President Donald Trump came to office boasting of his business bona fides and suggesting that companies and chief executives would welcome his market-friendly policies.
As The New York Times reports, some of that has come to pass. The stock markets are booming and big business cheered last year’s tax overhaul, which favored the wealthy and corporations. But throughout Trump’s administration, big companies have routinely been drawn into open conflict with him.
Chief executives have spoken out against his immigration policies, protested his decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement and quit his business councils after his response to last year’s violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Now, ahead of the pivotal midterm elections in November, a coalition of major companies—including Walmart, Patagonia and Lyft—is making a big push to increase voter turnout.
The participating companies all insist that the effort, called Time to Vote, is nonpartisan. They say they are concerned with persistently low voter turnout rates, and want their employees and customers to get to the polls on Nov. 6.
“For democracy to work, people have to vote,” says Chip Bergh, the chief executive of Levi Strauss & Co., which was one of the companies that helped organize the effort. “The greatest threat to democracy is apathy.”
