At every turn, President Donald Trump has used the powers of his office to squelch dissenting opinions and contrary behavior in corporate America. His treatment of Amazon illustrates his methods. As he came under criticism from CEO Jeff Bezos and Bezos-owned Washington Post, Trump struck back. He was not successful in getting the postal service to double postage fees for Amazon but did arrange for the Defense Department to award a huge contract involving cloud-computing to Microsoft when Amazon was clearly the leader in the field. (Brown Political Review, April 8, 2020, by Simon Giordano)
When Nordstrom dropped Ivanka Trump’s fashion line, he attacked them but more dangerously, he attacked CNN and Time Warner and NBC, threatening to revoke NBC’s license. But business consultant Heidi N. Moore argues in The Washington Post, April 4, 2020, that Trump is so clumsy in his administration that his attacks are unlikely to cause any long-term damage. Stock prices of companies under attack rebound nicely. Plus his attacks are so unfocused and mercurial that the companies don’t know how to toe the line.