U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan (left) speaks during a meeting with banking leaders to discuss how the financial services industry can meet customer needs affected by COVID-19 at the White House in Washington, DC, on March 11, 2020.
Brendan Smiarowski | AFP | Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to address some of the leaders of the world’s most influential companies on Thursday, although some are expected to skip the event.
In addition to President Trump, President Joe Biden’s chief of staff Jeff Zients He will be addressing CEOs on behalf of President Biden as the president is in Italy for the G7 meeting.
A Business Roundtable spokesman said “roughly” 100 of the more than 200 chief executives who belong to the exclusive forum are expected to attend its quarterly meeting in Washington on Thursday, a typical turnout rate.
CNBC reached out to each of the more than 200 companies whose CEOs are listed online as members of the Business Roundtable to ask whether they planned to attend Thursday’s meeting.
Only 17 companies confirmed whether their CEOs would attend; the remaining 180-plus companies did not respond to emails over several days.
Here’s what we know: Of the 17 company spokespeople who responded to CNBC, four said their CEOs plan to attend. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Citigroup Jane Fraser, CEO Bank of America With CEO Brian Moynihan Edison International CEO Pedro Pizarro.
An additional 13 companies said their CEOs would not attend the Trump and Zients speech.
Black Stone Steve Schwarzman, CEO of the group and a close ally of President Trump, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, Steel Case CEO Sarah Armbruster, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods, delta Airline CEO Ed Bastian, Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick and Executive Chairman James Gorman. Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good also plans to miss the meeting, according to company representatives.
Some members, including Armbruster, Good and Solomon, are unable to attend due to scheduling and travel conflicts. Black Rock With CEO Larry Fink Microsoft For example, CEO Satya Nadella is reportedly planning to attend the G7 summit in Italy.
Representatives for Messrs. Woods and Bastian did not respond to questions about why their chief executives were not attending the meeting. Representatives for Messrs. Fink and Nadella did not respond to requests for comment.
The attendee list could read like a directory of which CEOs are willing to travel to Washington to be heard, just weeks after President Trump was convicted in New York on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Trump’s comments to the group are also available for a split-screen comparison. What Biden said in his speech to CEOs At a Business Roundtable meeting attended in March 2022.
As the president seeks reelection, Biden is touting his administration’s record of aggressive antitrust enforcement and a blanket ban on so-called junk fees, which companies charge for services for which they have no cost.
These policies have angered some business leaders, who have begun to support a second Trump administration and the deregulation it could bring.
But behind the scenes, Biden has been working on his own to win over American companies. The president has met regularly with CEOs and industry executives to discuss the post-pandemic recovery of the U.S. economy and its global standing.
Former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California said the fierce election campaign was the reason busy CEOs were making the trip to Washington to meet with Trump in person.
“I think [CEOs] “Like everybody else, he sees himself as going to win,” McCarthy said Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
For some CEOs planning to attend Thursday, their choice to attend represents a shift in attitude toward the former president. Several top executives publicly and privately broke with Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol by his supporters.
Dimon told attendees at The New York Times’ DealBook conference last year that Trump should “help” his rival, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, win a primary against him.
Dimon said that if Haley did well, voters “might have a better choice on the Republican side than Trump.” In response, the former president slammed Dimon on social media, calling him an “overrated globalist.”
But just two months later, Dimon changed his tune.
“Step back and be honest. [Trump] “We were sort of right on NATO. We were sort of right on immigration. We grew the economy pretty well. Trade and tax reform worked. We were sort of right on China,” Dimon said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
President Trump has outlined an economic package for his second term that many economists believe could lead to a resurgence of inflation — a frightening prospect for investors and consumers who have spent the past year waiting for the Federal Reserve to respond to simmering inflation by cutting interest rates.
The former president has also proposed extending tax cuts from his first year in office beyond the 2025 deadline and imposing stiff tariffs across the board, particularly on imports from China.
Speaking at Davos, Dimon suggested his willingness to defend some of Trump’s policies was, at least in part, aimed at avoiding aligning himself, or JPMorgan Chase, with the Trump administration, a notoriously vengeful president.
“I have to be prepared for both. [Trump and Biden to win]”I’m prepared for both. I’ll deal with both,” he said.