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Trump Strategic and Policy Forum, Which Included IBM and GM CEOs, Disbands
- jldugger 9y agoNot exactly a vote of confidence in the administration's priorities in renegotiating NAFTA, which started like an hour ago.
- Analemma_ 9y agoIt was already clear that nothing of substance is going to come out of the NAFTA talks, both because nobody in business or agriculture wants it (http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/15/trump-win-nafta-talks-241617 http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/15/trump-win-nafta-tal...) and because nobody is impressed by Trump anymore: just like the rest of the world, Canada and Mexico have figured out that he's all bluster and folds like a cheap tent as soon as you say "No".
- gremlinsinc 9y agoIt was already clear that nothing of substance...was going to come out of this entire 4 year term... I think you meant to say..
- ep103 9y agoOnly if we're lucky. Repealing obamacare without a replacement came within a single vote.
- eggpy 9y agoTrue, but that carried a lot of Republican support and was not just a Trump initiative.
- orclev 9y agoYeah, the congress and senate might actually accomplish something (for good or evil), but the president is just a side show to keep people distracted and drum up ad revenue for news companies (and I use the term loosely).
- maxxxxx 9y agoWith the uncertainty they have spread and the refusal to work on Obamacare problems they are on track of making it fail even without repealing.
- maxerickson 9y agoThe public exchanges may not have any affordable policies or even any policies at all available at some point. The ACA is a lot more than just the public exchanges.
- gertef 9y agoThat's Congress not the Executive
- maxxxxx 9y agoThey will lower taxes mainly for upper incomes and produce huge deficits. They will have made the US health system even worse. Another achievement will be winding back a lot of environmental rules. So I think they are on track with their real goals. Helping the American worker was never a serious goal.
- _1 9y agoJust yesterday: > "For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!" https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/897478270442143744 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/89747827044214374... How many had already quit and this was just to stop further embarrassing himself?
- yincrash 9y agoAccording to the article the entire Strategy & Policy Forum disbanded beforehand, and he tweeted that to save face.
- zitterbewegung 9y agoTwelve quit before it was disbanded. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Manufacturing_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Manufacturing_Council and sort by Membership status.
- egwynn 9y agoMight be worth noting that three of those twelve left because they left their jobs with their respective companies, and one in protest of a different matter in Juny. It looks like eight left in the past two days in protest of Charlottesville stuff.
- powertower 9y ago> The President’s Strategic and Policy Forum was conceived as a bi-partisan group of business leaders called to serve our country by providing independent feedback and perspectives directly to the President on accelerating economic growth and job creation in the United States. This "Strategic and Policy Forum" existed for the sole purpose of promoting the individual company interests... Such as how to best offshore the work-force, pay less taxes, etc. This backhanded manipulation and dealings did not work on Trump as well as it did on the previous presidents. So now they are disbanding (as they serve no purpose), and using this moment to attempt to discredit the person they could not manipulate.
- matt4077 9y agoMatt Levine says it best: "[..] but I have to confess that it seems odd to me to denounce Nazism out of fealty to shareholder value. You can just denounce Nazism because you're not a Nazi! This is a financial newsletter, but I have never assumed that the operations of capital are autonomous and self-executing, or that executives are robots who are programmed to maximize shareholder value to the exclusion of all other considerations. Corporations exist in society, and are not above society's concerns. Businesses operate through human beings, who remain human even in their roles as CEOs. One would hope." https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-16/ceos-consultants-and-communists https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-16/ceos-cons...
- fleetwood 9y agoMatt Levine always says it best
- WaxProlix 9y ago> I have never assumed that the operations of capital are autonomous and self-executing, or that executives are robots who are programmed to maximize shareholder value to the exclusion of all other considerations. But that is how it works, right? If you don't maximize shareholder value you can be ousted, if you don't where others do you will lose in the marketplace and cease to exist. Isn't that competitive ruthlessness exactly what people like about our current system? > Corporations exist in society, and are not above society's concerns. Businesses operate through human beings, who remain human even in their roles as CEOs. One would hope. Citation needed, I guess. For mid-small size companies this might be the case, but evidence seems to point to the opposite of this for any organization large enough to be its own thing outside of the humans and subsystems that comprise its pieces.
- rhizome 9y agoBut that is how it works, right? If you don't maximize shareholder value you can be ousted Depends on what you mean by "maximize," since "shareholder value" is a matter of opinion. Some might make the case for short-term rises at all costs, while others take a longer view of "value." In between are a lot of experts and self-proclaimed experts.
- maxxxxx 9y agoThe sad part is that business will go on but now the lobbyists will do the advising again.
- bbctol 9y agoI'd guess the lobbyists were doing the actual advising before this anyway.
- sxates 9y agoSeems like these panels were in place more for their legitimizing optics than for genuine counsel.
- lightbyte 9y agoLobbyists act on behalf of business, how is this any different?
- barneygumble742 9y agoThe lobbyists never stopped advising. In fact his administration is filled with former lobbyists that are now on the executive branch's payroll. That's one way to drain the swamp.
- corporateslave3 9y agoThe weird part is they arent doing it for political reasons, this is to protect the image of their corporation. But we havent been told that. There is so much obfuscation of the truth in politics, I am constantly amazed and dismayed at the same time.
- gremlinsinc 9y agoPretty sure that's part of it, but I'm also sure most of these people/ceo's are definitely not closet Nazi's and they definitely don't want another Hitler to rise in America as that would definitely be bad for business...
- corporateslave3 9y agoIn what ways has Trump done anything similar to Hitler?
- gregpardo 9y agoOh you didn't get the memo... He's LITERALLY the same. The media told me so.
- mulletbum 9y agoAttacked the media and placed almost all the blame for American hardships on immigrants?
- eggpy 9y ago'so-called judges' is a terrifying precedent...
- davidreiss 9y agoSo-called judges once ruled that blacks were property rather than human. We have a long history of "so-called judged". Go read about what lincoln felt about judges.
- gremlinsinc 9y agoThis is so sad...Nobody wants to play w/ the bigot/racist/nazi sympathizing president... things were so much easier for Hitler...
- sctb 9y agoPlease comment civilly and substantively on HN or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- gremlinsinc 9y agosorry, sometimes I forget I'm not on reddit.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- WaxProlix 9y ago> You can believe that broad common ownership of the means of production can still foster competition, while also thinking that that common ownership should be allocated by capitalist methods. I don't understand how this would work - anyone more economically versed care to chime in on how you could have common ownership of the means of production that was also distributed capitalistically?
- richmarr 9y agoPension funds do this already to a degree. Everyone pays in, the funds invest in all sorts of things, so everyone kinda owns bits of everything in a capitalist way. Of course it's obfuscated enough that it's hard to know what you own a piece of, but it doesn't have to be that way.
- whytaka 9y agoWhere are you citing this from?
- gertef 9y agoThat's just what a stock market is, if stocks are owned broadly by members of the public.
- qntty 9y agoStock grants to employees?
- austincheney 9y agoSo..... who else do you think the Republicans are going to nominate for president in 2020?
- D-Coder 9y agoBased on recent history, Martin Shkreli has good odds. :-)