Two More Corporate Executives Quit Trump Advisory Council

By Michelle Ma 

Two more members of President Donald Trump's manufacturing advisory council said Tuesday they would resign, while the leader of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. criticized the president for his initial response to the weekend violence in Charlottesville, Va.

Mario Longhi, the former CEO of U.S. Steel, and Scott Paul, the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a nonprofit group formed by manufacturers and the United Steelworkers union, both said they were resigning.

Mr. Paul said he was quitting the council "because it's the right thing for me to do."

U.S. Steel said Mr. Longhi had resigned but refused to comment further.

The men joined other corporate chiefs who have left he council in apparent protest of the president's failure to quickly condemn the white supremacists who engaged in who engaged in violence over the weekend in Charlottesville. On Monday, Mr. Trump denounced the hate groups.

The others CEOs who stepped down were heads of Merck & Co., Intel Corp. and Under Armour Inc. They drew attacks from Mr. Trump, who indicated he had other executives with whom he could fill the slots.

"For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on," Mr. Trump tweeted late Tuesday morning.

Wal-Mart chief Doug McMillon, who is on another White House advisory council, criticized Mr. Trump's for how he responded to last weekend's violence in Charlottesville, but said, "we believe we should stay engaged."

"As we watched the events and the response from President Trump over the weekend," Mr. McMillon wrote in a statement, "we too felt that he missed a critical opportunity to help bring our country together by unequivocally rejecting the appalling actions of white supremacists.

Alex Gorsky, the head of Johnson & Johnson, who also said he would remain on the advisory council, said he respected other chief executives' decisions to leave it, but he decided to remain engaged "not as a way to support any specific political agenda" but to advocate for the company's positions when public policy is discussed.

"Ours is an important voice on healthcare, one that global leaders at every level, in and out of government, need to hear," Mr. Gorsky said in a statement Tuesday. "We must engage if we hope to change the world and those who lead it."

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 15, 2017 17:13 ET (21:13 GMT)

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