Business and politics

Trump Recruits Regulatory Rulebreakers

The new Trump Administration will not be the first to staff many of its top positions from the private sector; Trump himself filled his first cabinet with various corporate types. This time around, however, these business figures are coming aboard amid an atmosphere in which norms and rules regarding conflicts of interest and ethics are falling by the wayside.

This starts, of course, at the top. Trump has signaled that he will do even less than in 2017 to separate himself from his family’s ventures. Now, as ProPublica points out, he will also be the first president to take office as the majority owner of a publicly traded company, Trump Media & Technology Group.

In its most recent 10-Q quarterly filing, issued on election day, Trump Media listed as one of the risk factors for its investors the fact that Trump was the subject of numerous legal proceedings. By getting himself elected, Trump has in effect removed many of these risks, given the Justice Department prohibition against prosecuting a sitting president.

The question now is what steps he may take once in office to protect the company itself from oversight. Trump’s choice of Paul Atkins, described as a “regulatory skeptic,” to head the Securities and Exchange Commission will be a boon both to Trump Media and all publicly traded companies.

Trump’s picks for his cabinet and other top positions include numerous figures from the private sector who are currently affiliated with corporations that stand to benefit from a weakening of regulatory protections in various areas. These include companies with a history of misconduct. Here are some examples, drawing on data from Violation Tracker.

Howard Lutnick: Secretary of Commerce. Lutnick is the chief executive of the investment banking and brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald, which has racked up more than $50 million in penalties. This includes a $10 million fine paid to the SEC in 2022 for failing to comply with recordkeeping requirements.

Chris Wright: Secretary of Energy. Wright, an executive at Liberty Energy, which does business as Liberty Oilfield Services, is an outspoken defender of fracking and an ardent climate denier. Earlier this year, the company paid $265,000 to settle allegations from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that Black and Latino workers at its operations in Odessa, Texas were subjected to a hostile environment, including racial slurs. According to the EEOC, management took no correction action when informed of the problem. Liberty has also been cited numerous times by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, including a 2021 case in which it was fined $55,000 for serious and repeated infringements.

Stephen Feinberg: Deputy Defense Secretary. Feinberg is the co-chief executive of the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. The portfolio firms controlled by Cerberus include Hospitality Staffing Solutions, which was fined $58,000 by the Labor Department for wage and hour violations, and Cyanco, which was fined $52,000 by the EPA. Cerberus used to own military contractor DynCorp, which has been involved in numerous controversies, including a case in which it paid $7.7 million to settle allegations of submitting false claims to the Department of State.

Frank Bisignano: Commissioner of the Social Security Administration. Bisignano is the chief executive of the payments company Fiserv. In 2020 Fiserv subsidiary First Data paid $40.2 million to the Federal Trade Commission to resolve allegations it knowingly processed payments and laundered credit card transactions for scams that targeted hundreds of thousands of consumers.

Additional examples come from the make-believe agency known as the Department of Government Efficiency, whose main cheerleader, Elon Musk, heads companies such as Tesla that have clashed with regulators and paid fines.

Not all of Trump’s picks are migrants from the corporate sector. There are also Fox News hosts, rightwing public officials and MAGA ideologues. There is even the wild card RFK Jr., who is critical of the food and drug industries.

Yet the new Trump government will have plenty of people who have come through the reverse revolving door and are likely to promote policies that benefit their former employers and Corporate America in general. The fact that many of them will be veterans of companies with a history of misconduct should make them enthusiastic supporters of Trump’s assault on regulatory safeguards.

If there is an opposite to economic populism, this is it.

The New Swamp

During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump led his supporters to believe he would “drain the swamp” by ending the influence of special interests over government. This time around, he did not bother to make such a vow. In fact, Trump himself can be seen as the ultimate special interest: his entire campaign was largely motivated by the desire to make his legal entanglements disappear. And that is already beginning to happen.

A close second in the self-promotion department goes to Elon Musk, who shamelessly used his wealth to sway the election in Trump’s favor and ingratiate himself and his business interests with the new administration. He has already been rewarded by being named to co-lead a new entity called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which will recommend ways to slash federal spending and regulation. Musk’s main aim may be to protect the hefty contracts and subsidies his space and electric vehicle businesses enjoy while eliminating those going to his competitors.

