Commentary: CEOs have a new boss — Trump
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.
Raising cane: President Trump is lobbying for real sugar in Coke. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
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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.
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