Biden's 2024 campaign in risk of losing corporate funding, CEO support due to his pro-labour stance

TN Ashok
Washington, Oct 8 (IANS) US President Joe Biden's 2024 campaign for a 2nd term in the White House faces the danger of losing corporate funding and CEO support owing to his pro-labour rhetoric and stand on the United Auto Workers Strike.

Biden's tight alliance with organised labour has unnerved some of his business supporters that they fear he might lose the support of the corporate world and their honchos due to his rhetoric and administrations actions. 

They want Biden to send out a strong message to the corporate world that he is on their side with policies to promote and grow their businesses.

An US media report said Biden's political advisers have directly urged the President to state bluntly that he wants to help business succeed -- a message that seems to be getting lost when he courts working class voters and embraces their cause for better pay and working conditions, NBC reported.

A top political ally, requesting anonymity, said Biden needs to reassure them of the US government support and policies that will help the corporate world.

In one of his speeches where Biden said in favour of labour: "You deserve what you've earned, and you've earned a hell of a lot more than you’re getting paid now", has completely unnerved his supporters. 

Biden while standing at the picket line with the workers of the UAW in Michigan seemed to extend silent support when the union leader Shawn Fain blasted through a bull horn "CEOs sit in their offices, they sit in meetings, and they make decisions. But we make the product".

Much of the criticism Biden faces are triggered mostly by the sudden shift in stance away from businesses because under the previous Donald Trump administration business flourished with tax cuts and deregulatory measures. 

Most of the tax cuts that Donald Trump signed into law in 2017 ended up benefiting corporations and higher-income individuals, a Congressional Research Service report shows.

Business leaders today are ruffled by the presence of Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan, a Biden appointee, whom they see along with heads of other regulatory agencies overseeing labour and consumer relations, as impediments to competition and survival in the marketplace, media reports said .

"Biden at his core is a blue-collar guy from Scranton. He has never worked in business and he does not have any particular interest in those issues and I don't criticize him for that," said Steven Rattner, a long-time Democratic donor, who headed the auto industry task force in the Barack Obama administration.

"Rightly or wrongly, there's a perception that there's a fair amount of hostility toward business, and that makes the business community nervous," he said.

The business community has felt ignored by the Biden administration and has nurtured hostility towards Lina Khan, who they see as someone who had rankled top businesses by targeting large companies such as Amazon and Microsoft. And that brings an element of uncertainty in the future corporate entities mergers and their trust in his policies.

Though the incumbent president Biden can marshal enough resources to his campaign for presidency in 2024, what is worrying his pro-business supporters is that a general apathy is setting in the corporate world in the potential rematch between Biden and Trump, the businessman.

Biden is leading the Democratic party to the left adopting progressive views that concentrated wealth and business power are corrosive to working-class advancement. 

A political fundraiser reportedly said he heard from senior CEOs saying: "I don't really love Trump. On the other hand, how bad could it be? He gave me a bunch of money and he didn't f--- with me the way Biden is'. That's made it difficult for us to rally business support for Biden as much as we'd like."

The White House has however countered the propaganda that Biden is anti-business stating that on the contrary the President has been a boon to the business world by making substantial investments in new roads and bridges, while pursuing renewable energy projects that create new jobs. Some 336,000 new jobs were created in the month of September, a number that almost doubled Wall Street expectations, which demonstrate that Biden's policies, are pro-business and pro-growth and pro economy.