How Rex Tillerson exposes the secret chasm between capitalism and conservatism

Conservatives are huge promoters of the free market. But what happens when a company on that market undercuts America's foreign policy?

Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson
(Image credit: ERIC PIERMONT/AFP/Getty Images)

Rex Tillerson, the CEO of oil behemoth ExxonMobil, has been picked as Donald Trump's secretary of state. While picking Tillerson is consistent with the Cabinet of business plutocrats Trump has already amassed, it also reveals a striking tension between capitalism and conservative ideology.

Tillerson, now 64, joined ExxonMobil (then just Exxon) right out of college in 1975, and became CEO in 2004. Along the way, he spent an enormous amount of time in the company's international division. ExxonMobil operates in something like 50 countries, where many oil reserves are owned by governments and operated by state-owned oil companies. So Tillerson has had to do plenty of international diplomacy in his day, and make nice with governments that don't always share the Pax Americana vision of a globalized and interconnected democratic world.

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Jeff Spross

Jeff Spross was the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He was previously a reporter at ThinkProgress.