American businesses have been noticeably mum since President Donald Trump’s return to power in 2025.
Many of the nation’s most prominent executives have gone out of their way to accommodate the president, even as he has increasingly asserted control over their industries. A phalanx of billionaires paid court at Trump’s inauguration, while top companies—including Caterpillar, T-Mobile, and Altria—are helping to fund Trump’s ballroom. Other firms have acceded to their partial nationalization; US Steel, for instance, handed the administration a “golden share” in the company, essentially ceding control over its strategic direction to the government.
This silence is a mistake, argues Daniella Ballou-Aares, founder and CEO of the nonprofit Leadership Now. “To think that large influential actors can stay out of things when democracy is threatened is an illusion, frankly,” she says.
Launched in 2017, at the start of Trump’s first term, Leadership Now is perhaps the nation’s only bipartisan business group committed to defending democracy. The organization includes more than 400 business leaders nationwide, with chapters in eight states. It has taken a strong stand against election denialism and created a “democracy report card” for business leaders. It also recently debuted a “Business Plan for America,” which emphasizes the importance of political stability and the rule of law for economic growth.
Before founding Leadership Now, Ballou-Aares co-founded the global advisory firm Dalberg and worked as a senior official at the U.S. State Department. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. The full interview is available at Spotify, YouTube, and iTunes.
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Anne Kim: You have an MBA from Harvard Business School. You started your career at Bain and Company. What prompted you to leave behind a traditional career in business to launch Leadership Now?
Daniella Ballou-Aares: It was both a moment in time and the history of what I had done professionally that led me to start Leadership Now. The moment in time was early 2017. I was coming out of five years in the Obama administration, working on international economic development.
I had also spent most of my career before that in business, building a company and working with companies around the world. Trump had been elected president, and I saw an overall risk that faith in democracy as a whole was eroding.
Having thought enough in my life about 1930s Germany and about what happened in that period, I worried that if we didn’t have a really thoughtful approach from the business community about how to rebuild faith in our democracy, how to make our systems more responsive to citizens, and how to counter efforts to undermine trust in our institutions, in media, and in each other, we were really going to be in trouble.
Anne Kim: What is the specific role of business in defending democracy? [In a TED Talk that you gave in 2023, you said that “when business leaders stay out of politics … and passively enable autocracies, democracies collapse.”] What is the argument that business leaders have the power to preserve democracy or to prevent autocracy?
Daniella Ballou-Aares: Businesses are inherently large actors in their countries. And so to think that large influential actors can stay out of things when democracy is threatened is an illusion, frankly.
Those who are influential in the system, we’ve seen over history, need to play a role. Sometimes that might be more behind the scenes than public, but if various sectors and power centers are willing to allow the rule of law to go away, it’s very, very risky. In Nazi Germany, some of the biggest companies did not want to engage and thought that Hitler was a joke, that he would go away, but they ultimately paid the price.
In contemporary Hungary, you saw somewhat similar dynamics. When Orbán came in, he made it easier for business in the beginning, but of course in the end, he basically made sure that his friends and allies were the ones who would all succeed and anyone who was running a legitimate business ended up moving to London. I mean that’s a slight exaggeration, but…
Anne Kim: Close enough!
Well, businesses in America are definitely involved in politics, but in a particularly narrow way right now, right? They give millions of dollars to candidates, and they spend awful lots of money on lobbying, but they don’t spend the same kind of resources on preserving the infrastructure of democracy that enables their businesses to exist and grow. Why are they so eager to get involved in these very specific ways, I guess for their own self-interest, but don’t have any interest in the bigger picture that enables them to thrive in our system?
Daniella Ballou-Aares: I would say we have a market failure of sorts as well as an opportunity. If you look at the best companies—the executives that I know—you have a lot of smart, thoughtful people in the business world who would like to see this country succeed and who have good expertise in their industry and how that industry might evolve as part of a future economy.
But when you look at the institutions that represent business in politics, their mandate is extremely narrow. It ends up basically being tax and regulatory relief. They are largely defensive. Industry associations are built to be mostly defensive. Let’s just make sure government doesn’t do some things that are bad for us.
