The Wall Street Journal - CEOs Have Access to Trump, but Do They Have Clout?

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June 18, 2017. Vanessa Fuhrmans, Peter Nicholas.

Monday’s meeting with the president could be a gauge of the value of these sessions for some business leaders.

When tech industry executives gather at the White House Monday, brainstorming ways to modernize government will be on the agenda. But on display will be President Donald Trump’s evolving relationship with America’s corporate chieftains.

Some 300 business leaders have met with Mr. Trump since he took office promising the nation’s top executives a direct line to the Oval Office and a chance to shape economic policy. The discussions have helped the president project an image of CEO-in-chief as he awaits a major legislative victory and have given CEOs a voice in initiatives like the administration’s push to expand apprenticeship programs.

But corporate leaders are learning about the limits of their clout. Hopes for an overhaul of the corporate-tax code this year are fading, some executives and corporate lobbyists say, as the White House and lawmakers struggle to reach consensus on a plan that could get through Congress. Mr. Trump’s move to quit the Paris climate accord has been a stinging lesson for some that White House face time doesn’t always translate into influence.

Dozens of business leaders urged the president publicly and privately to keep the U.S. in the climate agreement; many were taken aback when he rejected their pro-business case for upholding the deal, people involved in the lobbying effort say.

Even Ivanka Trump, the president’s elder daughter and one of his senior advisers, bet CEOs could sway her father. According to people familiar with the effort, she appealed toDow Chemical Co. head Andrew Liveris and Apple Inc. chief Tim Cook to make the case directly to the president.
Monday’s meeting, five months into Mr. Trump’s presidency, is shaping up as a gauge of the value of these sessions to business leaders. Some, including International Business Machines Corp . CEO Ginni Rometty and Apple’s Mr. Cook, have faced public or employee pressure not to attend such meetings.

Tanya Meck, a partner at Global Strategy Group, a Washington-based public affairs firm whose client roster has included Comcast Corp . , Airbnb Inc. and Microsoft Corp . , said some chief executives are weighing those factors before accepting White House invitations.

“It is very much an individual decision,” Ms. Meck said.

The White House talks, framed as listening sessions, often turn casual and wide-ranging once the cameras leave the room. Participants describe a president who absorbs information from the volley of conversation rather than from dense briefing binders.

“He’s a business guy, so he’s in his element.” said James Kamsickas, CEO of automotive supplier Dana Inc . and a member of Mr. Trump’s manufacturing-jobs council.

The White House sent participants a memo laying out Monday’s agenda. An early draft solicited ideas for making government “operate like a modern technology enterprise.”

“We’re 10 to 20 years behind in a lot of technology,” said Chris Liddell, a former chief financial officer at General Motors Co . and Microsoft who helps manage the White House’s business relationships.

Executives expected to attend Monday’s session include heads of Amazon.com Inc.,Apple, Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet Inc .
Notably absent will be Tesla Inc . ’s CEO, Elon Musk, who attended a similar tech-leader roundtable at Trump Tower in December. Mr. Musk quit his role in business councils that advise the president after Mr. Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris accord.Salesforce.com Inc . leader Marc Benioff —who tweeted he was “deeply disappointed” in the Paris withdrawal—is no longer coming to the Monday session as planned because of a scheduling conflict after the meeting date was changed, according to a person familiar with the matter.

White House officials say they have received an enthusiastic response from executives who see the overall effort to improve government efficiency as an apolitical goal. “Modernizing government services is not politicized,” Mr. Liddell said in an interview in his West Wing office.

Upon his arrival at the White House, Mr. Liddell said, he was surprised to learn that various federal agencies still use the computer-programming language known as Cobol. Mr. Liddell said he first learned the language in the 1970s as an engineering student. “It’s that old!” a White House aide said.

Most business leaders say they remain committed to advising the president and see the sessions as a way to learn how Mr. Trump ticks. Though he campaigned on his success as a businessman, Mr. Trump wasn’t well known to most CEOs outside New York before his election.

Another factor keeping CEOs at the table: the narrowing window many see for legislating policies to boost competitiveness, particularly on corporate taxes.

“There’s a real priority to get that done while there’s [Republican] alignment in Congress and the White House,” said Kathryn Wylde, president and chief executive of the business group Partnership for New York City, who led some 50 CEOs to Pennsylvania Avenue in April. Right now, “the issues at stake are just too important to withdraw from the conversation.”

There have been disappointments. At the meeting with the New York CEOs, Mr. Trump acknowledged their concerns about any tax-reform bill that eliminated state and local-tax deductions, a painful prospect for New York and other states with high taxes.

“We’re all lucky that I’m from New York because in some ways New York has unique problems,” he told them. Yet, when the White House presented the first rough outline of its tax proposal a few weeks later, it called for taking away the deductions.

On occasion, business leaders have prompted an about-face from Mr. Trump. During the campaign, he vowed to shut down the Export-Import Bank, calling its financing unnecessary. But he softened after a conversation with Boeing Co . CEO Dennis Muilenburg, according to people familiar with the matter. And in an April interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Trump reversed himself, calling the bank important for small companies.

Mr. Trump has also used meetings to bolster his agenda. At a March meeting with heads of trucking companies, White House officials asked them to bring a couple of big rigs onto the South Lawn, where the president spontaneously climbed into a cab and posed for pictures.

Inside the White House, CEOs pressed for a gas tax increase to help fund Mr. Trump’s plan to spur $1 trillion in highway and other infrastructure spending. Weeks later, Mr. Trump said he was open to the tax increase, citing the trucking chiefs’ support.

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