Donald Trump embarked on a trade war with China expecting it might cause a recession that would throw Americans out of work, warning that it would cause “some pain” — despite public surveys showing Americans are afraid of what the tariffs would do to their personal finances, and even as they are already causing job losses and economic suffering for workers and farmers. None of it seemed to have any impact on the president’s decision-making.
But one group of Americans has had their concerns about the tariffs heard and attended to by the White House: CEOs and donors.
From the start of Trump’s chaotic tariff rollout, Trump has paid attention, and sometimes wildly changed course on trade policy after listening, to a variety of Wall Street titans and corporate executives — even granting them special, private audiences to air out their concerns.
Take Trump’s first turnaround on the tariffs, which saw the president announce he was pausing his massive across-the-board tariffs for ninety days on all but China just a week after he put them in place. According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump’s walkback came after having lunch with investor Charles Schwab and watching JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warning on Fox Business that the tariffs would cause a recession.
Meanwhile, the newspaper reported, his Treasury secretary Scott Bessent “was flooded with worried calls from Wall Street” that prompted him to persuade Trump to suspend the tariffs, while other unnamed “banking executives” pushed GOP lawmakers to warn him he would crash the economy.
Separately, venture capitalist and Trump donor Chamath Palihapitiya, who gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Republican National Committee last year, raved in a recent interview about how responsive the Trump White House was to those who gave it money. Palihapitiya complained that despite being a “lifelong Democrat” and a megadonor to the Democratic Party, he “could never…
Auteur: Branko Marcetic