He could also target rules that his businesses have been charged with violating. For example, Tesla has been fined dozens of times by OSHA for workplace safety violations and is the subject of investigations about the safety of its autonomous driving systems. His SpaceX business has had disputes with agencies such as the EPA.

Musk’s co-head of DOGE is to be Vivek Ramaswamy, the one-time presidential candidate and anti-ESG crusader who is involved with business interests such as the pharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences, which also stands to benefit from a reordering of federal policies.

Corporate executives and billionaires have long sought to alter regulatory practices through their political influence. Musk and Ramaswamy are taking corporate capture to a new level by getting themselves installed in positions designed to decimate oversight—while continuing their private sector activities.

Trump’s cabinet picks are likely to include others with checkered business records and conflicts of interest. The president-elect is thus seeking to ram through the nominations by pressuring the Senate to allow him to make recess appointments that circumvent the confirmation process.

Key posts are also being handed to MAGA zealots whose main qualification is unquestioning loyalty to Trump. That applies to the selection of former Rep. Lee Zeldin to head the EPA. Zeldin once held relatively moderate positions on some environmental issues such as offshore drilling, but he has increasingly embraced pro-fossil-fuel views in recent years as he aligned himself with Trump.

Most troubling is the announcement by Trump that he will nominate Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general. Gaetz, regularly described as a firebrand and a political bomb-thrower, seems perfectly prepared to carry out Trump’s vow to purge the Justice Department of those who participated in the supposedly politicized investigations of him for seeking to overturn the 2020 election and for improperly retaining classified documents. Gaetz may also be looking for payback in relation to a DOJ investigation of him for sex trafficking, which did not lead to criminal charges but Gaetz is still the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation.

At the same time, Gaetz is likely to go along with Trump’s inclination to use the powers of the DOJ to prosecute his opponents, while possibly declining to pursue transgressions by Trump-friendly corporations and billionaires such as Musk.

It has been only a week since the election, but the second Trump Administration already seems poised to usher in a wave of self-dealing, conflicts of interest, and personal vendettas: the New Swamp.

Kamala Harris as A Corporate Crime Fighter

The coming weeks are likely to see much discussion, pro and con, about Kamala Harris’ record prosecuting street crime during her time as District Attorney of San Francisco. Perhaps even more relevant to her as a presidential candidate was her tenure as the California Attorney General.

State attorneys general involve themselves in many issues, but one of their key roles is to address business misconduct, especially in the areas of consumer protection and antitrust. As the California AG from 2011 through 2016, Harris was for the most part an aggressive corporate crime fighter.

In Violation Tracker we have more than 40 cases her office successfully prosecuted, resulting in over $3 billion in fines and settlements. About one-third of that total came from a 2016 judgment against the predatory for-profit Corinthian Colleges, which by that time had ceased operations and was in bankruptcy.

Here are some of the other more significant cases:

A $750 million settlement with the Canadian company Powerex, which was accused of manipulating the market during the 2000-2001 western energy crisis.

A $323 million settlement with SCAN Health Plan to resolve allegations the company overcharged the state’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal.

A $298 million settlement with JPMorgan Chase, which was accused of misleading state pension funds in the marketing of residential mortgage-backed securities. This was part of a broader $13 billion settlement the bank reached with state and federal agencies concerning the toxic securities that helped bring about the financial crisis of the late 2000s.

A $241 million settlement with Quest Diagnostics, which also involved Medi-Cal billing abuses.

A $168 million settlement with K12 Inc., a for-profit online charter school operator, and 14 affiliated non-profit schools known as the California Virtual Academies it managed, over alleged violations of California’s false claims, false advertising and unfair competition laws.

An $86 million settlement with Volkswagen concerning the installation of defeat devices to evade emissions testing in its diesel vehicles. This was a supplement to the company’s $14 billion federal-state settlement.

Among the other companies her office successfully pursued were Walmart (for over-charging customers), Toshiba (price-fixing), Wells Fargo (privacy violations) and Chevron (improper hazardous waste disposal).

