Trump Strategic and Policy Forum, Which Included IBM and GM CEOs, Disbands

[matt4077]

Matt 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-cons...

[WaxProlix]

> 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.

[sn9]

As an aside, that space blockchain section is 0.30 bitcoin [0].

[0] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=price+of+gold+in+bitcoi...

[fleetwood]

Matt Levine always says it best

[davidreiss]

Is there a reason for the love that some on HN have for Matt Levine? Seems like every finance related topic brings up matt levine.

> Matt Levine says it best:

Is that the really best?

[_1]

Just 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/89747827044214374...

How many had already quit and this was just to stop further embarrassing himself?

[zitterbewegung]

Twelve quit before it was disbanded. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Manufacturing_Council and sort by Membership status.

[yincrash]

According to the article the entire Strategy & Policy Forum disbanded beforehand, and he tweeted that to save face.

[powertower]

> 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.

[jldugger]

Not exactly a vote of confidence in the administration's priorities in renegotiating NAFTA, which started like an hour ago.

[Analemma_]

It 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-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".

[WaxProlix]

> 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]

Pension 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.

[gertef]

That's just what a stock market is, if stocks are owned broadly by members of the public.

[whytaka]

Where are you citing this from?

[qntty]

Stock grants to employees?

[corporateslave3]

The 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.

[empath75]

I am willing to entertain the idea that the ceos of large corporations are also decent human beings.

[gremlinsinc]

Pretty 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...

[kiba]

How could you distinguish between "images" and "moral courage" in an environment that practically demand you to do so?

You don't.

[Consultant32452]

It's definitely political posturing/virtue signaling to customers. The big gripe is that Trump didn't explicitly call out white supremacists when denouncing hate and violence. The Sheriff explicitly stated that there was violent escalation from both the white supremacists and the antifa crowd. A single member of the white racist asshole group escalated the violence to the next level and someone got killed. I'm on board with explicitly calling out the white supremacists, but I think the reaction by the media is eye-rollingly inconsistent. They didn't hold anyone's feet to the fire when BLM killed cops, or antifa has previously escalated to violence. In short, this is fair criticism of Trump, but the scale of the response is kinda ridiculous. But also, I welcome the media to the club. Maybe we'll also get Islamic terrorists called out by their group identity too.

[AnotXOR]

We're at peak activism today and corporations are the primary targets. My guess is those CEO's were flooded by "concerned customers" who were probably as fake as so many twitter/facebook bots.

[sctb]

Please comment civilly and substantively on HN or not at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[maxxxxx]

The sad part is that business will go on but now the lobbyists will do the advising again.

[sxates]

Seems like these panels were in place more for their legitimizing optics than for genuine counsel.

[barneygumble742]

The 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.

[bbctol]

I'd guess the lobbyists were doing the actual advising before this anyway.

[lightbyte]

Lobbyists act on behalf of business, how is this any different?

[austincheney]

So..... who else do you think the Republicans are going to nominate for president in 2020?

[D-Coder]

Based on recent history, Martin Shkreli has good odds. :-)