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This is how much Corporate America loves lower taxes: There’s a guy holding a knife to the neck of the federal institutions that ensure businesses can thrive, and not one CEO or lobbying group is raising a finger to stop him.
Industry lobbies spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year to roam the halls of Congress and nudge the levers of power in their favor. So you might wonder why none of them seem to be moved by the “Department of Government Efficiency” infiltrating federal payment systems and scrubbing public data from the internet.
The reason is simple. The formidable US business lobby wants two things: lower taxes and fewer regulations. That’s it. Of course, the reason they can be so hyperfocused on those desires is because they have been existing for so long in a kind of pro-business dreamland — a nation of sensible laws, free markets, reliable economic data, and, crucially, a population of workers and consumers to keep the whole thing afloat. That’s all thanks to the federal bureaucracy Elon Musk is trying to kill.
And even though US corporations have the deepest pockets and best lawyers around, don’t count on them using any of those resources to throttle Musk or DOGE or any of the Project 2025 objectives that are plainly playing out before all of our eyes.
“This is business as usual,” economist Kathryn Anne Edwards told me Wednesday. “How many businesses run on getting economic data? The entire financial industry should be knocking at the door of the federal government saying, ‘How dare you mess with data that we use to make market predictions?’ I don’t hear anything from them.”
Business groups did sound the alarm recently over President Trump’s tariff proposals. The US Chamber of Commerce, along with trade groups representing automakers, manufacturers, farmers and others all made public pleas to oppose levies on imports from Canada and Mexico, which would effectively tax American businesses. Those same groups cheered this week when the White House announced a monthlong delay on those tariffs.
The Chamber of Commerce, which is the leading business lobby, and the Business Roundtable, which represents CEOs, didn’t respond to a request for comment about the Musk-led assault on federal agencies.
To be sure, the silence from Corporate America isn’t entirely unexpected. While big corporations have flirted in recent years with the idea of leveraging their power to defend marginalized communities and democratic institutions, they have largely lost their appetite.
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It was trendy, for example, in 2016 for brands to join with activists in opposing North Carolina’s anti-trans “bathroom bill.” When police murdered George Floyd in 2020, businesses rushed to tout their anti-racism efforts. And in 2021, when insurrectionists attacked the US Capitol, corporate PR teams were working overtime to make sure CEOs were on the record denouncing the event.
We’re not seeing the same level of outrage anymore, for a variety of reasons (which I wrote about last year as more and more states were curbing abortion access.). At the end of the day, everything in business is a cost-benefit analysis, and we’re witnessing now just how much companies are willing to risk — the stability and rule of law that makes a business community possible — in exchange for lower taxes and the invaluable status of not being in Trump’s crosshairs.
Of course, there’s no law saying corporations must defend the Constitution. That job falls to Congress, where so far Musk’s power grab has been met with shrugs from the Republican majority and little more than outraged rhetoric from Democrats.
“Business is doing what business is going to do,” Edwards said. “They want lower corporate taxes, and it sounds like they’re willing to sell their soul to get it.”