Will business leaders face a backlash after the midterms?

Corporate leaders embraced President Donald Trump when he returned last year to the White House. Some were looking to avoid a crackdown, others to curry favor with the administration. Now they are increasingly worried about consequences if Democrats take back control of Congress in November.

‘Holding Trump accountable’

Leading executives “fear a reckoning” after the midterms, said The Washington Post. Silicon Valley firms such as Palantir, OpenAI and Meta that “ingratiated themselves with Trump’s Washington” now anticipate that a Democratic Congress will scrutinize their dealings with the president. Companies tied to Donald Trump Jr. and Elon Musk are also expected to get a close look. Trump-aligned businesses have a “very rough couple years ahead,” said Democratic strategist Cooper Teboe to the outlet.

Corporate investigations could be Democrats’ “secret weapon for holding Trump accountable,” said Molly Claflin at MS NOW. Chevron “gained the rights to vast oil reserves in Venezuela” after making “multimillion-dollar contributions” to presidential projects, while R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company made similar donations before the government lifted vaping restrictions. Other examples abound. Democrats would be continuing a “long tradition” of delving into big businesses to “investigate government corruption.”

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“Democrats are coming for the CEOs,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Private-sector officials “may not have liked writing checks for the inaugural or White House ballroom” but also had little choice “given how much leverage” Trump had over their businesses. Regardless, corporate America should “lawyer up.”

‘Perils of plutopopulism’

Democrats in Congress are split over “how hard to go after companies that courted the White House,” said Politico. “The corruption is everywhere,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told the outlet. Others would prefer to focus on affordability issues instead of “weaponizing the federal government,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto said to Politico.

U.S. CEOs are now discovering the “perils of plutopopulism,” Chrystia Freeland said at the Financial Times. Businesses embraced Trump believing he would “deliver tax cuts and deregulation.” That bet is “starting to go wrong” now that the president’s “political star is shining less brightly.”