The Business Roundtable

What I'm hopeful to see in the farm bill is some movement on this particular point on farm workers.

I'm going to say immigration writ large because I do chair this for the Business Roundtable.

Immigration is a tremendous lever for economic growth for the United States, for businesses.

We did an analysis that showed that the GDP could grow 3.3% over a trillion dollars in the next 10 years if we get some immigration reform.

More input can lead to reduced output.

Research back in the 80s by the Business Roundtable showed that increasing regular working hours from 40 to 60 hours per week results in 25 to 30% more work being completed, not 50%.

Stepping up occasionally to do overtime isn't the issue.

It's about avoiding buying into the notion that we have to get used to working long hours to get all our work done.

They published a memo in June 2024, essentially arguing that Democrats Climate is a political luxury topic, and they should be focusing on bills.

And third way, importantly, is backed by a bunch of major foundations and corporate interests, including the Business Roundtable, which represents some of the largest corporations in America.

Interesting.

OK.

That's one front.

The other front really has been the business roundtable.

And the elites that were around in the Gilded Age, we're talking Rockefeller and Carnegie, have a legacy in the new tech elites.

We're talking Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos and those kind of things.

But if you don't recognize that that's the system they've put in place, what business did is hijack the curriculum so that it's no longer a public education system to educate free citizens, but workforce development.

And, you know, I've watched this happen since I was in high school in the 70s.

But the Business Roundtable, at the behest of George W. Bush, right, coming to the Charlottesville Summit in the 1980s, He invited them in and said, how can we partner with you over American education so that you become globally competitive? And they opened the door, and Missouri's been part of that Business Roundtable agenda.

As a matter of fact, the law we have called the Outstanding Schools Act was written by – people who were hired by the Business Roundtable to change our system of education.

However, it depends which business leaders, as you asked.

is the Business Roundtable, you know, forgive me for saying this.

Not

forgiving you, just say it.

They're cowards.

However, amazingly, the historically very conservative National Association of Manufacturers, which is, you know, over 2,000 businesses, there only are 200 in the Business Roundtable.

Easy to organize them.

They don't stand by each other.

Together, they also rallied America's business leaders.

Reagan convinced the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that the Japanese and the Germans needed to revalue the yen and Deutsche Mark.

With legislation in hand, he assembled Japanese and German delegations and had his personal trade negotiators gather in the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan in September 1985.

Essentially, Reagan pulled the Japanese and Germans into the plaza and said, in so many words, All right, how do you want to do this? The easy way or the hard way? You can't manipulate your currency anymore.

That's awesome.

Thank you for what you and your team are doing on this and the rest of the folks at the Business Roundtable.

And thank you for spending some time with us today.

I really appreciate it, Chris.

Thanks, Kevin.

It was fun.

This has been Work in Progress, presented by the Business Roundtable in partnership with the Human Potential Network.

Conversations about apprenticeship and workforce training in America's skilled trades.

By 1972, CEOs of powerful corporations were preparing to take a financial plunge.

A group of executives formed an organization called the Business Roundtable, devoted to increasing corporate influence in the world of politics.

At about this time, a lot of countries began to steeply increase their spending on lobbyists.

These investments paid out, rolling back environmental regulations, lowering corporate tax rates, and obliterating proposed reforms to labor laws.