Harris’ office was also involved in many cases brought by groups of state AGs, often taking a leading role. The largest case was a $25 billion settlement reached by federal and state agencies in 2012 with five of the largest mortgage servicing companies over their foreclosure practices. Others included:

A $687 million settlement with Standard & Poor’s Financial Services, which had been accused of inflating ratings of residential mortgage-backed securities at the center of the financial crisis.

A $339 million settlement with Abbott Laboratories (now AbbVie) to resolve allegations it promoted its drug Depakote for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

A $151 million settlement with drug wholesaler McKesson to resolve allegations the company inflated the price of prescription drugs by as much as 25 percent, causing the states’ Medicaid programs to overpay millions of dollars in pharmacy reimbursements.

A $90 million settlement with the Swiss bank UBS on charges of anticompetitive and fraudulent conduct in the municipal bond derivatives industry, which took the form of bid-rigging, submission of non-competitive courtesy bids and submission to government agencies, among others, of fraudulent certifications of compliance with U.S. Treasury regulations.

Harris’s record as AG was not flawless. Most notably, she was criticized for failing to prosecute OneWest Bank for foreclosure violations. The bank was controlled by Steve Mnuchin, who would go on to become Donald Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury.

If she were to become president, Harris would be in a position to set the tone for the way her administration would address corporate misconduct. That would begin with her choice for attorney general and extend to the approach she encourages for all regulatory agencies.

This is an area in which she cannot simply promise to continue the policies of the current administration. Biden’s Justice Department initially signaled it would get tough on corporate miscreants after Trump’s lax approach, but it has largely failed to deliver. Instead, the DOJ has stressed leniency agreements, which have turned out to be a boon for recidivist companies.

Harris would do well to signal that she intends to change course and draw on her experience as state AG to be an aggressive corporate crime fighter at the federal level.

The False Hope of Vance’s Populism

The claim that Donald Trump’s near-death experience in Pennsylvania is a sign of divine intervention is not the only far-fetched notion emerging from the Republican Convention. It is also difficult to swallow the idea that the choice of J.D. Vance as Trump’s running mate is an indication that the GOP is embracing pro-worker populism.

Vance is one of a group of younger Republican senators who are seeking to address one of the key contradictions of the MAGA movement. Trump has done a good job tapping into the anger of working class voters, but he has used it mainly to stoke resentment against immigrants and cultural elites. He has offered little in the way of proposals that would improve the lot of communities still suffering the effects of economic dislocation.

In his 2016 campaign, Trump promoted the idea he would revive the coal industry. That excited many voters in states such as West Virginia, but it was a false promise. Coal continued to decline. Now Trump is relying on gimmicks such as eliminating payroll taxes on tips received by hospitality workers while pushing widespread tariffs that could seriously backfire. At the same time, he brought about a Republican platform containing tax and regulatory policies that are anything but populist.

Vance and his group are smart enough to realize that those workers flocking to the Republican Party may not be satisfied with cultural populism alone. They are thus willing to flirt with ideas that are antithetical to long-standing GOP orthodoxy.

They seem to be more receptive toward labor unions—a stance that got a boost after the Teamsters president agreed to speak at the convention. They have a more positive view of antitrust enforcement, at least when it comes to Big Tech. In the past, Vance has expressed support for increasing the minimum wage and raising taxes on corporations.

There is no indication that any of these ideas are going to be adopted by Donald Trump, who continues to espouse the corporate agenda on most issues. He clings to the business-friendly claims that regulation harms the economy and that low business taxes are the key to prosperity. He vilifies unions and environmental groups. A second Trump Administration would likely pander to corporate interests the way the first one did.

While many CEOs are still wary of endorsing Trump and his social agenda, some are moving into his camp. Most notable is Elon Musk, who has committed to spending tens of millions of dollars to support the Republican ticket. Other major figures in Silicon Valley are also jumping on the Trump bandwagon.

It is unclear whether Trump’s selective populism will continue to satisfy his supporters, but for now he seems to be riding high. As for Vance, it is more likely that Trump will change his views rather than the other way around. After all, this is the same Vance who once denounced Trump and now worships him. I am betting he will have a similar conversion when it comes to economic policy.

From SCOTUS to Project 2025

There has never been any question that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority is solidly pro-corporate. Yet in a slew of audacious rulings at the end of the term, those Justices abandoned any pretense of even-handedness.

