Rex
Tillerson, the U.S. Secretary of State fired by U.S. President Donald Trump and
former CEO of Exxon, an international oil company based in the U.S., did not
allow his difference with the president of tariffs on steel and aluminum to be
a deal breaker. In this respect, the ex-CEO was not doing his company’s
bidding. That is to say, he was not primarily in public service to serve the
private interests of a multinational corporation. Unfortunately, this cannot be
said of Gary Cohn, the ex-president of Goldman Sachs who quit as Trump’s chief
economic advisor just after the tariffs were announced. Tariffs in general and
especially to protect goods in another sector are not in the interests of a
major American banks with substantial international business. If the former
president of Goldman Sachs had taken the post in government to further Goldman’s
interests, the question is whether public service is mere window-dressing at
the highest levels of government—plutocracy being the real name of the game.
In a statement at the time of his resignation, Cohn wrote, “It
has been an honour to serve my country and enact pro-growth economic policies
to benefit the American people. In particular the passage of historic tax
reform.”[1]
That reform lowered the corporate tax rate and thus was a financial benefit to
Goldman Sachs. Cohn left this point out and instead cited the benefit to the American
people, which might thus have been a mere subterfuge designed to hide the
possibility that the ex-president of Goldman Sachs was actually doing his firm’s
bidding.
That Cohn was instrumental in getting the corporate tax rate
reduced and that he resigned at least
in part because President Trump acted aversely to Goldman Sachs’ interests in
enacting tariffs—even just as a
negotiating tactic in the trade negotiations then going on—suggests that
Cohn had taken the governmental post
to safeguard and promote the financial interests of Goldman Sachs. Perhaps
President Trump had been obliged to fill the position with such a person in
exchange for having accepted campaign contributions from the firm or even the
financial industry more generally. It would then be no accident that the
Secretary of the Treasury was also a Goldman alum.
The larger question regards whether the public
interest can be served in a political economy in which large companies have
substantial political leverage over aspiring candidates for office via campaign
contributions. At the time of Tillerson’s firing, President Trump remarked that
he was finally able to have a cabinet of his own—of his choosing. This
statement implies that he had been obliged initially to hand over several
cabinet positions to people not of his own choosing. Had Exxon purchased the de
facto first chance to fill the Secretary of State position, and Goldman Sachs
the U.S. Treasury and chief economic advisor positions? With public statements
insisting on having served the American people, which would hardly be need to
be said were it true, it should come as no surprise that the American people
have been kept in the dark concerning the influence of “dark” money on “public”
offices at the expense of the public good.
For more on this topic, see Institutional Conflicts of Interest
For more on this topic, see Institutional Conflicts of Interest
1. Kate Kelly, Maggie Haberman, and Peter Baker, “Gary Cohn to Resign as Trump’s
Top Economic Advisor,” The New York Times, March 6, 2018.
