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posted by takyon on Wednesday August 16 2017, @05:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the pressure-relief dept.

Following a number of CEOs pulling out of President Trump's American Manufacturing Council and Strategic and Policy Forum, President Trump tweeted that the initiatives have been ended:

Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!

The CEOs of Merck, Intel, 3M, and other companies had already left:

3M Co. Chief Executive Officer Inge Thulin stepped down from the White House's manufacturing council, adding to the corporate exodus as the backlash grows to President Donald Trump's ambivalent response to racially-charged violence in Virginia over the weekend.

Thulin joined the White House panel in January "to advocate for policies that align with our values and encourage even stronger investment and job growth -- in order to make the United States stronger, healthier and more prosperous," the CEO said Wednesday in a statement tweeted by 3M. "After careful consideration, I believe the initiative is no longer an effective vehicle for 3M to advance these goals."

Update: The members of the Strategic and Policy Forum reportedly disbanded the group before President Trump's tweet:

The quick sequence began late Wednesday morning when Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of the Blackstone Group and one of Mr. Trump's closest confidants in the business community, organized a conference call for members of the president's Strategic and Policy Forum. On the call, the chief executives of some of the largest companies in the country debated how to proceed. After a discussion among a dozen prominent C.E.O.s, the decision was made to abandon the group altogether, said people with knowledge of the details of the call.

Also at Bloomberg:

Trump made the announcement on Twitter, less than an hour after one of the groups was said to be planning to inform the White House that it would break up. [...] Trump appeared to be making an effort to get ahead of the news as the councils began to disintegrate. The strategy forum, which is led by Blackstone Group LP's Stephen Schwarzman, planned to inform the White House Wednesday before making the announcement public, according to another person familiar with the matter, who wasn't authorized to discuss the news publicly.


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @05:53PM (28 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @05:53PM (#554812)

    "Fine, quit, I don't care. There are plenty more waiting to take your place . . . Wait, what? More might consider quitting too? Shit, shut it down then!"

    Much easier than denouncing David Duke . . .

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  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:00PM (23 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:00PM (#554817)

    These CEOs couldn't give too shits about David Duke; it's become clear that they're not going to be making significant money from being part of Trump's government.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:06PM (18 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:06PM (#554825)

      Meanwhile back in reality, the stock market is at a record high and unemployment is at a 10 year low.

      • (Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:22PM (13 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:22PM (#554837)

        And all to the credit of the guy whose been running government for a couple of weeks as opposed to the guy that been doing it the previous 8 years.

        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:52PM (10 children)

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:52PM (#554859) Homepage Journal

          Yeah, funny how absolutely none of his policies did shit but hemorrhage well paying jobs that then got replaced by not nearly as many minimum wage jobs while he was in office but less than a year after he's unemployed everyone else gets back to work. Nobody's going to be able to prove causation but it's got correlation out the ass.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 4, Insightful) by n1 on Wednesday August 16 2017, @07:16PM (4 children)

            by n1 (993) on Wednesday August 16 2017, @07:16PM (#554880) Journal

            Sources for 'everyone else getting back to work' in recent months?

            BLS data from earlier this month indicate things are roughly in-line with the last 12 months of growth.

            Employment in food services and drinking places rose by 53,000 in July. The industry has
            added 313,000 jobs over the year.

            Professional and business services added 49,000 jobs in July, in line with its average
            monthly job gain over the prior 12 months.

            In July, health care employment increased by 39,000, with job gains occurring in ambulatory
            health care services (+30,000) and hospitals (+7,000). Health care has added 327,000 jobs
            over the past year.

            Employment in mining was essentially unchanged in July (+1,000). From a recent low in
            October 2016 through June, the industry had added an average of 7,000 jobs per month.

            Employment in other major industries, including construction, manufacturing, wholesale
            trade, retail trade, transportation and warehousing, information, financial activities,
            and government, showed little change over the month.

            [...]Over the year, average hourly earnings have risen by 65 cents, or 2.5
            percent. In July, average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory
            employees increased by 6 cents to $22.10.

            https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm [bls.gov]

            • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 16 2017, @07:28PM (3 children)

              by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday August 16 2017, @07:28PM (#554888) Homepage Journal

              Reread that last paragraph. That is not something to be scoffed at. It was rapidly going the other direction or sitting pat for most of Obama's two terms.

