As Donald Trump launched his trade war on April 2, billionaire Republican donor Ken Langone knew it would decimate Home Depot, the company he helped build into America’s best-known DIY store.
His gloom deepened as Trump followed up his “liberation day” with a tariff regime on China so steep that many experts said it would amount to a de facto embargo on goods from the world’s biggest exporter.
The reaction was twofold. First, capital markets delivered a withering verdict, with a sharp sell-off in US Treasuries, the dollar, and global equities wiping out trillions of dollars of market value and raising fears of a financial crisis. The bond market moves alarmed Trump, who appeared to be on the cusp of a crisis like the one that toppled Liz Truss after a month-and-a-half as UK prime minister.
Then corporate America swung into action.
From Silicon Valley to the shale oilfields, from JPMorgan’s boss Jamie Dimon to Apple’s Tim Cook, some of the world’s most powerful business leaders launched an urgent campaign — sometimes in public, but mostly in private — to pull Trump back from the brink.
It worked — in part. In recent weeks, Trump has caved in on some reciprocal tariffs, exempted most of Canada’s and Mexico’s goods from duties, offered huge carve-outs for carmakers, and signalled that he would bail out America’s agricultural producers. Equity markets have recouped their losses.
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Brian Ballard, a top GOP lobbyist, described a “whirlwind” in the US capital as companies rushed to influence the right people close to Trump.
Some executives played on the personal relationship they struck with Trump after his election win, during trips to Mar-a-Lago or to his lavish Washington inauguration in January — which many of them personally funded.
“A lot of the tariff carve-outs, like the one for electronics, didn’t come from broad industry lobbying campaigns. It seemed more like Trump was hearing directly from executives, like Tim Cook,” said a Washington corporate adviser.
Langone suggested Trump’s tariff war had awoken some of corporate America powerful beasts, who now had demands.
“He’s rattled cages,” Langone told the Financial Times last month. “Now he’s got to go feed the gorilla.”
Among the lessons of that lobbying campaign is that private persuasion is more effective than public coercion — and the president cares what Main Street thinks.
Global auto executives learned quickly. “Liberation day” hit their sector hard, as Trump hammered tariffs not just on adversaries such as China, but also key allies including Germany and Britain.
Even after Trump announced a 90-day reprieve for most countries — China excluded — foreign-made car imports to the US still faced a 25 per cent levy.
Export powerhouses BMW, Mercedes and VW decided they could no longer rely on German diplomats or European politicians and needed to take matters into their own hands.
On April 18, senior executives from the three German automakers met Trump at the White House in a private meeting to seek relief. Bosses at the Big Three — Ford, Stellantis, and GM — also stepped up their own lobbying efforts.
Stellantis chair John Elkann warned that “American and European car industries are being put at risk” by Trump’s trade policy — a rare public intervention.
On Tuesday, Trump granted some relief to the automakers, sparing car parts from multiple tariffs and offering rebates to offset the cost of some of the levies that remained.
It was a partial victory — but it also allowed Trump to visit Michigan last week to tout his rescue package for the auto sector, even though some tariffs remain.
“We give them a little time before we slaughter them if they don’t do this right,” Trump told supporters.
Other Trump allies from corporate America, meanwhile, were also urging him to step back from the brink, warning of a catastrophic impact on sectors the president had vowed to defend.
Harold Hamm, the billionaire shale magnate who co-ordinated oil and gas donations for Trump to help his election, lobbied the president to pull back on tariffs that would have harmed the energy sector.
“I did talk to Trump about what it would do to [oil] prices, particularly in different parts of the country,” Hamm said. The slump in oil prices following the tariff announcements has raised fears of a new slowdown in the shale sector, a large employer and prolific producer.
The tycoon also warned him that some refineries were entirely dependent on Canadian crude — which was also a target of Trump’s tariffs, before he reduced the duty on energy imports from the northern neighbour.
“And so the whole thing got complicated and the president said: ‘OK let’s not do that.’ He didn’t think it was a good idea . . . That was a success.”
While the sudden sell-off in bonds and rise in yields after the tariffs were announced also triggered alarm for Trump, who dispatched his Treasury secretary Scott Bessent to try to calm the markets, other voices from the real economy were also weighing in.
Langone said that when he told the FT last month that the president was being “poorly advised” and some of the tariffs were “bullshit”, Trump heard him, according to one person with knowledge of the matter. Langone declined to comment further on tariffs through a spokesperson this week.
“The more rooted your business is in Middle America and Main Street, the more likely the administration and its close allies are to pay attention to the impact of policy decisions,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist at Penta.
Big-box retailers — most exposed to the US consumer’s mood — have also privately warned that tariffs would raise prices and potentially empty shelves. Walmart’s CEO Doug McMillon, Target CEO Brian Cornell, and Ted Decker, the CEO of Home Depot, met Trump at the White House. The men warned the president that his tariffs would bring a toxic combination of supply chain disruption, higher prices, and empty shelves, according to Axios.
Those kinds of warnings were echoed by other executives on earnings calls in recent weeks — and borne out by the sinking numbers in Michigan university’s consumer sentiment survey.
Apple’s Cook has secured exemptions from the overall 145 per cent tariff on products from China used to make iPhones and other hardware designed by the California-based group.
While those who sought to quietly influence the president won concessions, public opposition led to some bruising encounters.
On Tuesday, the White House condemned a “hostile and political act by Amazon” after reports that the tech giant intended to flag price increases on its products as a result of Trump’s tariffs.
Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos later that day spoke with the president to reassure him that his company had “never approved” such a plan. “Jeff Bezos was very nice. He was terrific. He solved the problem very quickly and he did the right thing,” said Trump.
Wall Street has also begun to steer clear of publicly criticising a president they expected to be more sympathetic to their sector, but has launched attacks on corporate law firms and other perceived foes.
“Trump has always been disruptive and we all underestimated the level of disruption — we are all just awakening to this,” said a top executive at a Wall Street bank who regularly speaks to Trump’s administration.
The senior executive said his finance peers had learnt that it was better to send back-channel messages to Bessent to explain how the tariffs are hurting their businesses and those of their clients.
“It’s better not to do it [criticise the administration] on television. It’s not going to get you very far. You are better off having a more substantive conversation behind the scenes,” the top Wall Street executive said.
While Wall Street titans such as Bill Ackman, Ken Griffin and Ray Dalio made public calls for Trump to rein in some of his plans, the sell-off in the bond market was more persuasive. That, and some warnings of recession from Dimon, leader of the US’s largest bank.
Other executives who are not as influential or connected as Cook or Hamm are leaning on their local Republican politicians to deliver messages of distress caused by the tariffs or any other unfavourable policy from the administration.
“You’re seeing more political leaders, both in Congress and at the state level, voicing concerns about the long-tail effects of these trade policies. That puts real pressure on the administration and its congressional allies to take those effects into account,” said Madden at Penta.
Additional reporting Patricia Nilsson, Stephen Morris, Antoine Gara
