One of the main reasons Donald Trump won the presidency is because he convinced enough Americans that their country needed a successful businessperson at the helm, someone who knows how to make lucrative deals and who lacked political baggage.
The first 100 days in the White House have been an adjustment for Trump, who’s never held elected office. However, during this transition he’s regularly put himself in his element, talking business at tables full of executives.
He started holding these executive discussions shortly after he was elected in November, and invited some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names to Trump Tower in December. For his first large meeting as president, he chose to sit down with a group of prominent American CEOs including SpaceX and Tesla’s Elon Musk, Ford’s Mark Fields, and Lockheed Martin’s Marillyn Hewson.
Since his election, Trump has met with 81 executives to hear their thoughts on regulation, manufacturing, and trade. Looking at who the president has chosen to meet with offers insight into the direction he wants to take the country, as well as how he leads.
Skye Gould/Business Insider
Tech
• One of Trump’s most vocal supporters during his campaign was billionaire investor Peter Thiel, a Facebook board member and the cofounder and chairman of Palantir, a big data analysis company that has worked with US intelligence and defense. Thiel served as Trump’s bridge to Silicon Valley, a sector from which many prominent names opposed him during the campaign.
• Uber founder and CEO Travis Kalanick resigned from Trump’s business advisory council in February after facing pressure from his employees and customers.
• Trump has invited Elon Musk to multiple meetings, and Musk’s companies have benefited from billions of dollars in government subsidies under President Barack Obama.
• Dozens of tech leaders publicly condemned Trump’s initial immigration ban in February.
• Trump signed two executive orders to promote STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education among young women, an initiative brought up by these tech leaders.
• Tech leaders want an improved H1-B visa process, to recruit and retain foreign talent.
Skye Gould/Business Insider
Retail
• Trump told heads of retail that tax reform would be the best opportunity to help their businesses. In February he held a meeting with eight representatives of the Retail Industry Leaders Association.
• Retail executives have been most vocally against the proposal of a “border tax” on imported goods, since their businesses survive on imports.
• Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly circulated a flyer throughout Capitol Hill that stated a 20% import tax would lose billions of dollars for his company, and that foreign companies like Alibaba would be able to undercut it through direct online sales.
Skye Gould/Business Insider
Manufacturing
• Trump has promised to remain true to his “America First” campaign promise by increasing manufacturing in the US. And in his first speech to a join session of Congress, in March, Trump formally announced that he wants to pursue a $ 1 trillion infrastructure spending plan.
• One of Trump’s first acts after his election was negotiating with United Technologies CEO Greg Hayes to keep 700 Carrier jobs in the US in exchange for $ 7 million in tax breaks.
• The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that a net of approximately 5 million American manufacturing jobs were lost between 2000 and 2010.
• Trump declared that the Keystone and Dakota Access oil pipelines have to be created with American steel.
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