As vice president, Kamala Harris was a leading player in a remarkably progressive Biden administration that fought mergers, battled Big Tech and called out corporate greed.
As the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Harris finds herself in the middle of a tug-of-war as she crafts her own economic agenda on major issues like taxes, trade and regulation.
Some business leaders and wealthy donors are hopeful that Harris will adopt more centrist policies as she outlines her agenda, especially by dialing back Biden-era antitrust crackdowns.
“CEOs are wildly excited about Harris,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, founder and president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, told CNN in a phone interview.
Sonnenfeld pointed to confidence that Harris will protect the rule of law and hopes for recalibrated trade, regulatory and tax policies.
Progressive groups, suspicious of billionaire donors and their deep pockets, are already trying to persuade Harris to continue and build on Biden’s legacy.
In just one example of this emerging battle, the two sides are clashing over the fate of Lina Khan, the head of the Federal Trade Commission and arguably the highest-impact regulator of business in the Biden administration. Some businesses have been furious with her unprecedented antitrust crackdowns. Progressives have championed Khan’s leadership.
Meanwhile, Harris, somewhat of an unknown commodity on business policy, hasn’t said much about where she stands.
“She’s a blank slate. She can’t afford to go too far to the left because it would erode business confidence. And so much of the economy is all about confidence,” said Greg Valliere, chief US policy strategist at AGF Investments.
Business leaders swoop in on antitrust
Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman raised eyebrows by telling CNN last week that Harris should replace Khan, the antitrust cop confronting Big Tech, Big Oil and even Big Mattress.
Of course, some of Khan’s critics have a stake in the outcome of this battle.
Hoffman sits on the board of Microsoft, a company that the FTC has tried and failed to prevent from buying “Call of Duty” video game maker Activision Blizzard for $69 billion. The FTC is also investigating a recent Microsoft deal with artificial intelligence startup Inflection.
Another Democratic donor, billionaire Barry Diller, told CNBC on Friday that he would lobby Harris to replace Khan, saying the FTC chair is “a dope” who is against “almost anything” business wants to do.
Diller, the chairman of conglomerate IAC, also has a stake in what happens to Khan.
CNN has learned that the FTC has multiple ongoing investigations into subsidiaries of IAC, the company that owns dozens of media brands including Angi, People and Care.com.
It’s not clear which IAC subsidiaries are being actively investigated by the FTC.
In a statement to CNN, IAC said the company “doesn’t comment on the status of investigations.”
Diller told CNN in a statement on Tuesday that he “misspoke” about Khan in the CNBC interview.
“I said ‘she’s a dope.’ She isn’t. She’s smart but I believe overreaches in disrupting sensible business combinations,” Diller said.
An FTC spokesperson declined to comment on news of the investigations, which haven’t been previously reported.
‘Could be punctured very easily’
Now, an alliance of more than 20 pro-consumer groups led by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee is calling on Harris to “publicly signal” support for Khan.
In a letter from the alliance, shared first with CNN, progressive groups including Public Citizen, the AFL-CIO and the NAACP, express “concern” about Hoffman’s call to fire Khan and about “billionaires choosing their own regulators.”
“Removing Lina Khan from her position would hurt millions of families, make Americans cynical about government at a time when you are inspiring hope, and be a retreat from finishing the unfinished business (and building on) the legacy of the Biden-Harris Administration,” said the letter, which is being sent Tuesday morning.
One of the organizers, PCCC co-founder Adam Green, told CNN in a phone interview that publicly supporting Khan “should be a lay-up” for Harris – and suggested there could be a backlash if she doesn’t.
“There is a high degree of default trust in Kamala Harris that she will build on – not subtract from – the legacy of economic populism of the Biden-Harris administration,” Green said. “But that could be punctured very easily if she signaled that Lina Khan – one of the administration’s shining stars – could even potentially be fired.”
Sonnenfeld, the Yale professor who has been dubbed the “CEO whisperer,” predicted Khan will not get that public endorsement.
“It’s not going to happen. Her days are numbered,” Sonnenfeld said.
FTC spokesperson Douglas Farrar previously told CNN that Khan is “honored to serve in the Biden-Harris administration, where she has protected consumers, workers and entrepreneurs from illegal conduct and corporate abuse.”
A Harris campaign aide told CNN last week that there have been “no policy discussions” about replacing Khan at the current time.
Waiting for views on taxes and energy
Beyond antitrust, CEOs are watching to see what priorities Harris lays out on taxes.
Former President Donald Trump wants to not only extend the 2017 tax cuts, but he has also called for lowering the corporate tax rate from 21% to 20% or even 15%.
President Joe Biden proposed raising the corporate rate to 28% and promised not to raise taxes on those making less than $400,000 a year.
Harris has yet to detail where she thinks the corporate tax rate should be, but as a presidential candidate in 2020, she pushed for the rate to go back to 35%, where it was before the Trump tax cuts.
Another key sticking point is energy, where Trump has tried to blame the Biden-Harris administration for periods of high gas prices.
Trump has also highlighted Harris’ previous support for a fracking ban – a dramatic step that could significantly hurt US supply of oil.
“She wants no fracking,” Trump said during a rally last week in North Carolina. “You’re going to be paying a lot of money.”
It’s true that as a presidential candidate in 2020, Harris supported a fracking ban, but she later walked that back.
Harris campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt said in a statement to CNN that “Trump’s false claims about fracking bans are an obvious attempt to distract from his own plans to enrich oil and gas executives at the expense of the middle class.”
Notably, Hitt highlighted that the Biden-Harris administration didn’t just pass the country’s largest-ever climate change legislation, it has presided over record-setting US domestic energy production. That includes not just clean energy like solar but record US oil and natural gas production.
Sonnenfeld, the Yale professor, argued the Harris campaign should talk more about that.
“They may not want to brag about it because they don’t want to draw the ire of environmentalists,” he said. “But it’s a very strong counter to the drill, baby, drill mantra.”
