Heads of US businesses who once thought well of President Barack Obama have turned to grumbling. These days they come not to praise, but to accuse him of over-reaching and indecision. The outlook for taxes and regulation worries them, they say. There is too much uncertainty. This is holding back investment and growth.
These themes came to prominence after Ivan Seidenberg, boss of Verizon, gave a speech last month as chairman of the Business Roundtable, a club of US company leaders. “By reaching into virtually every sector of economic life, government is injecting uncertainty into the marketplace and making it harder to raise capital and create new businesses,” he said. He had previously been viewed as an Obama ally.
Jeffrey Immelt, head of General Electric, also sounds disillusioned. The US “has to become an industrial powerhouse again but you don't do this when government and entrepreneurs are not in synch”, he told an audience recently.