              --
              My rights don't end where your fear begins.
              • (Score: 3, Informative) by n1 on Wednesday August 16 2017, @09:23PM (1 child)

                by n1 (993) on Wednesday August 16 2017, @09:23PM (#554959) Journal

                https://d3fy651gv2fhd3.cloudfront.net/charts/united-states-wages.png?s=unitedstawag&v=201708081602v&d1=20120101&d2=20171231 [cloudfront.net]

                https://d3fy651gv2fhd3.cloudfront.net/charts/united-states-wages.png?s=unitedstawag&v=201708081602v&d1=20070101&d2=20171231 [cloudfront.net]

                I agree with your original point about the lack of good jobs during the Obama administration, but even if there is a positive change with this new administration, it is too early to say. There are many less jobs in construction now than this time last year, but there are more jobs in other areas.

                These charts from BLS data indicate there's been little change in direction or momentum, even if you go back to the 70's... That's not to say I put a lot of weight into the validity of BLS data, but the same applies now as before.

                • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 17 2017, @11:19AM

                  by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday August 17 2017, @11:19AM (#555226) Homepage Journal

                  Mostly the BLS stats are painting an extremely small portion of the picture. Yes, they can tell you some of the jobs that were created but they're by no means comprehensive and say nothing at all about unemployment, which is a critical part of any discussion on jobs. Under the tail end of Bush and most of Obama we lost so many jobs that a large percent of the work force just gave up even trying to find work at all and still haven't returned to work to date. Obama could have done many things to fix this problem by incentivizing job creation in different ways; instead he stuck to the traditional progressive playbook. Which is to say he had little to zero effect on the jobs market throughout his entire presidency. He basically let it freewheel when he wasn't putting minor speed bumps in the road.

                  Now Trump is a cheeto-headed dipshit but the fiscal ideas he's trying to get implemented will create jobs if he can ever get his own party to quit stabbing him in the back. Mind you he'll also be screwing the little guy in numerous ways to the favor of big business but at least he'll be screwing employed people.

                  --
                  My rights don't end where your fear begins.
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @09:45PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @09:45PM (#554973)

                As history has shown, people often attribute positive outcomes to the puppet of the day without doing any further digging. Most economic trends are dictated years in advance, but people like yourself are stuck in correlation == causation.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @08:16PM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @08:16PM (#554914)

            well-[paid] jobs [...] replaced by not nearly as many minimum wage jobs while [O'Bummer] was in office

            Yeah. Any Dumbocrat who had the top gig any time in the last 3 decades has been a Neoliberal.
            Slick Willie's Five Major Achievements Were Longstanding GOP Objectives [googleusercontent.com] (orig)[1] [truth-out.org]

            Additionally, Slick Willie queered the way "unemployment" is counted.
            Since before the start of O'Bummer's (undeserved) 2nd term, The Labor Non-Participation Rate[2] has remained above 22 percent. [shadowstats.com]

            [1] Can any site coder tell me why the content on that site appears twice on each page in an HTML-only presentation?
            Does it look less dumb with stylesheets?

            [2] ...which was called The Unemployment Rate before Slick Willie.

            -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

            • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 17 2017, @11:22AM (1 child)

              by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday August 17 2017, @11:22AM (#555227) Homepage Journal

              1) Dunno. I don't feel like source diving before I've finished my first cup of coffee.

              2) Looks fine with style sheets. You really should come into the 21st century with us.

              --
              My rights don't end where your fear begins.
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2017, @07:49PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2017, @07:49PM (#556452)

                I pretty much always find that styling added to web pages makes them LESS readable.

                I especially appreciate (NOT) those nitwits who put styling in their HTML -and- do more styling via CSS--and don't check the HTML by itself, often yielding stupid shit like black text on a dark background.

                The sites where the entire page looks like a WAR IS OVER headline with a giant font are especially trippy.
                Note to self: Bookmark the next one of those you come upon to save as an example of how NOT to do things.

                There are 2 radio stations that I listen to which did their schedule grid pages with CSS instead of a table.
                I access those pages via archive.li, which interprets the CSS for me.
                Elsewhere, I simply block all CSS.

                If site devs would put CSS into nice packages with essential-stuff/nice-to-have/only-chintz separated from each other and with descriptive names on the CSS files, that would be nice.
                I pretty much never find anything like that, so I just block it all by default.

                -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

          • (Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 16 2017, @09:15PM

            by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday August 16 2017, @09:15PM (#554953) Journal

            Yeah, funny how absolutely none of his policies did shit but hemorrhage well paying jobs that then got replaced by not nearly as many minimum wage jobs while he was in office but less than a year after he's unemployed everyone else gets back to work. Nobody's going to be able to prove causation but it's got correlation out the ass.

