President Trump’s business advisory councils disband as CEOs abandon president over Charlottesville views

President Donald Trump’s relationship with the American business community suffered a major setback Aug 16 as the president was forced to shut down his major business advisory councils after corporate leaders repudiated his comments on the violence in Charlottesville (VA) this weekend. President Trump announced the disbanding of the two councils — the Strategy & Policy Forum and the Manufacturing Council, which hosted many of the top corporate leaders in America — amid a growing uproar by chief executives furious over President Trump's decision to equate the actions of white supremacists and protesters in remarks he made Aug 15. But those groups had already decided to dissolve on their own earlier in the day, apparently.

Earlier Aug 16, the chief executives of Campbell Soup and the conglomerate 3M resigned from the manufacturing council. “Racism and murder are unequivocally reprehensible and are not morally equivalent to anything else that happened in Charlottesville,” Campbell Soup chief executive Denise Morrison said. “I believe the president should have been — and still needs to be — unambiguous on that point.”