The Myth of the Silent Executive

As the Donald Trump administration makes sweeping changes to U.S. federal programs and threatens higher tariffs on longtime trade partners, business leaders are understandably nervous about how the fallout will affect their ability to compete. 

More than 80 percent of U.S. business leaders across political parties are very or somewhat concerned about “the impact of the current political and legal climate” on their companies, according to polling from the Leadership Now Project, a nonpartisan business coalition. Nearly half (45 percent) of respondents to the April survey conducted with the Harris Poll said their business had already been negatively impacted by recent executive orders and new U.S. policies including tariffs and changing regulations. 

The prevailing narrative in the media seems to be that business is mostly staying silent about how changing U.S. policies affect them for fear of legal action, government reprisal or social media backlash, but coalitions including Leadership Now question how much that's really true. 

"I do think the perception that business is being entirely silent is overstated," Daniella Ballou-Aares, founder and CEO of Leadership Now, said in the latest episode of "What the...?," a video series co-hosted by TriplePundit and our parent company 3BL. "You're hearing a lot of the fear factor — if you say anything that's pushing back on the administration, it’s going to be an issue. But my experience so far is actually largely that when there's been pushback, it actually has led to changes."

Behind the mainstream headlines, it's not hard to find examples of business leaders speaking out about harmful policies and either winning in court or convincing the administration to reconsider. Analysts cite tumbling stocks and U.S. business pushback as the key reasons for delays on new tariffs, for example, with trade groups and business coalitions across sectors sounding the alarm. Among them is Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America, a trade group representing 95 percent of the U.S. footwear industry. 

"The tariff escalations have created disruption and uncertainty in the shoe industry like we have never seen before," Tom Florsheim, Jr., chairman and CEO of the Wisconsin-based footwear company Weyco Group, told TriplePundit in an email. "The trade wars, particularly with China, have severely disrupted our supply chain and made planning inventory and pricing impossible. Business needs certainty to plan and invest, and in this climate even basic business functions like quoting pricing to customers is not possible."

Although Trump claims his “Liberation Day” tariffs will revive U.S. manufacturing, business leaders like Florsheim, a Leadership Now member, see things differently. 

"While many business people recognize there are countries that have unfair trade practices and would likely support some strategic tariffs, I haven’t spoken to anyone who thinks tariffs across all product categories make sense," Florsheim said. "Ninety-eight percent of footwear sold in the U.S. is imported. Because of the high labor content in manufacturing footwear, the industry was forced to go offshore approximately 30-plus years ago. There is no shoe manufacturing infrastructure at scale in the U.S. anymore, including factories [and] component makers. Because manufacturing in the U.S. is not an option, 'Liberation Day' has created an untenable situation for us where supply has been disrupted and the cost of our product has soared due to the cost of the tariffs." 

Major trade groups in the apparel and footwear industry responded quickly and in lockstep. "They started really proactively messaging, pushing back on the administration, saying what an impact this would be on their companies. Tom himself was out there publicly," Ballou-Aares said.

She sees more and more businesses joining in this type of collective action to communicate how changing policies and political instability affect them and expects that trend to continue. "Tom Florsheim on his own couldn't have done this, but as part of a footwear industry association, they can really have an impact," she said. "Industry associations and new kinds of coalitions that can form are going to be really critical — not only for the immediate impacts like tariffs, but in the longer-term [efforts] we're seeing that, for instance, seek to tell companies who they can hire, how they do their hiring and what policies they can have around diversity or otherwise." 

Florsheim agreed, adding: "If you want to see change, you need to speak out. There is power in numbers."

In our conversation, Ballou-Aares highlighted similar moves, including more than 50 chambers of commerce objecting to cuts in funding for medical research, as ample evidence the voice of corporate America is far from muted.