But when we look at the nature of the problems we need to solve, they’re very complex, they’re multifaceted, and they largely cannot be solved by government alone, whether it’s technology, climate, [or other issues]. We have to have the expertise that resides in America’s private sector as part of the solution, but the institutions that represent business are not built to create solutions. They’re created to play defense.
We need to do more to have business leaders play a role in defending democracy, and we need them to be part of the solution.
Anne Kim: How do you define the appropriate relationship between business and government? In the political debate right now, on the far left, it’s very adversarial. And then on the right, it’s a little bit too intimate, perhaps. It seems like you’re in the middle ground somewhere. How would you describe where that balance of power should rest between business and government?
Daniella Ballou-Aares: Let’s first talk about the intimacy, which is what we don’t want. What we don’t want is crony capitalism—it’s actually very anti-American. America was built on meritocratic innovation and entrepreneurship—all these things that are the antithesis of paying off the system.
We feel it’s very important that members of the business community who are not crony capitalists take a clear position that it’s bad for the country, bad for Americans, and bad for business. We see way too much evidence of that happening right now. But it’s certainly not all of business.
I think one problem we have is that in the press, there are ten guys, maybe five, who get referenced all the time. But when we represent business as a monolith, we lose the opportunity for those in business who are not crony capitalists—which I would argue is certainly the majority—to have a voice in an alternative way to engage as business.
And then there’s the other extreme—that business is inherently the source of all our problems, and we need to really minimize its influence, growth, and its role in society. That’s impractical—the vast majority of Americans work in businesses. It’s just the reality. Every time you get an Amazon package, that is a business. What defines America in many ways globally is our businesses.
Most Americans would like businesses to be well-behaved, but they don’t want every corporation to go away. So I think that view not only is impractical, it leaves out the opportunity to say what we want business to look like. What does it look like to have a business community that is creating positive impact for society?
Now that doesn’t mean you don’t have regulations, that there’s never an adversarial relationship. That tension is needed. There does need to be that push and pull across business and government so that you have a good environment.
Anne Kim: Another part of the TED Talk that you gave back in 2023 was what happened on January 6. You spoke about how it had a very personal impact on you and upon the organization that you’re now leading. And I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about that day and how that’s influenced your work in the second term of this administration.
Daniella Ballou-Aares: I was just having a conversation recently about how that was a really critical moment for our country. January 6 has been too much swept under the table in some ways, and there is a baseline respect for our elections and democracy that remains at risk to a degree I would not have anticipated at that time. And I think we’re really seeing it right now in the lead-up to the election, where there are consistent efforts to call into question the legitimacy of elections and to intervene at a state level.
This is an area where our member CEOs in states like Wisconsin and Arizona have been very visible, and we’re leading efforts with the business community in those states. The vast majority of CEOs and the business community think it’s totally unacceptable to undermine elections, no matter what party they are.
With any CEO or executive I interact with, I say, “Look, we have one core criterion when we engage with candidates, and it’s that they can’t be election deniers. They have to acknowledge that January 6 was real.” And I don’t get any pushback from anyone, regardless of political party.
I think we are coming to a place where we are making the issue of trust and faith in our elections a clear dividing line between those who support democracy and those who do not.
Anne Kim: I thought that your organization was actually one of the first, or maybe the first, business organization to condemn January 6. So could you talk about specific things you’ve done to engage the business community on the issue of democracy? What have your members been doing to move the needle on all these conversations?
Daniella Ballou-Aares: Interestingly, on January 6, we were not the first ones. We were the second ones because the first was the National Association of Manufacturers—not who you would usually expect to be the first mover in defense of democracy. And that to me was such a positive sign.
You saw an organization that’s historically been seen as leaning conservative, representing a very geographically diverse set of manufacturing companies in the country, come out early and say, look, this is a really unacceptable attack on our democracy.
I think it’s a good reminder that those who are concerned about our system, who are ready to stand up, are not a monolith. It’s not just Democratic business executives or those who are geographically on the coast.
