swift concerts and other events. Iowa senator Chuck Grassley wrote a bill to give federal regulators more tools to combat monopolies in the meat and poultry industries.

But as the economy faltered in the 1970s, things changed. Liberalism lost its luster. Labor unions withered. The Reagan Revolution ushered in a new era of conservative dominance—and thanks in part to the rising influence of corporate lobbyists and campaign contributions, lawmakers and officials in both major parties worked to reduce government authority and maximize economic efficiency.

 

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