Nigerian
born international CEO, Adebayo Ogunlesi has now ceased to be an
adviser to embattled US President Donald Trump. Trump sacked him today
along with other distinguished CEOs counselling him via two councils on
how to “Make America Great Again”.
Adebayo Ogunlesi: to advise Trump on the economy
Trump sacked Ogunlesi on Twitter, when he announced the dissolution of two business advisory councils, in one fell swoop.
Ogunlesi
was a member of Strategic and Policy Forum, one of the two disbanded by
the unpredictable president. The other group was the Manufacturing Jobs
Initiative Council.
Ogunlesi, heads Global Infrastructure
Partners, a private equity firm and one of Fortune 500 companies. He was
the only African on the panel.
The New York Times reported
before Trump’s tweeted dissolution, that members of Ogunlesi’s panel
were debating dissolving the body entirely as Trump wallowed deeper into
bigotry quagmire. But Trump preempted their move.
“Corporate
leaders had hoped that President Trump would help businesses by slashing
taxes and gutting regulations. It is not clear how much he will deliver
on that score. On top of that, he is putting many chief executives in
the position of answering for a president with an unparalleled track
record of outraging people, most recently at a contentious press
conference on Tuesday when he drew a false equivalence between the white
supremacists who protested in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend and
counter-protesters.”, NYT reported.
Trump had earned rebuke and
isolation from business leaders for supporting racial bigotry, White
Supremacists and the KKK, following his remarks that failed to blame the
tragic violence in Charlottesville, Virginia on the group. Instead, he
blamed all the sides and the group that challenged the racists.
The
leaders of three companies — Kenneth Frazier of Merck, Kevin Plank of
Under Armour and Brian Krzanich of Intel — were the first to resign from
the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative Council.
They resigned on
Monday because Mr. Trump was slow to condemn the white supremacists
during the weekend and blamed “many sides” for the violence.
When
Trump moderated his tone on Monday by saying “racism is evil” and
condemning neo-Nazis, he did not assuage some of the CEOs working with
him.
Scott Paul, the president of the Alliance for American
Manufacturing, an organization backed by the steel industry and the
United Steelworkers resigned. he was followed on Tuesday by Richard
Trumka and Thea Lee, the president and deputy chief of staff for the
union group A.F.L.-C.I.O.. The latter’s resignation followed Trump’s
reversed position at a press conference at Trump Tower in New York, in
which he said that “not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me,”
referring to the white nationalists who were chanting “Jews will not
replace us” as they marched with tiki-torches.
Ogunlesi’s Strategic Forum, composed some of America’s most highly respected and successful business leaders.
 |
Comments
Post a Comment