Now that President Joe Biden has bowed out as the Democratic candidate in the 2024 election, corporate America’s eyes are on his presumptive replacement, Vice President Kamala Harris. At the top of CEOs’ agendas is determining whether she will be unfriendly to business or govern as a true “capitalist,” as she described herself years ago.
Of course, as Biden’s vice president, Harris has inherited his administration’s record to a certain degree. And in recent months, Biden has lost much support from Big Business, notably Silicon Valley, to Republican candidate Donald Trump. Many executives have looked past Trump’s often erratic behavior and attempts to micromanage the economy to support him over Biden, drawn in by promises of new tax cuts, less regulation—particularly on environmental matters—and a crackdown on crime. One CEO told Fortune earlier this month that Biden’s energy policy, such as a ban on gas exports plants, was counterproductive, while another faulted the Biden administration’s approach to immigration.
To counter the narrative that the Biden-Harris ticket would be unfriendly to business, Harris this spring launched a charm offensive with top CEOs that could serve as a springboard as she tries to win support—financial and otherwise—as the Democratic nominee. She can tap her reputation as a centrist and as an enforcer of the law, given her past role as California attorney general. (Harris raised $50 million in the hours after Biden endorsed her as his replacement.)
According to a recent Bloomberg report, Harris has regularly met with executives, including Visa CEO Ryan McInerney, Teneo Chairwoman Ursula Burns, and former American Express CEO Ken Chenault, and had lunch with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, all in an effort to build her credibility with Big Business. Other business leaders whom Harris wooed this spring, according to Bloomberg, include CVS Health CEO Karen Lynch, Motorola Solutions CEO Greg Brown, and Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya.
“The business community, especially the tech/VC community are exhilarated over this choice,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for leadership studies at the Yale School of Management, told Fortune via email on Sunday when news of Biden stepping down broke. Sonnenfeld cited her familiarity with Silicon Valley and what he says is her more centrist leanings toward the government’s role in the economy.
At the top of the ticket, Harris must outline her own stance toward business, untethered from being anyone’s No. 2. For signs of how Harris would engage with corporations, it’s worth examining her stint as California AG between 2011 and 2017. Here are some clues:
Kamala Harris on tech
Compared to Biden, Bay Area-native Harris has long fostered a more nuanced relationship with Silicon Valley, a major employer in her home state. As an AG candidate, Harris reportedly touted herself to donors as “a capitalist.” Once in office though, she took steps to rein in Big Tech. She sued eBay in 2012 over alleged anticompetitive hiring practices related to its no-poaching agreement with Intuit. She later pressured giants like Facebook and Google to curtail the distribution of revenge pornography on social media. Still, she has personal connections with many prominent tech executives and investors. (One of the first tech executives to tweet enthusiastically about the Harris news on Sunday was Box CEO Aaron Levie.)
Kamala Harris on the FTC
One signal Big Business will be watching closely is whether Harris intends to keep on Federal Trade Commission Lina Khan, the activist head of the anti-trust agency who’s confronted companies like Kroger, Amazon and Nvidia. CNBC commentator Jim Cramer said on Sunday that he expected Harris to replace Khan, since the vice president is “better for M&A,” a tool companies use for growth and to monetize investments. In contrast, Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance has called for a more muscular FTC, leaving Harris a window to score big points with corporate America.
Kamala Harris on oil and the environment
Harris has long touted her tough stance on Big Oil as evidenced by the many lawsuits she filed against various companies as San Francisco district attorney from 2004 to 2011 and then as California AG. Those included one against Phillips 66 and ConocoPhillips for environmental violations at their gas stations. As vice president, she has been active in promoting the policies of the Environmental Protection Agency, the bête noire of many large companies in the energy sector and beyond. Still, for all the Republican talk of Biden-Harris hostility toward Big Oil, U.S. oil production is at all-time highs, a stat that will rile environmentalists but may please some chief executives.
Kamala Harris on immigration
Harris, the daughter of economist Donald Harris and breast cancer researcher Shyamala Gopalan, both immigrants, is very much pro-immigration and strongly supports the DACA program that gives a path to U.S. citizenship to many immigrants who were young when they arrived in the country. That pro-immigration stance is more in sync with Big Business, which worries about worker shortages, than Trump’s threats of mass deportations and the humanitarian chaos and economic uncertainty deportations would likely bring.
Kamala Harris on AI
On artificial intelligence, Harris has been outspoken about protecting the public from the potential dangers of AI, one of the most promising areas in tech. In March, she announced new rules requiring U.S. federal agencies to show that AI tools don’t harm the public. She has firmly advocated for more protections for consumers, pointing to AI-generated scam calls and the nefarious effects of unidentified AI-generated content.
One card Harris has seems intent on playing is the relative stability the Biden-Harris administration has fostered. Many CEOs condemned the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, as well as the social upheaval during the Trump presidency. In 2017, a number of prominent CEOs exited an advisory council over then-President Trump’s reactions to white nationalists’ rally in Charlottesville, Va., that implied he sympathized with participants.
So while CEOs maybe be drawn to many Trump policies on trade and taxes, Harris offers a counter-argument that as president she could maintain the business environment of the last four years that’s been relatively stable compared to some of the tumult that marked Trump’s first presidency.
