President Donald Trump tweeted on Wednesday that he is disbanding two business advisory groups — an attempt to stem the bleeding from a wave of executive defections from the groups. Several members of the groups, mostly top CEOs, resigned one by one after Trump’s weak initial response to the Charlottesville white nationalism march and his subsequent press conference insisting that there were two sides to the conflict.
So many CEOs resigned from Trump’s manufacturing council that he just disbanded it
Trump’s response to the Charlottesville white nationalism march caused many business leaders to resign in protest.
The New York Times reported the business leaders serving on the manufacturing council, as well as the Strategy and Policy Forum — an economic advisory group — were planning to hold a call today to discuss disbanding the group. It’s unclear whether that happened, or whether Trump just shut down the group after the resignations.
The departures from the manufacturing council started with Merck CEO Ken Frazier, who resigned on Monday:
Subsequently, the CEOs of Under Armour, Intel, 3M, and Campbell Soup resigned, as well as both representatives from the AFL-CIO and the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
Trump initially called out Frazier by bringing up an issue from this campaign:
When more CEOs began to resign, he said he had many others to replace the departing members:
Still, more people left, including Campbell Soup CEO Denise Morrison, who had this scathing statement to go with her resignation:
But by the time Trump disbanded the council with a tweet, nine members had resigned, and two others were no longer with their company. This means of the original 28 people who were in the group, nearly 40 percent were no longer a part of the council by Wednesday afternoon.
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