The business community lashed back at Donald Trump’s decision to ditch the Paris climate accord, as two high-profile executives quit the president’s advisory council and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Lloyd Blankfein took to Twitter for the first time ever to express disapproval.
“Today’s decision is a setback for the environment and for the U.S.’s leadership position in the world,” Blankfein wrote.
The one-sentence venture into the Twittersphere -- by a CEO whose Wall Street firm has the most former employees in the administration -- was but a drop in the waterfall of discord on Trump’s decision Thursday. Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook spoke to Trump Tuesday to try to talk him out of a withdrawal,“but it wasn’t enough,” he told employees in a letter obtained by Bloomberg.
Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger and Tesla Motors Corp. founder Elon Musk both withdrew from a presidential jobs panel. And such blue-chip U.S. titans as General Electric Co., Ford Motor Co., Dow Chemical Co. and Microsoft Corp. were among companies weighing in with their dismay.
Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, is organizing a group of American states, cities and businesses to meet the emissions targets under the Paris accord.
“We’re going to do everything America would have done if it had stayed committed,” Bloomberg said in an interview with the New York Times.
Virgin Group Ltd. founder Richard Branson’s response was, perhaps, the most personal: The decision, he wrote, made him “want to cry.”
But Blankfein’s Twitter debut was one of the most eyebrow-raising responses. While he doesn’t serve on any of Trump’s advisory councils, his former Goldman Sachs colleagues in the administration include Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Dina Powell. Steve Bannon, who left the bank more than two decades ago, is Trump’s chief strategist.
Cohn, who was Blankfein’s deputy for more than a decade, defended Trump on CNN, saying, “What President Trump believes is that he was elected to grow the U.S. economy and provide great job opportunities for American citizens.
“What he believes he did today was do exactly that,” he said.