Chief Justice Roberts and his allies swept away a 40-year-old precedent that directed judges to defer to federal regulatory agencies in interpreting laws involving oversight of business. The decision is expected to result in a wave of lawsuits by corporate interests challenging all manner of regulations. Many of those cases will ultimately be decided by the Justices, and it is clear how that will go.

Along with its ruling in the Chevron deference case, the Court took several other whacks at regulators. It invalidated the Securities and Exchange Commission’s use of in-house administrative law judges, a move that could cripple the agency’s ability to resolve securities fraud cases and could undermine similar enforcement procedures at other regulators. At the same time, SCOTUS put on hold an Environmental Protection Agency plan to curtail air pollution that drifts across state lines. Finally, the Court gave corporations more time to challenge regulations by extending the statute of limitations.

All of this is bad enough, but it could turn out to be a prelude to a wider assault on federal oversight of corporate conduct. A large coalition of business-friendly conservative groups have come together under the banner of Project 2025 to provide a blueprint for how a second Trump Administration could start to dismantle the so-called administrative state.

The plan is set out in a 922-page compendium titled Mandate for Leadership and published by the Heritage Foundation, which produced a similar volume for the incoming Reagan Administration. It calls for radical changes across the executive branch to usher in what it calls a “return to self-governance to the American people” but is in reality a call to give corporations a freer hand.

Mandate is filled with strident anti-regulatory rhetoric. It accuses the EPA of engaging in “vendetta-driven enforcement” and “liberty-crushing regulation.” It describes the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as being “assailed by critics as a shakedown mechanism” and claims that penalties collected by the agency “have “ended up in the pockets of leftist activist organizations.”

Many of the recommendations in the volume consist of weakening agencies by cutting their budgets and staffs while re-orienting them to the needs of business. The chapter on the EPA says the agency should “foster cooperative relationships with the regulated community,” a thinly veiled call to retreat from enforcement. There is also a call for more “state leadership,” presumably meaning those states antagonistic to the mission of the agency.

On Day One of a Trump Administration, Mandate argues, the president should issue an executive order creating “pause and review” teams at EPA that would, among other things, “identify existing rules to be stayed and reproposed.”

The only regulations viewed favorably in Mandate are those that would promote the conservative social agenda that also suffuses the volume. For example, the plan supports measures that would prevent companies from providing abortion-related healthcare coverage for employees.

After Project 2025 started to attract more attention, Trump recently tried to distance himself from the effort. Like most of what the presumptive Republican nominee says, that statement should not be taken too seriously.

In fact, the tone and substance of the Mandate volume are entirely consistent with the regulation-bashing that has been part of Trump’s shtick since he entered the national political arena. With help from the Supreme Court and Project 2025, a second Trump Administration could do a lot more to weaken public protections and make life comfortable for rogue corporations.

The Second Trump Administration is Open for Business

Much of the concern about a possible second Trump term has focused on what seem to be his increasingly authoritarian impulses. Yet we should also worry about old-fashioned corruption.

A glaring sign of what may coming has just appeared in the revelation that a businessman with a shady record put up the $175 million bond Trump had to pay while he appeals a civil fraud judgement in New York State. This was after Trump claimed he could not find any company willing to provide the original bond amount of $454 million and successfully begged a state appeals court to reduce the amount.

That businessman is Don Hankey, whose holdings include Knight Specialty Insurance, which provided the bond for what Hankey told the Washington Post was a “modest fee.” He claimed that the bond deal was not meant as a political statement, yet Hankey supported Trump’s claim that the case brought against him by New York Attorney General Letitia James was unwarranted.

Hankey has accumulated most of his fortune, which Forbes estimates at over $7 billion, from making subprime automobile loans via companies such as Westlake Financial, Westlake Services and Wilshire Consumer Credit. These businesses have run afoul of regulators.

