Corporate executives strongly condemned Trump’s refusal to unequivocally denounce the white nationalist violence in Charlottesville last year. They resigned from the president’s advisory councils in droves and issued strong statements against racism.

But since that tragic day when a white nationalist drove a car into protestors opposing the rally and activist Heather Heyer was killed and 19 others were injured, President Trump has had at least 114 meetings with 106 corporate executives representing 90 different businesses.

A previous Public Citizen tally found Trump had met with more than 300 corporate executives before Charlottesville.

Corporate executives started leaving Trump’s councils after the president infamously blamed “both sides” for the violence.

Knowing a PR nightmare when they see one, the corporate executives that comprised Trump’s business advisory councils — the Strategy and Policy Forum and the Manufacturing Council — publicly distanced themselves from the president. The CEOs of Merck, Under Armour, Intel, 3M, Blackrock and Campbell’s Soup were the first to resign from the councils.

Trump disbanded the councils with a post on Twitter.

After the councils were disbanded, the council member CEOs of Boeing, Blackstone, Dow Chemical, EY, General Motors, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase, and United Technologies Corporation also released statements.

Among the executives who were not on the councils who issued statements condemning Trump’s refusal to unequivocally condemn neo-Nazi violence were CEOs of Aetna, Airbnb, Apple, Nike and Peebles.    

CEOs who strongly criticized President Trump after Charlottesville yet subsequently met with the president include Johnson & Johnson’s Alex Gorsky, Apple’s Tim Cook and JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon.   

With Public Citizen’s previous report, this brings the tally of Trump corporate executive meetings up to 500 meetings with 396 executives representing 351 corporations.

According to a National Bureau of Economic Research analysis of the Obama administration’s White House visitor logs, Obama had exactly 100 corporate executive meetings during the first seen years of his presidency. The analysis found that corporate executives’ meetings with the White House correlate with increased stock returns, government contracts and deregulatory favors. More

President Donald Trump has staffed his administration with lobbyists, lawyers and former employees from the chemical industry and its allies.

A new Public Citizen report, “Trump’s Chemical Romance” identifies 146 high-ranking Trump administration officials with ties to the corporate coalition pushing to roll back the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Chemical Disaster Rule. The actual total is undoubtedly higher.

The report found:

• 15 Trump EPA appointees with conflicting ties to the RMP Coalition and the industry sectors its corporate coalition members represent.
• 13 Trump appointees in the White House with conflicting ties to the RMP Coalition and the industry sectors its corporate coalition members represent.
• 57 Trump appointees with conflicting ties to the American Chemistry Council and/or its member corporations.
• 92 Trump appointees with conflicting ties to chemical and petrochemical corporations and groups with ties to the industry.
• 146 Trump administration appointees with conflicting ties to the RMP Coalition and the industry sectors its corporate coalition members represent.

In an effort to delay and weaken the Chemical Disaster Rule, groups representing chemical and petrochemical corporations, along with allies affiliated with coal-fired power plants, paper mills and corporate groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, formed an alliance called the RMP Coalition (named for the EPA’s “Risk Management Program,” the formal name for the Chemical Disaster Rule.)

The RMP Coalition also includes the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the Utility Air Regulatory Group (UARG).

The RMP Coalition successfully petitioned disgraced former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt to delay and weaken the Chemical Disaster Rule.

Pruitt’s new version gives in to industry’s demands – in Pruitt’s words, it “proposes to reduce unnecessary regulatory burdens,” in order to save the industry as a whole an estimated $88 million per year – that is, about 0.1 percent of chemical giant (and American Chemistry Council member) DowDupont’s 2017 profits. A single chemical disaster can cost upwards of $200 million.

Specifically, the Pruitt EPA’s weakened version of the rule:

• Rescinds the requirement that facilities that experience a catastrophic chemical release or a near miss must conduct a root cause analysis, which would ensure that the industry learns essential safety lessons from disasters and near-disasters.
• Guts Safer Technology and Alternatives Analyses, which is intended to minimize the quantities of hazardous substances facilities use and encourage substitutions of less harmful substances when possible, as well as encourage additional safety measures.
• Eliminates the requirement that corporations that stockpile hazardous chemicals make information about their facilities available to the public, essentially prioritizing corporate secrecy over public safety. Without commonsense disclosures, first responders and community members won’t even know what kinds of hazards they could be exposed to.

The public comment period for Pruitt’s weakened version of the rule ends on Thursday, August 23. There’s still time to tell the EPA: Don’t roll back the Chemical Disaster Rule.

The 146 administration members with ties to the RMP Coalition and the industry sectors its corporate coalition members includes 57 appointees with conflicting ties to the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s primary corporate coalition, and 92 appointees with conflicting ties to the chemical and petrochemical industries, including Dow Chemical Corporation, Arkema Chemical, BP, Chevron and Koch Industries.

The officials and their industry affiliations were identified via a review of ProPublica’s Trump Town database, which compiles Trump administration appointees and makes their financial disclosures easily accessible. The full spreadsheet of Public Citizen’s analysis is available here. A simplified list of the conflicted officials is below.

Photo by Paulo Silva on Unsplash

Whew! Finally we can all sleep soundly knowing that Trump is taking consumer protection seriously!

President Trump has signed an executive order creating a “Task Force on Market Integrity and Consumer Fraud.”  That the name of Trump’s task force puts the “market” before consumers and lacks the word “enforcement” does not seem incidental — especially coming from a man who paid $25 million to settle fraud cases stemming from his failed real estate seminar program.

At a press conference announcing the task force’s formation, Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein used this opportunity to talk about how Trump’s Department of Justice is getting tough on corporations that rip off consumers and scam the government by highlighting his signature policy of lowering corporate penalties. The Trump executive order replaces a financial fraud task force created by President Obama.

How does one get tough on corporations by lowering corporate penalties? Unclear! But that doesn’t stop Rosenstein, who doesn’t think it’s fair when a corporate violation that spans multiple jurisdictions triggers multiple penalties for the company. Rosenstein characterizes these instances as “piling on,” and has used his authority to limit how much a single corporate violation can trigger penalties from multiple enforcement agencies. More