More CEOs turn their backs on Donald Trump

WASHINGTON: Could America’s first CEO president lose America’s CEOs? It was a question that came to the fore again Monday when first Merck & Co’s Kenneth Frazier, then Under Armour Inc’s Kevin Plank and Intel Corp’s Brian Krzanich stepped down from a White House business group set up to advise Donald Trump. On Tuesday, Scott Paul, the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, said he was stepping down, because it was “the right thing for me to do”.

While none mentioned the president, Frazier, one of the country’s most-prominent black CEOs, quit the council as Trump was being assailed for failing to quickly condemn white supremacists for deadly violence at a rally Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia. Frazier said he was acting on a “matter of personal conscience”.

Trump shot back on Twitter on Tuesday, saying, “For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!”

Plank and Krzanich, who are white, referred to the charged atmosphere in the US. Plank said he was quitting be-cause his athletic-wear company “engages in innovation and sports, not politics,” and Krzanich, who leads the world’s largest semiconductor maker, cited a “divided political climate” and de-clared, “The current environment must change, or else our nation will become a shadow of what it once was and what it still can and should be.”