In 2015 the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau hit Westlake Services and Wilshire Consumer Credit with a $48 million penalty, including a fine of $4.25 million and $44.1 million in cash relief and balance reductions for customers the agency said had been subjected to illegal debt collection practices. According to the CFPB, the companies:

Pretended to call from repo companies by altering caller ID information. The companies’ debt collectors would then make explicit or implicit threats that the borrowers’ vehicles were in imminent danger of being repossessed.
Altered caller ID information so that it looked like they were calling from unrelated businesses or family members.
Explicitly and implicitly threatened to file criminal charges against consumers even when they had not decided to refer the borrowers to criminal authorities. These tactics likely misled consumers into believing they needed to make a payment urgently to avoid an investigation.
Tricked borrowers whose vehicles had been repossessed by making it appear their calls were coming from a party associated with the word Storage. During some of these calls, the companies’ debt collectors implied that the vehicles would be released if the borrowers made a partial payment on the account; however, the companies would actually only release a repossessed vehicle after a borrower paid the full amount due.
Called consumers’ employers, friends, and family members without permission and told them that consumers were delinquent on loans or facing repossession, investigation, or criminal charges.
Paid a repo company to make collections calls to consumers, even when the companies had not decided to repossess the consumers’ vehicles or the companies had no reason to believe repossession was imminent. This tactic likely misled consumers into believing that they needed to make a payment urgently to avoid repossession.

The CFPB also accused Westlake and Wilshire of violating federal consumer financial laws in their advertising, customer relations, and account servicing practices. These were said to include changing the due dates on accounts or extended loan terms without consulting consumers and giving consumers incomplete information about the true cost of their loans.

In 2016 the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office announced that Westlake Services would provide $5.7 million in relief to consumers to resolve allegations that the company charged excessive interest rates on subprime auto loans.

In 2017 Westlake Services and Wilshire Consumer Credit had to pay $760,000 to resolve a case brought by the U.S. Justice Department alleging they violated the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act by repossessing vehicles from members of the military without the required court orders.

Are we expected to believe that the owner of a business such as this is helping Trump solely out of the goodness of his heart? It seems a lot more likely that Hankey is currying favor with Trump in the hope of receiving future assistance from the White House in dealing with pesky regulators.

It is not difficult to imagine that Trump would use a new stint in the Oval Office for such purposes. After all, this kind of corruption was a constant theme during his first term, when special interest groups seeking presidential help could simply book an event or a block of rooms at Trump’s hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue.

What is amazing is that this kind of mischief seems to be happening again even before Trump has won the election or taken office.

Big Business on the Defensive

Too often, the news is filled with stories of large corporations getting away with all kinds of abuses—mistreating workers, fouling the environment, cheating consumers, undermining our privacy. This week has been different.

On the labor front, there has been more coverage of strikes than we have seen for a long while. This includes a resolved dispute involving film and TV writers, a continuing one involving actors and an escalating one involving autoworkers. These work stoppages are all receiving widespread public support.

The auto strike also brought about the first-ever visit of a sitting U.S. President to a picket line. Occupants of the White House have more typically responded to walkouts by blocking them—as Biden did with railroad workers last year—or with more extreme measures such as Reagan’s firing of the air traffic controllers in 1981.

At the same time, news outlets are giving substantial play to efforts by federal and state governments to curb the power of Big Tech. The Federal Trade Commission, along with 17 state attorneys general, just filed a sweeping complaint against Amazon.com, accusing the e-commerce giant of abusing its market power to the detriment of both consumers and small businesses that rely on its platform to sell their goods.

The FTC complaint arrives as the trial proceeds in a Justice Department lawsuit against Google for monopolizing the online search market. Both cases challenge the core business models of the companies. Even if break-ups of the tech giants are unlikely, adverse court rulings could require them to make fundamental structural changes in the way they operate.

Significant changes, while perhaps not as drastic, could also result from the current labor disputes. It appears that the new contract won by the Writers Guild of America will put limits on the industry’s control of content created with the help of artificial intelligence. United Autoworkers members are seeking to dismantle tiered wage structures and reduce the basic workweek while the industry is making the transition to electric vehicles.

Other fundamental challenges to corporations can be seen in the environmental area. Not long ago, a group of young people in Montana prevailed in their lawsuit arguing that the state’s failure to consider climate change when approving fossil fuel projects was a violation of a provision in the Montana constitution guaranteeing residents the right to a clean and healthy environment. This is just one of numerous efforts to use the courts to address the climate crisis. Large companies are also facing the prospect of new greenhouse gas disclosure requirements—one passed by the California legislature and another pending in the European Union.

