Donald Trump got dumped, Republicans lost Congress, and corporate America — typically conservatives' suitor — finds itself engaged in a budding courtship with Democrats.
Can this Big Business-Biden romance last?
It's … complicated.
Increases in the federal minimum wage, higher corporate taxes, and stricter environmental regulations are among issues that could dampen any affection between them.
But leaders and lobbyists for 10 of the nation's top trade and business groups — including the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the American Petroleum Institute — said that they had had encouraging early conversations with President Joe Biden and administration officials.
All signaled enthusiasm for at least some of the items on Biden's business agenda and described common interest in COVID-19 relief, infrastructure investment, and immigration reform.
Some also welcomed the end of the unpredictability often associated with the Trump administration, and the removal of a man who frequently trashedcorporations by name and whose economic ideas sometimes scratched no deeper than the slogan "America First."
"Our companies have been very concerned about former President Trump's rise in protectionism and chaotic governing," said Nancy McLernon, the president and CEO of the Global Business Alliance, which represents the domestic interests of 200 multinational companies, including BP, Honda, and Sony.
"A lot of our executives were just confounded when we'd meet with some folks in the Trump administration and they were basing their trade policies on the dynamics of the 1980s rather than the 2000s and today."
On trade, "it's really about returning to a sense of normalcy," Aric Newhouse, a senior vice president of policy and government relations at the National Association of Manufacturers, said.
Josh Bolten, the president and CEO of the Business Roundtable, told reporters in January that he believed Biden and Congress "have a number of opportunities to enact policies that will support long-term economic growth and create more opportunity for all Americans." Those policies include making progress on immigration, climate change, and racial equity and justice.
The White House declined to answer specific questions from Insider. But a Biden spokesperson said the administration immediately engaged the business world, and they offered examples of business-friendly actions it's taken since Biden became president on January 20.
Those include a January 22 roundtable with business owners led by Vice President Kamala Harris and a February 9 meeting with Biden, Harris, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and business leaders.
The spokesperson also mentioned Biden's advocacy for the American Rescue Plan (the White House's name for the COVID-19 relief bill) and efforts through the Small Business Administration to improve the nation's Paycheck Protection Program.
The billionaire Tom Steyer, who ran for president as a Democrat in 2020 and is now a loyal Biden backer, said he believed business was longing for political stability and a semblance of normalcy.
"I don't think there are any legitimate businesspeople in the United States of America who say that [Trump's] kind of behavior is the basis for a safe, democratic, and prosperous society," Steyer said.
But don't expect Republicans, despite losing the White House and Senate, to stand idly by.
"Let's be clear: Republicans, not Democrats, cut taxes and burdensome regulations that held American businesses back for decades," said Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina who ran a consulting business before entering Congress in January.
"Democrats have made it abundantly clear they're determined to repeal those tax cuts and restore cumbersome regulations … they're looking to destroy small businesses with drastic minimum-wage hikes and endless unemployment benefits."
Following are five areas of intrigue that could help determine whether the Biden administration and Big Business truly hit it off.
Political dowries: campaign contributions
If the language of business is spoken through money, corporate America hasn't been shy about whispering sweet numbers to Biden.
About one in four US billionaires contributed to Biden's presidential campaign, Forbes reported. Numerous business types gave the maximum of $5,000 to Biden's presidential transition fund, an Insider analysis found.
Biden also decided to accept most corporate contributions of up to $1 million toward the festivities surrounding his inauguration. Remember Katy Perry singing "Firework" as actual fireworks exploded over the National Mall?
While Biden isn't expected to release a full accounting until April, Insider has identified numerous large companies that obliged the new president with six- or seven-figure contributions, including Boeing, AT&T, Verizon, Microsoft, Comcast, Centene, Dow Chemical, and Coca-Cola.
Holland & Knight — one of the US's most notable lobbying firms whose recent clients include the American Chemistry Council, Bacardi, CrossFit Inc., and the Financial Services Institute — also made an unspecified contribution.
During the 2019-20 election cycle, even the political-action committee of the US Chamber of Commerce — the country's most powerful business lobby — sent about $1 of every $4 it spent on congressional campaign contributions to Democrats, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics found.
