U.S. President Donald Trump and Apple CEO Tim Cook shake hands on the day they present Apple's announcement of a $100 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 6, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

New Republic reporter Timothy Noah said seven out of the ten top donors to the presidential race last year gave to Trump — and now their favored president is turning on them

“… The White House keep[ing] scorecards measuring the loyalty of 553 corporations to President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful reconciliation bill demonstrates that the relationship between private wealth and this presidential administration isn’t as happy as you might think,” said Noah.

Trump is certainly making corporations happy by “chucking health care for the poor so it can cut taxes for the rich,” said Noah, and he’s also “dismantling regulatory agencies created to check corporate power.” Trump lowering taxes and deregulation “are what oligarchs desire more than anything else,” Noah adds, which is why “people like Elon Musk, Timothy Mellon, and Miriam Adelson supported Trump in 2024.”

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However, “Trump’s pathological attachment to high tariffs, his never-ending threats to destabilize the Federal Reserve, and, increasingly, his demands that corporations bend the knee are all more than these plutocrats likely bargained for,” Noah said.

Even as Trump dismantles regulatory agencies legitimately created by Congress, he is introducing a new, “more chaotic regulatory regime dictated by his own whims,” said Noah. “Trump appears intent on ripping up business regulations" and “replacing them with himself.”

Consider the president allowing chip-maker Nvidia to sell AI chips to China. Trump had previously blocked those sales on national security grounds, but Noah said Trump changed his mind and allowed sales, providing Nvidia turned over 15 percent of the resultant revenues to the United States Treasury.

The Constitution does not grant a president the right to demand Invidia surrender a portion of its revenues from Chinese sales to the U.S. Treasury, said Noah, “Nor does the Constitution encourage a president to tell Goldman Sachs to fire its chief economist or Intel to fire its chief executive."

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And then there’s the issue of Trump approving the merger of Nippon and U.S. Steel — provided the federal government retain a “golden share” that allows it to veto certain future actions affecting workers. Language in that agreement refers unnecessarily to Trump by name, which strikes Noah as “unsettlingly authoritarian.”

And now comes the news that Trump has loyalty “scorecards” on corporations that rank their support as “strong, moderate, or low” based on whether and how they supported passage of the Big Beautiful Bill through “social media posts, press releases, video testimonials, ads, [or] attendance at White House events.” The most obedient companies, said Noah, appear to be AT&T, Airlines for America, Cisco, Delta, DoorDash, the Steel Manufacturers Association, Uber and United.

“[I]f history is any guide, businesses don’t fight fascist corporatism; they just grope their way toward accommodating it,” writes Noah. “That’s certainly what we’re seeing thus far. Even when Trump bullies American oligarchs, they can’t see their way to judging him anything other than their guy.”

Read the full New Republic report at this link.