One of the major recent developments in American politics is the nasty divorce underway between the Republican Party and conservatives on one side and the Chamber of Commerce and big business on the other. What's causing the breakup? 🧵
One theory, advanced by @MichaelRStrain @AEI, is that American enterprise is the innocent victim here. Corporate leaders are merely:
(1) standing up for civic responsibility, and
(2) embracing cultural progressivism as a marketing tactic. bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
(1) standing up for civic responsibility, and
(2) embracing cultural progressivism as a marketing tactic. bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
There's a contradiction here: corporations genuinely committed to civic responsibility would presumably shy away from promoting racially divisive ideology, delisting books, undermining democratically enacted laws, etc. The "responsibility" being exercised is rather selective...
Perhaps more importantly, the business behavior that agitates conservatives and damages the nation goes far beyond innocently standing up for values. Here are some of the issues that folks like @MichaelRStrain apparently have no problem with:
1. American corporations kowtow to Chinese censorship but gleefully criticize America. Hollywood rewrites scripts. Disney's ESPN axed coverage of Hong Kong. Nike declares itself "a brand that is of China and for China" while cancelling a shoe with the original American flag.
2. American corporations mistreat American workers. Companies like Disney make employees train their H1B-holding replacements. Amazon has badly broken HR systems that underpaid workers and denied them benefits. Efforts at union organizing face retaliation.
3. American corporations wield their economic power to undermine democratic processes, threatening secondary boycotts of businesses in states like Indiana, North Carolina, and Georgia to force repeal of duly enacted legislation.
4. American corporations abandon and offshore critical industries and technologies, weakening the nation's economy and national security. Intel outsourced chip production, Boeing offshored vital aerospace components, Google and others site AI research in Beijing.
5. American corporations use political criteria to censor conservative viewpoints. Amazon banned @EPPCdc president @RyanTAnd's book. Twitter and Facebook blocked news coverage of Hunter Biden just before the 2020 election.
6. American corporations promote racial polarization. Companies from Wal-Mart to AT&T to Raytheon "train" employees that America is a systemically racist society and instruct them to understand themselves and their relationships in terms of racial conflict.
7. American corporations gladly help China, but not America. Google refused to work with the U.S. DoD. McKinsey has a "public commitment to anti-racism" but advises Chinese state-owned enterprises. Tesla takes billions in U.S. subsidies and then shifts its export hub to Shanghai.
Long gone are the days of "what's good for our country is good for General Motors, and vice versa."
Big business routinely behaves in ways that damage the national interest and distort our democracy. Americans, conservative or otherwise, are rightly fed up and seeking remedies.
Big business routinely behaves in ways that damage the national interest and distort our democracy. Americans, conservative or otherwise, are rightly fed up and seeking remedies.
An Institute of American Enterprise should focus intently on bad big business behavior, and what it portends for the future of a well-functioning market democracy. What say you, @MichaelRStrain, might our @BizRoundtable friends have something to answer for as well?
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