The Knights of Industry at Their Roundtable

Voting is under way. Trump is blaming the Chinese for unleashing Covid-19 on America. Biden is blaming Trump for an inadequate response. Trump says his policies held the death toll to a bit more than 200,000 instead of a possible 2.5 million. Biden says the 200,000 deaths could have been avoided by quicker action and a government mandate to wear masks.

Both men want to delegate responsibility for policymaking, Trump to fate, Biden to “the scientists”. Trump, driving to reopen the economy, hopes, Micawber-like, that something will turn up, perhaps an elixir, or the right weather, or a vaccine. Biden wants to abdicate to the “scientists” who might call for shuttering the economy despite the psychic and health costs of such a move.

Meanwhile, a new battle has opened in the war for what the combatants believe to be the control of the Supreme Court for decades to come. Trump has nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Since Judge Barrett’s judicial philosophy is said to be rather like that of her former boss, Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom she clerked from 1998 to 1999, that has set Democrats on the war path, threatening to do such things as yet they know not, but they will be the terrors of the earth, to borrow from King Lear.

Bidenites say the seat should be left vacant until their man occupies the Oval Office and that if it is not, and the Democrats control the congress, “nothing is off the table”, as Senator Schumer warns, reaching deep to manufacture sufficient outrage to persuade Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez not to “primary” him in 2023, and add his to the congressional Democrat scalps already dangling from her belt.

Several Democrats want to offset Trump’s three conservative selections by adding three justices to the existing nine, the number set by congress in 1869. Small but probably not insuperable barrier: Joe Biden has said he opposes such court packing. AOC and Elizabeth Warren are leading efforts to persuade Biden to abandon his opposition to packing, with Warren arguing such a move is “not just about expansion, it’s about depoliticizing (sic) the Supreme Court.” This will provide an interesting test of Biden’s ability to withstand what we might politely call the importunings of his Left.

Both sides believe they can select a jurist who will reliably vote their preference on major issues, a theory not entirely supported by history, witness most recently conservatives’ disillusionment with Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, after serious unhappiness with his father’s selection of David Souter.

All this sturm und drang sets CEO teeth on edge, darkening their outlook for the economy. The Business Roundtable, around which these knights of finance and industry who together employ more than 15 million workers periodically gather, announced that CEO plans for hiring and capital investment have been lowered in response to reduced expectations for sales. The CEOs are predicting with admirable precision that the economy will grow by only 2.3% this year, below their earlier forecast of 2.6%. Joshua Bolten, president and CEO of the Roundtable, says that “American businesses now have their foot poised above the brake, and they’re tapping the brake peiodically.”

The main culprits are “uncertainty”, with which one would think it is the CEOs’ job to cope, and the absence of rules-based trade policy. Jamie Dimon, the Roundtable’s Chairman while not at his day job as Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, says he and his colleagues “stand ready to work with policymakers to address our nation’s biggest challenges to create conditions for inclusive growth, investment and job creation here in America.”

Dimon and group, of course, have no idea with which policymakers they will be working. Biden is leading in the polls, both nationally and in every battleground state. Judging by their campaign contributions, the Wall Street contingent is betting it will be Biden. Never mind that Trump’s tax and regulatory policies have enriched them, or that it is not clear that Biden will hew to the “moderate” left-of- center ground on which he claims to stand. His team is passing the word to the bankers that Elizabeth Warren and her plans for reform of the financial sector will become persona barely grata as soon as Biden has corralled the votes of her followers.

Like so many others, these members of the corporate elite are weary of the chaos and unpredictability of Trump’s governing style, and long for the good old days of access to the policymakers with whom they have grown up over the decades, the men and women of the Biden team, rather than having to introduce themselves to Trump’s ever-changing cast of characters, or deal with the likes of Peter Navarro. They know they will pay higher taxes – Biden has promised as much – but surely the impact can be worked out at the next meeting of their boards’ compensation committees, especially for those who, like CEO Dimon, report to themselves as chairman of the board.

One thing is certain: the titans of the Roundtable will have to do a better job of defining their role in society than they did when they concocted a new “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation”, calling for a “move away from shareholder primacy.” The mush served up by the CEOs was of so little real-world consequence that few bothered to put to their boards what they were hailing as a major change in the way they run their businesses. No surprise, then, that a new study financed by the Ford Foundation found that the Business Roundtable statement “has failed to deliver fundamental shifts in corporate purpose.”

Events are forcing social issues from the periphery to the center of concerns of the sentient among the business leaders. Recent protests on racial issues have not only forced new, more intense attention to the issue of discrimination in hiring. They also have led to a broader reappraisal of the responsibility of the corporate sector to make up for dysfunctional government. Past efforts seem inadequate to stem a rising sense that corporate America is more a problem than a solution to what ails America. One thing is certain. Dysfunctional government is bad for business.

After the courts have decided who won the election, it is a good bet that corporate chiefs will expand their briefs beyond making campaign contributions and lobbying, beyond even accepting responsibility for carbon footprints and income inequality, and become more active in national policymaking, with restoration of sanity to the nation’s fiscal condition, and more sensitive attention to the overall needs of their 15 million workers high on their list.

Whether having a group of unelected millionaires increase its influence on the politicians elected by the people to govern them is a good idea is a question for another day.

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