CEOs of the world, unite!

Banking·LeadershipCEOs of the world, unite!By Jennifer ReingoldBy Jennifer Reingold It's time to flex.Win McNamee/Getty ImagesI was a reporter for almost 30 years, specializing in CEOs – the great, the mediocre, and the really, really bad (sometimes all in one person)

That belief, in turn, elevated industry titans from Jamie Dimon and Mark Zuckerberg to Jack Welch and Warren Buffett as the most powerful voices on the planet

The real decisions were made at Davos or in Sun Valley, not DC or Brussels. were an inconvenience

For decades – until companies Microsoft and Google became well-acquainted with antitrust law – companies ignored Washington and didn’t even lobby

Why bother? As trust dropped for institutions overall but rose for corporate leaders, even social change movements were pushed forward by CEOs

Leaders former Levi’s CEO Chip Bergh and Dick’s Sporting Goods CEO Lauren Hobart spoke in favor of topics such as gun safety or equity

Other organizations, political groups, and communities ed corporations’ lead – and it seemed to work for : Less than five years ago, at the height of the pandemic and the Black s Matter tests, The Edelman Trust Barometer showed that employees of all generations were 7.0 to 9.5 times more ly to be attracted to a company that takes a stand on key issues

Even if you didn’t agree with the policies, the point is that executives knew they were fully empowered to make these decisions independently

Fast forward to today

As the rich get richer and stock market valuations increasingly are tied to a tiny group of corporate behemoths, the leaders of those companies have more economic power than ever

And yet, they have willingly and shockingly lost their ability to use it (except, of course, when they actually join the administration, good old Elon)

It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so terrifying: The daily parade of CEOs bearing literal golden gifts — Hello Tim Cook! — as they bow and scrape to the President of the United States, horse-trading “investments” in the USA that have little chance of materializing in return for not being taxed or publicly humiliated in a given month

Un other organizations that have limited leverage — nonfits, universities, and, now, they’d you to think, Congress — these guys actually DO have the clout to resist

But they don’t – or won’t – even as one of their own (Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan) has his job directly threatened by the President, and along with another, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, may soon be signing up to pay a regular vig to Uncle Sam

Many leaders undoubtedly see this kissing up as a tactic

Be nice, stay under the radar, and all will be good one day soon

Then we can return to our regularly scheduled capitalism

But this is not how corporate leaders have EVER acted in the U.S

They have flexed at will, for better or for worse, because they could

If CEOs actually united, they could use that market power to pressure the President and his team to move from their chaotic, arbitrary apach to managing the economy to one that at least incorporates rational thinking

So what could these CEOs do, instead of flattery and humiliation? They could work together instead of letting their power be fragmented

They could use their voices collectively – just as they have done many times before in times of trouble

Just last year (before the election), JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon spoke publicly on income inequality

Last April, when tariffs were threatened, The Roundtable spoke up– and had impact

But now that the tariffs are real… crickets

They could say – loudly and to the world as a group – that firing the nonpartisan analyst responsible for the nation’s financial data will make it impossible for anyone to trust that anything people say is true

They could say that people are better at than politicians (even if those politicians are also running a at the same time) and that boards and holders already have a fiduciary duty to do the right thing

They could talk how this chaotic tariff cycle makes it impossible to budget, plan or hire when they have no idea what their costs are and that as a result, many of their financial jections are no longer sound

They could lean into their power instead of giving it away

They could try cooperating – so that they don’t lose the power to compete

After all, as one famous author once said, they have nothing to lose but their chains

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