How Many American Businesses Does Trump Think He Owns?

How Many American Businesses Does Trump Think He Owns?

Everybody older than three years knows that the Republican Party is the party of Free Enterprise. It is still the party which opposes any and all regulations that impinge on the freedom of industry or business. Again, four year olds know that it is also the party of free trade, where profits and international competition is more important than American jobs.

So why does President Trump daily act like he owns or has the right to boss around or bully any American business? He also freely bullies foreign countries in trade, especially in industries where he can pick up much needed votes in coal country or the rust belt. Or to pull up $10 billion to help American farmers hurt by counter tariffs.

It used to be that people could get sued for maligning businesses, when such treatment would lower their sales or stock price. Trump wants to strengthen slander and defamation laws, but will find that they will act mainly against himself.

I wish I had notes or a newsroom to look up every business that he has bullied. I will just mention the ones that I remember or can find on Google. We’ll start at the top: Amazon. This was founded by Jeff Bezos who is now the world’s richest man at $150 billion. Amazon was also the first business to reach an evaluation of $1 trillion ($945 billion today). Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, but has stayed off of the editorial department. That may be why Trump has attacked Amazon for taking advantage of the postal system whatever that means. The post office is really an independently run business. Was Trump trying to drive the Post into making up “fake news”?

This last week, Trump took on Nike ($131 billion) who started an edgy and youth oriented ad featuring Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49er who started kneeling at the National Anthem to protest the treatment of blacks by police. Trump has also threatened all NFL teams who would not fire athletes who kneeled similarly.

Trump interfered with all steel and aluminum using businesses by threatening and then imposing them with friends and allies as well as competitive nations. Clearly, all steel using businesses would be paying more, as will all consumers, and foreign countries to which we are exporting our products. There is an appeal panel, but it is the steel industry council which judges these appeals, and it is not granting any over a hundred of such requests.

A few weeks ago, Trump attacked LeBron James, affecting the LA Lakers, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and possibly the entire NBA.

Trump also attacked America’s hog icon, Harley-Davidson.

Trump had the DOJ attack the AT&T Time-Warner merger, possibly since Time-Warner owns CNN.

Trump regularly attacks the “failing” New York Times. Also NBC and their liberal channel MSNBC. The NY Times makes a profit, partly because of Trump himself.

Trump has attacked automobile makers Ford and GM.

Trump’s immigration cutbacks have affected farm labor, where 50-70% of laborers are unauthorized.

Trump had attacked Merck when their CEO resigned from Trump’s manufacturing council after Charlottesville.
160 tech firms attacked Trump’s ban from some Muslim countries, as affecting their recruiting, employees, and the economy.

Trump attacked Apple this week for manufacturing abroad, despite its main competitors doing the same thing. Apple is worth $1.055 trillion today.

Trump’s tax plan lowering the business tax from 35% to 21% has been tremendously profitable to them, where most of them bought back stock to raise the price and evaluation. Very little has trickled down to raise employee salaries, or even to expand with more jobs.

Not the same old business-friendly Republican Party, but very wealthy-friendly.

The US GDP was $18.6 trillion in 2016.   While Republicans in Congress will not stand up to check Trump, has Trump also bought out any challenges from the US business community, which he is bringing  chaos to?  The answer is NO!  Harley-Davidson stood up to Trump.  Nike is standing up to Trump with its new ads.  It has recovered after its small, week-long drop.  Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has stood up to Trump’s command to move its manufacturing to the US.  It’s jobs are highly repetitive, fine detailed assembly, which nobody really wants.

Climate action and socio-economic worldwide progress is predicted to gain $26 trillion by 2030 compared with business as usual.  How much of this progress has Trump blocked us from by making us the one nation to drop out of the Paris Climate Agreement?

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
This entry was posted in Donald Trump. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply