Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber $UBER, made a splash when he announced he heard the pleas of his employees and customers and was dropping out of a group of business leaders meeting with US president Donald Trump today.
Progressives hoping for similar defections shouldn’t hold their breath. Trump’s business council—officially called the president’s strategic and policy forum—has few members who are as subject to the pressure of employees and customers as Kalanick.
Uber relies on millennials for most of its US customers—almost three quarters of its user base is between 16 and 34—and that’s a group that favored Clinton over Trump, and pushed the #deleteUber movement. Many of Uber’s freelance drivers are immigrants without strong ties to the company, and almost 1,000 signed a petition urging Kalanick to drop out of Trump’s council. More than 200,000 customers deleted their Uber accounts, according to the New York Times (paywall).
Other members of the forum won’t be as easily swayed. Tesla $TSLA’s Elon Musk, the sole remaining CEO from Silicon Valley, is probably the most likely to hear from his customers, but he’s stated he wants to work with Trump:
Others, like Rich Lesser, CEO of Boston Consulting Group, attended the meeting, even if it has angered employees and clients want him to speak out against Trump’s immigration ban. Lesser offered only a tepid statement about the value of diversity on LinkedIn, without addressing the executive order, which has stirred unrest at the firm, a source told Quartz.
Most of the business leaders fall into three main buckets:
Ultimately, the decision of a CEO to work with Trump is a calculation based on their personal politics, their company’s interests, and whether its brand would be enhanced by publicly rebuking the president.
It’s not clear what influence, if any, the CEOs meeting with Trump today will have. But, as Musk suggests, it’s certainly greater than that of the CEOs who aren’t there.
