Business Roundtable. The Business Roundtable, an elite lobbying and advisory organization of chief executive officers (CEOs) from two hundred of the nation's largest business enterprises, was established in 1972 in response to a surge of regulatory legislation that began in the mid‐1960s. New laws that protected the environment, affected consumer goods, regulated energy use, secured worker safety and health, and guaranteed equal employment opportunity, combined to increase production costs and diminish business profits. Big business reacted aggressively to defend its interests.
During the 1975–1985 decade of relatively slow economic growth, income polarization, intense foreign competition, divisive social issues, and rising
conservatism, the roundtable's influence grew steadily. Its initial victories, however, were defensive. The roundtable defeated the AFL‐CIO's efforts to reform federal labor law and Ralph
Nader's campaign to create a Consumer Protection Agency. Subsequently, roundtable committees learned to influence the national political agenda and to achieve legislative and administrative victories that climaxed in multibillion‐dollar corporate tax reductions and selective business deregulation during and after the presidency of Ronald
Reagan. By the 1980s and 1990s, roundtable representatives regularly participated in broad coalitions of corporate and noncorporate groups to affect legislation in such diverse areas as
civil rights, liability law reform, and health‐care cost reduction. The roundtable proved especially effective at lobbying legislators representing congressional districts and states where its corporate members had large investments and employee payrolls.
Accommodating itself to the party in power, the roundtable rarely resorted to open confrontation. More often than not, it succeeded in convincing the government to promote the interests of big business in an increasingly global economy in which high‐technology development and subsidized trade increased corporate profits. Tax incentives, export promotion programs, federally insured overseas investment, and the privatization of formerly public services all improved corporate balance sheets. Hence, most big business executives saw federal power as a permanent presence in the economic marketplace and utilized the roundtable to defend their interests in Washington.
See also
Business;
Corporatism;
Economic Regulation;
Keynesianism;
Multinational Enterprises;
National Association of Manufacturers;
National Industrial Conference Board;
Taxation.
Bibliography
Sar A. Levitan and and Martha J. Cooper , Business Lobbies: The Public Good and the Bottom Line, 1984.
Kim McQuaid , Uneasy Partners: Big Business in American Politics, 1945–1990, 1994, esp. pp. 125–185.
Kim McQuaid
