Business leaders aren't flocking to Donald Trump despite his campaign's claims to the contrary, an insider in the corporate world said Monday.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale professor who leads the university's Chief Executive Leadership Institute and who works with about 1,000 chief executives a year and speaks to business leaders daily, wrote in a New York Times column that Trump suffers from the lowest levels of corporate support in the history of the Republican Party.
"The reality is that the top corporate leaders working today, like many Americans, aren’t entirely comfortable with either Mr. Trump or President Biden," Sonnenfeld wrote. "But they largely like — or at least can tolerate — one of them. They truly fear the other."
Not one Fortune 100 chief executive has donated to Trump so far this year, which is a major break from GOP presidential candidates in the past. But many business leaders are supportive of Biden's investments in infrastructure and applaud record profits and market gains during his presidency.
"Their legitimate misgivings about Mr. Biden are overwhelmed by worries about Mr. Trump, version 2024," Sonnenfeld wrote. "Mr. Trump’s primary conduits to the business community in his first term — more-reasonable voices like those of Jared Kushner, Dina Powell and Steven Mnuchin — are gone, replaced by MAGA extremists and junior varsity opportunists."
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Trump is doubling down on tariffs, unorthodox fiscal policies and devaluing the dollar, which Sonnenfeld noted would drive inflation even higher and erase some of their economic gains.
"Chief executives are not protectionist, isolationist or xenophobic, and they believe in investing where there is the rule of law, not the law of rulers," Sonnenfeld wrote.
"That there are more Fortune 100 chief executives based in the smallest state in the nation, Rhode Island — and there’s exactly one Fortune 100 chief executive who is based there — than currently support Mr. Trump tells you how truly isolated the Republican presidential candidate is from the halls of big business."
