Trump attacks CEOs over ‘disgraceful’ pay
BILLIONAIRE presidential candidate Donald Trump has launched an attack on the US’s top earners.
The Republican party’s frontrunner has said the high salaries paid to chief executives are a ‘joke’ and a ‘disgrace’ and said these were often approved by company boards stacked with the CEO’s friends.
Trump, a real estate mogul who said he plans to use his net worth of more than $10billion to fund his White House campaign, told CBS that it was hard to tackle the question of corporate pay because too many company boards lacked independence.
‘It’s disgraceful. Sometimes the boards rule but I would probably say it’s less than 10 per cent; and you see these guys making enormous amounts of money. It’s a total and complete joke,’ he said.
Trump highlighted r etailer Macy’s, which in July stopped selling his menswear line after he described some immigrants from Mexico as drug-runners and rap- ists. He said: ‘You’ll take a company like, I could say Macy’s or I could say many other companies, where they put in their friends as the head of the company and they get whatever they want.’
Trump himself is a chief executive of the Trump Organisation but has said he would be willing to pay a higher tax rate in order to help the country. And his corporation is privately held, unlike Macy’s and other companies whose stocks are traded on financial markets.
Macy’s did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Its line of Trump-branded ties were made with Chinese labour, another sticking point in Trump’s campaign since he has been critical of China for taking jobs away from US citizens.
Trump’s attack on corporate boards echoes the kind of criticism expressed by shareholder activists such as Carl Icahn, the billionaire investor who Trump has said he would like as his Treasury secretary should he become president.
Trump also said his tax plan, to be unveiled in the coming weeks, would cut taxes for the middle class and corporations, ‘but for the hedge fund guys they are going to be paying up’.
A CBS News poll showed Trump, who is competing for the party’s nomination for the November 2016 election, ahead in key battleground states, with retired neurosurgeon and political newcomer Ben Carson in second place.
The poll showed Trump attracting 29 per cent of likely Republican voters in Iowa, with Carson on 25 per cent. In New Hampshire, Trump had 40 per cent to Carson’s 12 per cent.
Carson said his time on the boards of Kellogg Company and Costco Wholesale Corp, including on compensation committees, showed he had well- rounded experience.
‘You get an enormous amount of experience doing those things,’ he said, speaking on CBS after Trump. ‘In fact, if you go back and you look at the compensation of the top executives, i t was really very reasonable, nothing like what you were talking about in the previous segment.’
The pay of chief executives has also been attacked by Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
According to research by the US’s Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think-tank, chief executives’ pay in 2013 was nearly 300 times that of the average worker.
‘These guys make enormous amounts’