Two business leaders whom President Trump has sparred with, including one who’s often been the subject of biting presidential tweets, were conspicuously absent from a list of the president’s dinner guests Tuesday that included prominent executives from some of the largest and most valuable U.S. companies.
The dinner at Trump’s Bedminster, N.J., estate, where the president has taken up temporary residence this month during “needed renovations to the Oval Office,” is set to include business leaders from a variety of sectors, many of which of greatly benefited from the GOP tax overhaul last December.
According to the White House, Trump will dine with Fiat Chrysler’s Michael Manley, Johnson & Johnson’s Alex Gorsky, Boeing’s Dennis Muilenburg, Ernst & Young’s Mark Weinberger, PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi, and Mastercard’s Ajaypal Banga, among others.
“This is an opportunity for the President to hear how the economy is doing from their perspective and what their priorities and thoughts are for the year ahead,” the White House said of the dinner.
Neither Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, nor Walmart chief Doug McMillon were invited to the meal Tuesday evening, both of whom have previously expressed disappointment over elements of Trump’s presidency.
[Opinion: Big Business is learning to bite its tongue and not talk Trump. Good.]
Trump’s beef with Bezos dates back to the earliest days of his presidential campaign, when he accused the billionaire tech entrepreneur of using the Washington Post “to screw [the] public on low taxation of Amazon.” Though they met when Trump was president-elect — a meeting the Amazon chief described as “very productive” — their relationship soured soon after the president began grumbling on Twitter that Bezos refused to charge sales tax on Amazon products and turned the U.S. Postal Service into his company’s “delivery boy.”
As Trump traveled across the country highlighting mom-and-pop businesses that have benefited from his economic agenda, he continued to bash Amazon for “putting many thousands of retailers out of business.” Over the course of just one week in April, the president fired off four separate tweets in which he demanded that Bezos repay the USPS for lost revenue, accused him of using the Post to lobby lawmakers, and of disrupting the “level playing field” for tax paying retailers across the country.
[More: Trump is wrong about Postal Service subsidizing Amazon, study says]
McMillon found himself at odds with the president following his muted response to a rally organized by white nationalists in Charlottesville, Va. last year. The Walmart CEO, who belonged to the now-defunct White House Strategic and Policy Forum, said at the time that Trump ”missed a critical opportunity to help bring our country together” in the aftermath of the rally, where a white nationalist drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one.
Both men have reportedly questioned the purpose of the president’s heightened tariffs. According to Reuters, Amazon has even considered launching an industry-wide advertising campaign against the president’s trade agenda.
Most of the executives whom Trump will dine with Tuesday evening have escaped his wrath on social media, despite also doubting the administration’s trade agenda. Muilenburg, for instance, told CNBC in mid-July that certain trade restrictions could do long-term harm the aerospace marketplace. Weinberger has similarly suggested that Trump’s protectionist instincts could put the U.S. on a dangerous path toward a global trade war.
But both men have praised other elements of Trump’s economic agenda, a move that has safeguarded their relationship with a president often described as thin-skinned. Boeing has also worked closely with the president and Pentagon officials on a $3.9 billion deal for two new Air Force One planes.
Though it’s unclear whether trade will be discussed during Tuesday’s dinner, the meeting is likely to mirror a similar meal between Trump and European business leaders that White House officials organized at the Davos summit earlier this year. There, the president touted his administration’s tax and deregulatory policies as responsible for putting the U.S. economy back on track.
Trump has already dined with supporters at his Bedminster golf club this week and spent Friday decrying the “fake, fake disgusting news” at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. The White House has described his extended stay as a “working vacation.”