            Now if only Trump had actually implemented a policy you might have a point.

          • (Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Thursday August 17 2017, @03:27AM

            by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Thursday August 17 2017, @03:27AM (#555116)

            Only because the rabid right kept saying those employment numbers were wrong! Unemployment was REALLY 20+%, until the Creamsicle Charlton got elected, then they were miraculous, bigly correct!

            Trumps still running under the Obama administrations fiscal budget and policies coattails. When they actually pass and incorporate a budget, (or hell, ANYTHING) then we will see the real results of the Republican control. I think it will resemble the Dubya years.

            --
            Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 16 2017, @09:02PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 16 2017, @09:02PM (#554938) Journal

          And all to the credit of the guy whose been running government for a couple of weeks as opposed to the guy that been doing it the previous 8 years.

          I'd credit the stock market rise to Obama because he left.

        • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday August 17 2017, @08:18PM

          by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Thursday August 17 2017, @08:18PM (#555544) Homepage Journal

          You put my name on your hotel in big, gold letters and I guarantee business will be tremendous for you. And you give me a cut. Now my name is on the U.S. government and economy. In big, gold letters. Because I'm the President. And business is doing tremendously because of it. And you give me a cut. 🇺🇸

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @07:57PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @07:57PM (#554903)

        The stock market? That mostly benefits the wealthy. Unemployment? Whether that is an impressive accomplishment or not depends on the quality of the jobs. And of course, wealth inequality continues to increase, just as it did under Obama. Anyone who likes any of these cretins is a fool.

        • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday August 16 2017, @10:25PM (1 child)

          by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 16 2017, @10:25PM (#554998) Journal

          Even more, it depends on exactly how you measure unemployment. Usually if someone can't find a job for awhile they stop counting him as unemployed. And occasionally they change how they measure it. I haven't heard of any recent changes, but I also haven't (believably) heard of any surges in employment. Are you counting that plant in Wisconsin? The one where the state is paying to have the plant locate there more than the worth of the jobs?

          --
          Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
          • (Score: 2) by fliptop on Thursday August 17 2017, @02:46AM

            by fliptop (1666) on Thursday August 17 2017, @02:46AM (#555090) Journal

            Usually if someone can't find a job for awhile they stop counting him as unemployed

            Why should we count people who are unemployable?

            --
            Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
      • (Score: 4, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 16 2017, @09:11PM

        by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday August 16 2017, @09:11PM (#554948) Journal

        Meanwhile back in reality, the stock market is at a record high and unemployment is at a 10 year low.

        Thanks Obama!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:07PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:07PM (#554826)

      While I'm all for making fun of CEOs and comparing them to robots, your comment is a bit far out there. This is 100% about PR and not lack of profits as you say.

      PR and profit are connected however, so a truly sociopathic CEO would make a "morality call" for purely selfish reasons. Again, not the case here.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:41PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:41PM (#554847)

        If remaining in Trump's government were to gain them greater profits than leaving, they'd stay with Trump; in fact, it would be their legal obligation to stick with Trump.

        It has nothing to do with David Duke.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mechanicjay on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:51PM (1 child)

          by mechanicjay (7) <reversethis-{gro ... a} {yajcinahcem}> on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:51PM (#554858) Homepage Journal

          ...it would be their legal obligation to stick with Trump.

          PIease cite your source for that, because as far I can tell, it's crap.

          To quote the Supreme Court from 2015:

          “Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.”

          This NYT article [nytimes.com] has a decent rundown to dispel this myth.

          --
          My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
          • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday August 16 2017, @07:01PM

            by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday August 16 2017, @07:01PM (#554865)

            While there is no legal obligation per se, activist shareholders are always looking for an excuse to sue if the stock price doesn't go up by N% by their deadline to sell.
            Something this high profile is an easy target for "negative publicity" claims.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:01PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:01PM (#554818)

    Duke wouldn't join the councils either?

  • (Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @07:28PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @07:28PM (#554889)


    Here's a photo of KKK grand dragon robert byrd meeting with trump.

    http://i.imgur.com/SBB6fDA.jpg
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @08:41PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @08:41PM (#554924)

      No it isn't.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @11:15PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @11:15PM (#555021)

      He got better. David Duke has only gotten uglier. We'll see with Sessions.