“Twisting people’s arms is inherently problematic” for a president, said N. Gregory Mankiw, a professor of economics at Harvard who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush.
“The president has so much power, you always wonder if there’s some implicit threat to individuals, and that goes beyond what I think a limited government should do,” Mankiw said.
But some defended Trump’s highly visible way of doing business in his transition to the Oval Office. Lanhee Chen, policy director of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, who is now at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, said he was not terribly concerned by Trump’s interactions with individual corporations and chief executives.
“I just assume this is what generally happens,” Chen said. “I don’t think it is that unusual for a president to make appeals to specific companies. What may be unusual is the public nature of the communications. But the activity itself is not uncommon” for presidents or for governors, he said.
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