Trump’s day: Air Force One, stocks, $50B deal
President-elect raps cost of airplane, announces sale of stock portfolio, takes credit for Japanese investment in U.S.
The turbulence began Tuesday morning with one of President-elect Donald Trump’s signature tweets of wrath: a public jab at Boeing alleging that the cost of building Air Force One had spiraled out of control.
That came an hour after Boeing’s chief executive was quoted questioning Trump’s stance on trade.
In the afternoon, Trump directed his attention elsewhere, taking credit in a surprise announcement for a Japanese conglomerate’s monthsold pledge to invest $50 billion in the United States.
In the raucous hours in between, a top Trump aide announced offhandedly that, months before, Trump had sold his entire stock portfolio, which some ethics advisers had worried could raise questions about conflicts of interest during his presidency.
It was a day of big pronouncements and few details, leaving many wondering whether this would be the unusual and unpredictable way that Trump will govern when he takes office next month.
That style, including his opaque personal financial dealings and his sudden shots at certain companies, has helped unnerve a corporate America that traditionally craves stability. Some business leaders and economists have worried whether executives can speak their minds about the president-elect or his policies without fear of facing Trump’s rage.
“Twisting people’s arms is inherently problematic” for a president, said N. Gregory Mankiw, a professor of economics at Harvard who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush.
But some defended Trump’s highly visible way of doing business in his transition to the Oval Office. Lanhee Chen, policy director of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, who is now at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, said he was not terribly concerned by Trump’s interactions with individual corporations and chief executives.
“I just assume this is what generally happens,” Chen said. “I don’t think it is that unusual for a president to make appeals to specific companies. What may be unusual is the public nature of the communications. But the activity itself is not uncommon” for presidents or for governors, he said.
Trump has for months targeted companies that, like his own, have shipped jobs overseas. In a string of early-morning tweets Sunday, he threatened “retribution or consequence” for companies that move operations out of the country.
Trump’s Boeing slam Tuesday, though, was something new. The president-elect criticized the Chicago-based jet manufacturer, alleging that the costs of its federal contract to build a new Air Force One had, as Trump said, spiraled “out of control.”
Trump’s tweets came roughly an hour after the publication of a Chicago Tribune column citing Boeing chief executive Dennis Muilenburg’s suggestion that Trump and Congress “back off from the 2016 anti-trade rhetoric.”