Corporations are not giving into these challenges without a fight. They are trying to limit their concessions to unions, aggressively arguing their positions in the court cases, taking steps to sway public opinion and employing legions of lobbyists to promote their point of view to legislators and policymakers.

Yet, for the moment, it is a pleasure to see Big Business on the defensive.

Biden’s Catalogue of Corporate Abuses

There was not much soaring oratory in President Biden’s State of the Union address, but the speech was an unapologetic call for a full set of progressive policy initiatives. It was also a bold critique of big business practices affecting workers, consumers and communities. Biden offered what amounted to a catalogue of corporate misconduct.

Although Biden implicitly praised the private sector for strong job creation during the past few years and explicitly hailed companies planning to make big investments in U.S. semiconductor production (with generous federal subsidies), he also spoke of the prior decades during which corporations moved large numbers of well-paid manufacturing jobs overseas and devastated many communities.

Biden chastised Big Pharma for charging exorbitant prices and generating high profits, warning that he would veto any attempts by Congress to repeal new legislation that will require the industry to negotiate Medicare drug prices for the first time.

Calling the tax system unfair, Biden lambasted large companies that have managed to avoid paying anything to the federal government and praised the adoption of a 15 percent minimum. Addressing those corporations, he stated: “just pay your fair share.”

Citing Big Oil’s record profits over the past year, Biden criticized the industry for not investing more in domestic production and instead using the windfall for stock buybacks that boost share prices. He called for quadrupling the tax on those transactions.

Biden went after insurance companies for surprise medical bills and called out nursing homes “that commit fraud, endanger patient safety, or prescribe drugs they don’t need.” He took credit for cracking down on shipping companies that charged excessive rates during the supply-chain crunch.

Touting a bill called the Junk Fee Prevention Act, Biden lashed out at hidden surcharges and fees imposed by hotels, airlines, banks, credit card companies, cable TV and cellphone providers, ticket services, and other sectors. “Americans are tired of being played for suckers,” he declared.

Biden took aim at large employers that require workers, even in low-skilled positions, to sign non-competition agreements, blocking them from taking a job with a competing company. Saying he is “sick and tired of companies breaking the law by preventing workers from organizing” unions, he called for passage of the PRO Act.

Speaking of the efforts to keep small business afloat during the pandemic, he vowed to double-down on efforts to prosecute corruption in those programs.

Biden also joined the chorus of voices denouncing the tech giants, stating “we must finally hold social media companies accountable for the experiment they are running on our children for profit.” He called for legislation to “stop Big Tech from collecting personal data on kids and teenagers online, ban targeted advertising to children, and impose stricter limits on the personal data these companies collect on all of us.”

There was a lot more to the speech, but this was a remarkable recitation of the sins of unbridled big business. It is significant that Biden delivered this critique without ever using the word “regulation,” which the Right has endlessly demonized. Yet he spoke repeatedly of both administrative and legislative initiatives to address the abuses.

The latter category is dead in the water in the new divided Congress. It will be up to the Biden Administration to show what it can do through executive action to turn his critique into significant change.

The Not-So-Woke Corporations

In its never-ending effort to use culture war issues for political advantage, the American Right has a new favorite target: woke corporations. This is the derogatory term conservatives have seized on to attack those portions of Big Business that have decided to show concern about issues such as racism, sexism and inequality.

This is one of those debates with a lot of empty posturing on both sides. Corporatist Republicans are pretending to be fire-breathing critics of the Fortune 500. Chief executives who are still preoccupied with profit above all are pretending to be social reformers.

Since behavior counts more than public statements, let’s look at the track record of large corporations when it comes to the issue at the center of wokeness: their treatment of women and people of color. One has only to look at some of the cases in the news over the past couple of months to get an indication of what really goes on in the business world.

Recently, for example, Google agreed to pay $118 million to settle litigation that accused it of systematically underpaying its female employees. The lawsuit, originally filed in 2017, alleged that the company put women into lower career tracks than their male counterparts, resulting in lower salaries and bonuses. Once a judge granted class action status to the plaintiffs—something that some similar suits against tech companies failed to achieve–it was almost inevitable that the company was going to have to make a substantial payout.

