President Trump said he was pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement on climate change to protect U.S. jobs, but some of the country's biggest job creators immediately and vehemently disagreed with Trump's decision. For two of them, Tesla's Elon Musk and Disney CEO Robert Iger, it was enough to give up on trying to work with Trump:
Musk and Iger were both on Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum, his chief business advisory council, and Musk was also on Trump's initiative on manufacturing jobs. With Musk and Iger gone, and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick having quit in February, there are 16 business executives left on Trump's council, including JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, General Motors chief executive Mary Barra, IBM chief Ginni Rometty, and council chairman Stephen Schwarzman from Blackstone, and they appear to be sticking with it, with various degrees of discomfort.
Musk has more to gain or lose here than most of the other members, since his rocket company, SpaceX, has several lucrative federal contracts and his other businesses, electric cars and solar power, are premised largely on transition from greenhouse-gas emissions to a greener economy. The California-based business community wasn't alone in taking extraordinary steps after Trump's announcement. Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs — the bank that has deeper ties to the Trump White House than just about any other company — was moved to issue his first tweet ever, after six years on Twitter. Peter Weber
The Week
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