If we look at our chapters in Wisconsin and Arizona that I mentioned that are really out in front, our membership is bipartisan. Our positioning is very clearly in support of election workers, in support of elections and their legitimacy. We do make the economic case that disruption to elections is also, of course, bad for business and the economy.
In Wisconsin, our co-leads are Anoop Prakash, who was in the Bush administration and is a business leader now in Wisconsin, and Tom Florsheim of Florsheim Shoes. We just gave him our annual award because Tom has not only been supporting election workers and coming out publicly on those issues, but when the footwear industry had unfair tariffs imposed on them, as has happened across the board, he was a party to the case against the administration’s tariffs that was ultimately resolved in the Supreme Court.
We’re convening with other associations, and we’re identifying the lawmakers who could respond if elections are undermined. Our members are thoughtful people who might have a range of views about what’s ideal economic policy. They might have a range of views around social policy, et cetera, but they are very deeply committed to the country.
I think you need a big tent to defeat efforts to undermine the rule of law and democracy, and we see ourselves as part of that. Sometimes I find myself pushing the envelope with some of our peers on the progressive side and saying, “Look, what’s our common ground here?”
Anne Kim: Now some people might be hearing this, and they’re thinking that business leaders should be helping democracy because it’s the right thing to do, but they may not necessarily still believe you that it’s the right business decision to make, especially given the potential for retaliation, which we’ve seen. So what is your argument in nuts-and-bolts terms that defending democracy is good for the bottom line, especially as you’re reaching out to individual businesses or companies about why they need to join your cause?
Daniella Ballou-Aares: I don’t think you can boil it all down to just an equation of positive upside for your company versus negative. It’s not that kind of transactional decision. All of that said, I think you can point to specific things to show that undermining the rule of law is damaging for your business. And we aim to do that. Our national work is doing quite a bit of that.
So tariffs—very specific. They were not passed through a lawful process and were very damaging. That doesn’t mean Congress couldn’t one day decide to implement tariffs and there wouldn’t be a process that would do things that business wouldn’t like in terms of tariffs, but the way this was done was clearly unlawful. Same thing with something like university funding and student visas. Many American companies depend on the research and innovation that comes out of our universities. They depend on the talent pipelines. When that is done unlawfully, that also is damaging.
We look to those areas where unlawful behavior has a direct impact on business, and then at what it means in terms of erosion of faith in the system, unrest you can have across civil society, et cetera. We aim to make that case through both what’s happening now and the historical precedent.
Anne Kim: Now, the other thing that has happened is that the second Trump administration actually has been very good for some businesses—namely the ones that are owned by the president himself and his family. But also if you’re in tech or if you’re in crypto, or you have a few million to spare on funding a ballroom, like that kind of thing. And at the inauguration, you saw that line of billionaires, the same ten guys that you were talking about.
Do you have an argument for business leaders who think they might have more to gain from the strategy of accommodating or enabling this administration rather than standing in opposition to it?
Daniella Ballou-Aares: I think it’s important to note that we have tens of thousands of executives and hundreds of thousands of companies, and most companies are harmed by those ten guys getting all of the benefits.
Or like if you want a contract, you need your guy in Mar-a-Lago. That is not a preferable situation for the vast majority of actors, even those who are participating in it. Not everyone, even those [involved] in the ballroom thing, is happy to be there.
We’re visible in our work because we think having peers moving in the right direction helps people move forward. The number of people in our networks who are reaching out to say, “Look, I was really worried about this, and now I see there are many other people worried—what can I do?” is very significant. It’s made me hopeful that not only members of the business community but Americans are seeing how risky the situation is and want to be part of the solution.
Anne Kim: For anyone interested in learning more about Leadership Now, or if they’re a business leader and they want to join, where can they find you?
Daniella Ballou-Aares: Our website is leadershipnowproject.org. You can follow us on Substack and LinkedIn. I’d also suggest checking out BusinessPlanforAmerica.org, our proactive policy agenda across issues like America’s talent advantage and global competitiveness. We tackle issues like housing, immigration, and the rule of law, and how we can build solutions that are good for our economy and good for people. We’re getting feedback, engaging with lawmakers, and excited to help make the next pro-democracy president a success.