This case is not the only instance of discrimination allegations against Google. In 2021 a branch of the U.S. Labor Department found evidence of compensation and hiring discrimination against female and Asian applicants for engineering positions. Google had to pay out $2.5 million in back pay and set aside $1.25 million for pay-equity adjustments. The company is also defending itself against a lawsuit accusing it of racial discrimination.

In another major discrimination case, Sterling Jewelers recently agreed to pay out $175 million to settle a long-running lawsuit accusing it of underpaying and underpromoting tens of thousands of women at its stores. There were also accusations of sexual harassment at the company.

Not long ago, a federal court approved a consent decree entered into by the gaming giant Activision Blizzard to resolve an action brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in response to reports of sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination and related retaliation at the company. The company is paying out $18 million.

Activision is being acquired by Microsoft, which has had its own discrimination issues. In May, the same Labor Department agency that fined Google required Microsoft subsidiary LinkedIn to provide $1.8 million in back pay and interest to a group of nearly 700 female employees said to have been the victims of gender-based pay discrimination.

As I documented in a 2019 report, almost all large corporations have been caught up in discrimination cases. While many of the cases are resolved through confidential settlements, I was able to show that 189 Fortune 500 companies had paid a total of $1.9 billion to resolve private litigation or cases brought by federal government agencies since 2000.

There is no indication that the policies that gave rise to those cases have come to an end. In fact, the main problem with woke corporations seems to be that they are not woke enough.

The Phony Feud Between Republicans and Big Business

When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis struck back at Disney for declining to support his culture war demagoguery, some observers were quick to see this as evidence of a supposed rift between the Republican Party and big business.

The Washington Post ran a front-page story declaring that “growing numbers of state and federal Republican leaders today seem eager to clash with the country’s biggest corporations.” The article portrayed the Disney dispute and a few other examples, such as criticism of Delta Air Lines for opposing restrictive voting law changes in Georgia, as “cracks in the once-sturdy relationship between companies and a business-friendly GOP.”

A similar article in the New York Times was headlined “Rebuke of Disney is Sign of a Shift by Republicans Away from Big Business.”

Reading these pieces gave me a strong feeling of déjà vu. I was reminded of the commentaries that were published about Donald Trump during his first presidential race and after his election in 2016. Much was made of his supposed attacks on big banks, military contractors and pharmaceutical companies. This continued when Trump went after Amazon.com for its supposed sweetheart deal with the postal service.

It eventually became clear that all of purported conflict amounted to nothing of substance. Trump never followed through on any actions that would negatively impact large corporations. In fact, he pursued a thoroughly pro-business agenda of lavish corporate tax cuts and a relentless attack on regulation. The latter made life easier for payday lenders, brazen polluters and employers engaged in wage theft. While some major corporations expressed misgivings about Trump’s style or his rhetoric on other issues, they were thrilled to watch him fulfill their most ardent policy desires.

Trump’s evil genius was his ability to give his working-class supporters the impression he was promoting their interests while actually catering to the corporate elite.

I have no doubt that DeSantis and other Republicans now attacking big business are engaged in the same kind of political theater. The only difference is that, while Trump pretended to be an economic populist, today’s rising GOP stars find it more advantageous to spar with corporations over social issues. It is true that DeSantis got Disney’s special taxing district rescinded, but he will probably get it reinstated once he no longer needs the company as a political foil.

The GOP spats with corporations are made easier by the fact that much of big business these days is engaged in its own posturing. Under the rubric of corporate social responsibility or ESG, many large companies are speaking out on social and environmental issues, often depicting themselves as the vanguard of change. They may do this on their own initiative, or, as in the case of Disney, are pressured by employees.

Trump-style Republicans and politically correct corporations are both engaged in a kind of kabuki dance. DeSantis et al. are pretending to be moral crusaders when they simply pursuing their political ambitions. Large companies are pretending to be moral crusaders of another sort when they are simply burnishing their commercial image.

Reporters looking for serious corporate critics are not going to find them anywhere in the Republican Party—nor among most Democrats. The mark of a serious challenger to big business is someone willing to support efforts to curb corporate power. That means strengthening worker organizing rights, consumer protection laws, environmental oversight, antitrust laws and the like—not concocting phony disputes with companies to advance a misguided culture war agenda.