The election of Donald Trump has prompted the business world with one big question: now what? The president-elect’s policies could impact each industry differently, leading to a number of businesses and business leaders to speak out about what this means going forward.
“I think President-elect Trump’s policies will be very positive for the entire economy by allowing regulations to be reduced and by adjusting Dodd-Frank, which has been a gigantic inhibitor for access to capital for small and mid-sized companies,” said Bruce Mittman, president and CEO of the Needham-based advertisement agency Mittcom.
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was enacted in 2010 in response to the financial crisis of 2008. It aims to prevent the crisis from happening again by creating new regulatory processes that increase transparency, accountability and consumer protection, according to the White House’s website.
Mittman said he believes the economy will benefit from deregulation.
Beth Monaghan is the CEO and co-founder of InkHouse, a public relations firm with one of two locations in Waltham. Monaghan wrote in a Nov. 18 blog post on the InkHouse website that the way “readers consume information is changing, and therefore public relations will have to change with it.”
“The media outlets we read ‘in the stream’ (that is, on our Twitter or Facebook feeds) are becoming more polarized,” she wrote in the post. “Websites or news outlets are either trusted or not trusted sources of information, which means now more than ever a PR professional needs to understand their target audience.”
Finding trusted sources of information has become an increasingly relevant point of discussion, as companies such as Facebook and Google begin to tackle the issue of fake news.
Google recently decided to ban websites that publish fake news from using its advertising service, while Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post that the company is taking steps to address the fake news problem.
Matt LeBretton, vice president of public affairs at New Balance, expressed his support for Trump in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. He specifically spoke about Trump’s opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a deal that New Balance said would hurt its domestic production.
“The Obama administration turned a deaf ear to us and frankly with President-elect Trump we feel things are going to move in the right direction,” he said in the interview.
These comments, however, caused a backlash on social media. People began posting pictures of themselves throwing out their New Balance shoes or burning them, according to New York Magazine.
Shortly after this controversy, the Daily Stormer, an online news source, called New Balance “the official shoes of white people.”
As a response, New Balance clarified its stance on the election.
“New Balance does not tolerate bigotry or hate in any form,” the company wrote in a statement emailed to The Daily Free Press. “One of our officials was recently asked to comment on a trade policy that was taken out of context … New Balance is a values-driven organization and culture that believes in humanity, integrity, community and mutual respect for people around the world.”
However, a business owner’s choice to comment on politics is a gray area to some.
“If you’re CEO of a public company, I think your personal opinion is not quite as valid given that you’re in charge of a company and not the predominant owner of that company,” Mittman said.
Michel Anteby, a professor of organizational behavior and sociology in Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, said that not making a statement is a statement in itself.
“When an organization does not react or take position on pressing social issues, it de facto is endorsing the status quo,” Anteby said. “Thus, by saying nothing, organizations are actually being paradoxically quite vocal.”