As recently as the 2013-14 election cycle, the chamber didn't donate a dime to Democrats.
"We won't always agree, but where we find agreement with folks, we want to work with anyone who shares our priorities," Neil Bradley, the Chamber of Commerce's executive vice president and chief policy officer, told Insider. "From our perspective, we want Republicans and Democrats to be the party of free enterprise and entrepreneurship and business."
Despite his public pronouncements against "dark money" in politics, Biden has tolerated Democrat-backing super PACs and politically active nonprofit organizations accepting secret cash in service of his political and policy ambitions.
One such group, which The Wall Street Journal identified as the newly formed nonprofit Build Back Together, will seek to build support for Biden's business and economic policies, among others. The group has not decided whether it will voluntarily disclose its donors, who could legally contribute unlimited amounts of money.
For now, at least, it gives corporations looking to cozy up to the Biden administration and Democrats another avenue to do so.
But the National Republican Congressional Committee, for one, doesn't envision business interests supporting Democrats en masse if they enact, for example, tax increases and a slew of federal regulations making commerce more costly.
"It's impossible for Democrats to be pro-business when they're pushing a job-killing socialist agenda in the middle of a pandemic," NRCC spokesman Mike Berg said. "Republicans are, and will continue to be, the party that fights for the American worker by promoting pro-growth economic policies."
Infrastructure: narrow or broad?
Biden wants to go big with a $2 trillion infrastructure plan that he hopes will appeal both to big business and to labor unions, the latter being a critical Democratic political constituency.
Business interests generally told Insider that the bigger the plan the better. Many expressed hope that Biden and congressional Democrats craft the plan with a broad definition of "infrastructure."
Translation: Instead of only mentioning standard fare, such as roads, railroads, bridges, highways, and the like, it should include "modern" infrastructure essential to 21st-century life.
"It's also water and wastewater, it's also modernizing the electric grid and broadband and having resiliency in terms of climate change," Bradley from the Chamber of Commerce said. "A real infrastructure package is going to be broader in scope than maybe many on the right would prefer, but that's going to be narrower and scale than many on the left would prefer. And that's probably the right place to land."
Improvements to pipelines, ports, and waterways are three other infrastructure areas on which the American Petroleum Institute will lobby, said Frank Macchiarola, senior vice president at API, which represents the interests of companies operating in the fossil-fuels production and transportation industry.
A federal minimum-wage hike
A top economic priority for many left- and far-left Democrats is increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour — nearly twice the current amount.
Several business organizations described this issue as a sort of litmus test for the Biden administration and Congress, which is controlled by Democrats.
Small businesses, for example, are "very appreciative" of Biden's sustained attention to their concerns, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has throttled or killed many operations, said Holly Wade, the executive director of the National Federation of Independent Business Research Center.
Enhancements to the Paycheck Protection Program and the aggressive approach to COVID-19 economic relief are indications of the administration's commitment, Wade said.
But a recent internal survey of her organization's membership suggested that about two-thirds employ someone earning less than the proposed $15 federal minimum wage that many Democrats support.
A forced increase in the minimum wage "would be a massive cost increase for many small businesses across the country," Wade added. "And they're terrified of having to absorb this cost increase, especially when they're trying to navigate kind of the pandemic economy and making those adjustments and then trying to think ahead."
There's room for an increase in the federal minimum wage — just not to $15 an hour, Bradley said.
"[Democrats] are going to have to decide, 'Hey, are you willing to work with the business community? Are you willing to work with Republicans and more business-minded Democrats to get an achievable increase in the minimum wage? Are you going to hold off for $15?'"
A conversation about the federal minimum wage is "totally appropriate, and I think it's time to have that conversation," said Matthew Haller, a senior vice president for government relations and public affairs at the International Franchise Association. "I also think $15 is too far, too fast, and with the wrong prescription at the wrong time."
But Adam Green, a cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said that Democrats must always remember their pro-worker roots when corporate America lobbies hard on a policy priority.
"We definitely lose way more than we gain if we've sold out on core issues," Green said. "There's a right way and a wrong way to be on the same side of issues with big business. The wrong way is siding with corporate CEOs against the workers they employ."
