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Finance

Commentary: CEOs have a new boss — Trump

Last updated: July 22, 2025 5:15 pm
Oliver James
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9 Min Read
Commentary: CEOs have a new boss — Trump
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If you’re an American CEO, you might wake up one day to discover that President Trump has helped himself to a seat on your board of directors.

Since first running for president in 2015, Trump has fashioned himself as a businessman-politician who knows what’s best for American companies. Many CEOs appreciate his focus on deregulation and lowering taxes.

But there’s a catch: Trump has strong views on how managers should run their businesses and no compunctions about using the power of the presidency to bully bosses into doing it his way. Many CEOs are learning how to accommodate the micromanager in chief, some through lip service and others through actual business decisions.

Some of Trump’s interventions are remarkably mundane. He wants Coca-Cola to use real cane sugar in its soda instead of corn syrup. Coke says it will actually do what Trump wants, even though sugar is more expensive and Trumpa-Cola will probably cost more.

Other demands are far more problematic. He wants the Washington Commanders football team and the Cleveland Guardians baseball team to revert to their former names, the racially insensitive Redskins and Indians, respectively. That’s Trump using professional sports franchises to push his anti-woke agenda to the extreme, which may not hurt Trump, but it puts the two teams in a lose-lose position by reigniting controversies they thought they had finally put behind them.

Trump’s most meddlesome gambit is his trade policy, which is meant to literally force thousands of US companies to reorganize the way they do business by buying less abroad and more domestically. He directly threatened Apple with a 25% tax if it doesn’t start making iPhones in the United States. After Mattel said it would have to raise prices because of Trump’s tariffs, Trump threatened a 100% tax on products the toymaker imports and threatened that Mattel “won’t sell one toy in the United States.”

Trump said he’d hit Harley-Davidson with a “big tax” if it went through with a plan to move some motorcycle production overseas. When Walmart said it would likely pass along the cost of Trump’s tariffs to its own customers, Trump told Walmart it should “eat the tariffs” — pay the cost and accept lower profits — and warned, “I’ll be watching.”

Read more: The latest news and updates on Trump’s tariffs

Trump’s manhandling of corporate America is hitting the bottom line. General Motors (GM)said on July 22 that Trump’s tariffs shaved $1.1 billion off its second quarter profits and will likely cost the company as much as $5 billion this year. The day before, Jeep maker Stellantis (STLA)said the Trump tariffs contributed to a $2.7 billion loss in the first half of 2025. The second quarter earnings season is just getting started, so that may just be a taste of the losses related to Trump’s rewiring of global supply chains.

There’s another category of Trump strong-arming: revenge. Trump has punished a dozen or so prominent law firms for working with Democrats or contributing to lawsuits or prosecutions targeting Trump himself. Trump typically issues an order limiting those firms’ ability to work with the federal government, and in some cases makes deals in which those firms agree to do pro bono work for Trump’s pet causes. Trump becomes the de facto chair of the firm’s pro bono committee.

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Then there’s Trump’s anti-woke crusade targeting Harvard, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, and dozens of other universities for policies Trump considers too liberal. Trump has canceled billions of dollars’ worth of federal grants to those schools, in some cases securing his desired policy changes as part of a settlement.

Many companies have tried to preempt a Trump anti-woke crusade by rolling back diversity policies, including Google, (GOOG), Deloitte, Goldman Sachs (GS), Bank of America (BAC), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Paramount (PARA), UnitedHealth (UNH), and IBM (IBM). Trump, in these instances, runs the HR department for a stint.

Trump’s micromanaging is a stark departure from the free-market capitalism the Republican Party has espoused for decades. University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers likens Trump’s interventionism to Soviet-style central planning. “There is not a single institution this guy doesn’t want to call to tell them how to do their jobs,” Wolfers said recently.

There are at least three lessons for CEOs. One is to hide for as long as Trump is president and hope he never notices your company or any of its products. Trump seems to have targeted Coke for his new beverage formula because he’s a famous fan of its products. He hasn’t said anything about Pepsi using a similar formula. Pepsi probably hopes he never does, though CEO Ramon Laguarta is clearly hedging his bets.

Another lesson is that it’s OK to blame Trump’s intervention for losing money, but not for raising prices. Trump hasn’t publicly criticized any company for saying his tariffs have cost them money, as GM and Stellantis have done and many more are sure to do. Eating the cost of his policies causes Trump no heartburn. But if you publicly blame him for any pain that afflicts voters, he blows his stack and sometimes seeks revenge. Lose money loudly, raise prices quietly.

El CEO de Nvidia, Jensen Huang, habla durante una conferencia de prensa en el Mandarin Oriental Qianmen después de asistir a la tercera Exposición Internacional de la Cadena de Suministro de China, en Beijing, el miércoles 16 de julio de 2025. (AP Foto/Andy Wong)El CEO de Nvidia, Jensen Huang, habla durante una conferencia de prensa en el Mandarin Oriental Qianmen después de asistir a la tercera Exposición Internacional de la Cadena de Suministro de China, en Beijing, el miércoles 16 de julio de 2025. (AP Foto/Andy Wong)
The new first buddy? NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. (AP Foto/Andy Wong) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

A third lesson is to pal up with Trump — and watch your back. Nvidia (NVDA)CEO Jensen Huang has become Trump’s new business BFF, accompanying him on a high-visibility Mideast trip in May and counseling him behind the scenes on technology and trade policy. Nvidia benefited earlier this month when Trump reversed a prior position and once again allowed the sale of advanced Nvidia chips to China. The company’s stock popped more than 5% on the news.

Other corporate titans have courted Trump — and then fallen out of favor. Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook, once considered Trump’s “tech whisperer,” seems to have offended Trump by declining to join his Mideast trip in May. That’s when Trump threatened a 25% tax specifically on imported iPhones.

Trump’s most spectacular business breakup has been with Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, who contributed millions to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and became head of the DOGE commission. But Musk grew disillusioned with some of Trump’s policies, criticized them publicly, and broke ties with the Trump administration. Trump retaliated by threatening to deport Musk to his home country of South Africa and cancel contracts or subsidies involving Tesla and another Musk company, SpaceX.

Crony capitalism only works if the cronyship lasts.

Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Bluesky and X: @rickjnewman.

Click here for political news related to business and money policies that will shape tomorrow’s stock prices.

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