Business has made a Faustian bargain with Donald Trump and Elon Musk, his henchman at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. The promises of deregulation and tax cuts are oh so appealing. In reality, business leaders have let some extremely rapacious foxes into the hen house in ways they may come to regret.
[T]here are several things I’d be worried about if I were a chief executive.
First is the unprecedented competitive advantage that Musk could gain by having access to things such as Department of Transportation safety data, Food and Drug Administration trial information, proprietary Department of Agriculture research or pre-publication information about patent applications.
Then, there are the longer-term competitive advantages that Musk could gain by incorporating data sets from different departments into his own artificial intelligence systems. (The White House claims he isn’t doing this, but there’s no proof either way.) … It’s unclear exactly what Doge is mining, and how data is being used.
But the potential negative consequences for business aren’t limited to unfair information access. The gutting of various agencies and the clawback of subsidies are having a chilling effect in areas such as energy, transportation, manufacturing and housing that were supported by the Biden administration.
There is a notable silence on these topics from Republican senators and business leaders alike. Plenty of people will say privately that they are worried about Doge’s slash-and-burn techniques. But no one wants to run afoul of Musk or Trump in public for fear of retribution (indeed, I will say that in my 33 years of journalism, I’ve never had as many sources want to speak only on background as they do now).
“Laying low is the dominant tactic right now,” says Sarah Bonk, head of Business for America, a non-profit membership group of businesses that want to make government work better.
Still, she says she has heard from members that are worried about the increasing risks associated with doing business in such an uncertain environment, and what regulatory chaos will mean.
Unilateral private control of the federal government has never been exercised in this way, even by 19th-century robber barons. Measured against such uncertainty, business may come to rue its political bargain.
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