The Business Roundtable is a powerhouse of influence in Washington, deploying its over 200 CEO members to score wins on corporate America’s priorities.
With Republicans’ takeover of Congress and the White House next year, the BRT is getting ready to lobby hard on tax, trade and other economic agenda items.
It enters the fray knowing companies could be looking at a mixed bag when it comes to President-elect Donald Trump’s priorities. Like it or not, the CEO trade group is readying to spend cash and move the needle in its direction.
So we sat down with BRT CEO Joshua Bolten to talk about what’s coming in Trump 2.0.
The lobbying blueprint: BRT’s priorities next year are tax, trade and regulation. Bolten said the group will have to play defense on tax and trade but sees some opportunities too. On regulations, it’s all upside under Trump in Bolten’s view.
BRT plans to intensify its lobbying next year, including through advertising, supplier engagement, letter-writing, Hill staff briefings, op-eds, grassroots efforts and meetings with lawmakers and Trump officials.
The group is also planning to deploy its CEOs for meetings — an effort that is already underway. BRT CEOs in town for the group’s quarterly meeting this week met to talk tax with key lawmakers on Capitol Hill Wednesday.
The tax agenda: BRT’s tax priorities have shifted a bit after the election. The group has the same objectives, but it’s less worried about some taxes going up, including the corporate tax rate.
Bolten said companies are “comfortable” with the 21% rate and primarily focused on preserving it.
The group also wants to make sure that taxes on multinational companies’ foreign earnings don’t go up and that some tax breaks get done. The top priority there is a full, upfront deduction for research and development spending. That expired in 2022, and BRT wants to revive it retroactively and make the treatment permanent moving forward. It’s a huge goal for corporate America, but one that will get tricky in a complicated tax debate.
“The actual expiration of the R&D tax credit was a bad shock to the system here in the United States,” Bolten said. “And so I think now without permanence… or very long extensions, I think you will find companies making calculations and hesitating in marginal cases about where to do their R&D.”
Tariff nerves: On the trade front, Bolten said Trump’s tariff threats are giving companies a lot of pause.
Bolten said companies have been preparing for this possibility knowing Trump could win the White House and have been working to diversify their supply chains to avoid targeted tariffs for years now, especially to avoid locating any critical production solely in China. But he said there just isn’t much that companies can do to be ready for big, widespread tariffs.
Here’s more:
Bolten emphasized that if Trump instead veers toward targeted tariffs, that’s an easier pill to swallow and can address unfair trade practices. But he argued that bringing supply chains entirely to the United States to avoid tariffs just isn’t realistic as businesses work to stay internationally competitive.
The debt factor: We also checked in with Bolten — a former Office of Management and Budget director — on the ever-climbing U.S. debt. Concern about perpetual budget deficits has risen on Capitol Hill. But the GOP tax plans that BRT supports would worsen the situation in the years to come, according to Congress’ nonpartisan scorekeepers.
Bolten said BRT members are very concerned about the mounting debt and view it as unsustainable. How does he square that view with the push for tax cuts? Bolten argued taxes should fall more on consumption than on businesses. He added that companies will be ready to help if Congress has the stomach to go after the biggest area of government spending: spending on programs like Social Security and Medicare.
“There’s very little political appetite to address that,” Bolten said. “If and when there is, I think you can expect the business community to come in with constructive suggestions about how to put together a sustainable plan.”
Did you think we’d skip DOGE? The other big area of focus for BRT is deregulation. The group is focused on competition policy from the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department, as well as changes to permitting rules to speed up the process for companies to start projects.
That’s where Bolten sees the “Department of Government Efficiency” stepping in. The so-called DOGE, run by mega-billionaire Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, is tasked with figuring out how to cut government spending and streamline the federal government.
Bolten called it “an odd animal” given its position outside of government, but he said BRT could work with Musk and Ramaswamy on goals via DOGE.
“I think there is an opportunity there for that initiative to promote some radical and positive change in the way the U.S. does business, and I think the best target is permitting,” Bolten said.
