US chief executive advisers to Trump have been wandering off, one by one
COULD America’s first chief executive president lose America’s chief executives?
It was a question that came to the fore again on Monday when first Merck & Co’s Kenneth Frazier, then Under Armour Inc’s Kevin Plank and Intel Corp’s Brian Krzanich stepped down from a White House business group set up to advise Donald Trump.
While none mentioned the president, Frazier, one of the country’s most-prominent black chief executives, quit the council as Trump was being assailed for failing to quickly condemn white supremacists for deadly violence at a rally on Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia. Frazier said he was acting on a “matter of personal conscience.”
Plank and Krzanich, who are white, referred to the charged atmosphere in the US. Plank said he was quitting because his athletic-wear company “engages in innovation and sports, not politics,” and Krzanich, who leads the world’s largest semiconductor maker, cited a “divided political climate” and declared: “The current environment must change, or else our nation will become a shadow of what it once was and what it still can and should be.”
Pressure Trump on Monday eventually bowed to pressure and denounced racist hate groups, but the damage was done. Frazier and his compatriots joined the ranks of Elon Musk of Tesla, Bob Iger of Walt Disney and Travis Kalanick of Uber Technologies – executives who walked away from business panels Trump touted, taking the unusual steps of publicly distancing themselves from a sitting president.
“The value of the advisory council goes down when respected members leave over issues of principle,” said James Post, professor of management emeritus for the Questrom School of Business at Boston University. “Whereas the president could have claimed to learn from the council, now it seems that he only listens when they agree with him.”
Frazier’s departure earned the head of the pharmaceutical giant angry tweets from Trump, with one making an all-caps jab about costly prescription drugs and another griping that Merck is a leader in high prices and in sending jobs overseas.
Plank, who issued his resignation on Monday evening, came under fire earlier
‘The current environment must change, or else our nation will become a shadow of what it once was.’
this year from Under Armour brand ambassadors, including Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry, for comments the chief executive made about Trump being a pro-business asset in the White House. What’s more, some of the white supremacists in Charlottesville were photographed in Under Armour apparel, a fact noted in posts on the company’s Twitter page on Monday, which was crowded with calls for a product boycott if Plank didn’t resign from the council.
As for Intel’s Krzanich, his Twitter account was peppered on Monday by pleas for him to quit the White House group after he posted that “there should be no hesitation in condemning hate speech or white supremacy by name.”
Whatever their motivations for exiting, any chief executive joining the advisory council should’ve known what to expect, because there was little mystery about Trump’s policy positions, said Nick Donatiello, a lecturer on governance topics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. ”
Risk calculations Of course, the chief executives remaining on the advisory group – including those from Dow Chemical, General Electric and Wal-Mart Stores – all have their own “risk calculations” to make, said John Rice, chief executive of Management Leadership for Tomorrow, a non-profit group that helps companies, including Goldman Sachs Group and Alphabet’s Google, find minority talent.
And “they know they will get called out”.
Trump’s Twitter fury does seem to hold less powder these days. While his critical posts of companies or their executives have exacted retribution in the stock market in the past, Merck’s stock never faltered on Monday – closing about half a percentage point higher for a second consecutive day of gains. – Bloomberg