Former George W. Bush White House chief of staff will head the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs formed to lobby in Washington, the group announced Wednesday.
Joshua Bolten will work with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who is beginning a two-year term as chairman of the group. The move places a Republican and Wall Street insider atop the lobby to begin the Trump era.
In a statement, Dimon said that Bolten “is the right choice at the right time to lead Business Roundtable to drive economic growth and opportunity,” citing his experience at the “highest levels” of government and the private sector.
Bolten will replace outgoing CEO John Engler, the former governor of Michigan.
Bolten served as Bush’s chief of staff from 2006 to 2009, and before that he was the director of the Office of Management and Budget, having started out the administration as a deputy chief of staff.
Before joining Bush’s political team, Bolten worked for Goldman Sachs in London.
In a statement, Bolten said that it was a “particular privilege to be joining Business Roundtable at this time of rapid change and great promise for U.S. economic policy.”
With President-elect Trump and a Republican-led Congress, the Business Roundtable has better odds of achieving some of its top goals, such as corporate tax reform. Some of Trump’s populist platform planks, however, such as renegotiating trade deals and imposing tariffs on U.S. companies moving jobs abroad, run counter to the CEOs’ preferences. The group lobbied hard for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Obama-negotiated Pacific-nation trade deal that died with Trump’s election.