Common ground on climate change
California wildfires have incinerated entire California towns. Massive hurricanes have shattered and submerged coastlines from the Gulf of Mexico to lower Manhattan. Texas' janky power grid recently failed during a deadly winter storm, imperiling millions.
One of Biden's first acts as president was to again tether the US to the Paris Agreement, the treaty in which nearly 200 nations agree to dramatically reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
Biden's administration has argued that aggressively addressing climate change isn't bad for business — it's essential for the economy's long-term health.
"We have gone irrevocably from asking the question 'Do we need to deal with this climate crisis?' to now 'How are we going to deal with this climate crisis?'" Steyer told Insider.
"Our hope is that President Biden's desire to work with allies is going to provide a really great opportunity to focus on environmental protection and climate change," McLernon of the Global Business Alliance said. "This is an area of strength for our companies because they come from countries that have prioritized dealing with climate change."
The American Chemistry Council "is committed to working with the Biden administration and leaders from both parties in Congress in a constructive bipartisan manner to find common ground on the solutions needed to help solve the world's most pressing challenges," Scott Openshaw, a spokesperson, said.
The US Chamber ranks among those who lauded Biden for rejoining the Paris Agreement. But Biden will have to beat back some members of his own party who want to make law the Green New Deal.
During his presidential campaign, Biden described the Green New Deal's "crucial framework" but wouldn't endorse it wholesale. Instead, he promoted his own, somewhat similar environmental plan — the Biden Green Deal — that goes heavy on energy efficiency, clean-energy sources, and emission reduction.
Even the American Petroleum Institute said it could work with Biden on climate issues, at least in certain respects. "We share the president's goal of reducing emissions and we support the ambitions of the Paris Agreement," Macchiarola of API said.
But one early Biden decision angered several business associations: the revoking a presidentpermit that allowed the Keystone XL oil pipeline to be constructed through several US states.
"That was a mistake that's going to cost jobs at a time when we don't need to be taking regulatory steps that cost jobs," Newhouse, of the National Association of Manufacturers, said.
The US and Canada will be producing oil regardless of whether the Keystone XL pipeline is built. Macchiarola argued that pipelines were safer and more environmentally friendly than other means of transportation.
Separately, in a February 22 letter to Biden, 17 Republican governors petitioned Biden to withdraw an executive order that prohibits new oil and gas development on federal land and in offshore waters.
Corporate taxes
Biden has proposed notable changes to the nation's tax structure, including increasing the corporate income tax to 28% from 21%.
It is one of several significant changes that Biden and Congress are floating that could unravel aspects of Trump's massive tax cuts from 2017.
Businesses, of course, don't generally like increased taxes, so expect some serious pushback.
"The 2017 tax bill created jobs, drove wages up, drove capital invested in our sector," Newhouse said. "And we think that the rates need to be where they are," not higher.
But Stephanie Silverman, the president and CEO of the Employee-Owned S Corporations of America, is optimistic for a bipartisan resurrection of a bill that would make it easier for workers at the companies the group represents to save for retirement. The legislation — Promotion and Expansion of Private Employee Ownership Act — failed in the last Congress.
The Employee-Owned S Corporations of America advocates for the interests of corporations that, as the IRS defines it, "elect to pass corporate income, losses, deductions, and credits through to their shareholders for federal tax purposes."
Such a bill, Silverman said, would help hundreds of thousands of employee-owners, "particularly at a time when lawmakers are seeking smart ways to encourage retirement savings for Americans, in addition to helping create stable jobs and financial security."
More moderate Democrats have expressed confidence that Biden-era tax policy can prioritize the interests of American workers while still addressing the needs of business owners and leaders.
"Democrats will always put the American people first, and a part of that is making sure there are quality, good-paying jobs to support a renewed middle class," said Rep. Suzan DelBene, a Democrat from Washington state who serves as chair of the New Democrat Coalition, a group of 94 "business-friendly" Democrats in the House.
"When in power, Democrats have consistently ushered in stronger periods of economic growth and created more jobs, which benefits businesses, workers, and families."
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