The members of Trump’s main business council discussed disbanding the group entirely according to multiple reports.
According to the New York Times‘ David Gelles, Landon Thomas Jr., and Kate Kelly, the members of the Strategic and Policy Forum held a phone call on Wednesday to discuss the future of the council and their relationship with the White House.
The group hoped to inform the White House before publicly announcing the decision, according to Bloomberg.
The discussion comes two days after the departure of Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier from Trump’s manufacturing council, another one of the White House’s meetings of business leaders, set off a wave of departures from that group. Frazier and other business leaders cited Trump’s muddled response to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia as the impetus for the exits.
The Strategic and Policy Forum features a diverse group of leaders including JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, General Motors CEO Mary Barra, and Walmart CEO Doug McMillon. Steve Schwarzman, CEO of private equity giant Blackstone, is the leader of the council.
The group held one White House meeting on February 3, in which Trump promised “exciting times ahead” and that this administration was “coming out with a tax bill soon and a healthcare bill even sooner.” Trump also said he wanted to meet with the council on a monthly or quarterly basis going forward, but another meeting never materialized.
According to the Times, even if the group did not disband, a number of executives said they would’ve departed from the council.
Trump, for his part, attacked those executives who left the manufacturing council, calling them “grandstanders” and saying they were “embarrassed” because they manufactured their products outside of the US.
The manufacturing council is expected to hold a similar phone call as the Strategic Forum’s later on Wednesday.
Here is a full list of Strategic and Policy Forum members:
- Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone
- Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo
- Doug McMillon, Walmart
- Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase
- Mary Barra, General Motors
- Mark Weinberger, EY
- Larry Fink,BlackRock
- Jack Welch, General Electric
- Paul Atkins, Patomak Global Partners
- Adebayo Ogunlesi, Global Infrastructure Partners
- Toby Cosgrove, Cleveland Clinic
- Rich Lesser, Boston Consulting Group
- Jim McNerney, Boeing
- Kevin Warsh, Hoover
- Daniel Yergin, IHS Markit
- Ginni Rometty, IBM
Three members of the council departed prior to the announcement:
- Bob Iger, Disney Left
- Travis Kalanick, Uber Left
- Elon Musk, Tesla, left the council in June after Trump pulled out of the Paris agreement on climate change. He tweeted at the time: “Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”