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Chapter 1: What is the main reputational risk identified in the latest report?
My next guest used to advise Barack Obama on geopolitics and nowadays is the president of the Global Situation Room, which advises companies on potential risks to their reputations. Its latest reputation risk report suggests that the biggest single risk to major companies comes from pronouncements, posts and rants from one man in the White House, Donald Trump.
It means that companies which may have been above politics in the past are increasingly bending the knee to the incumbent president to prevent him or his allies launching negative federal actions against them. Brett Bruin is also a board member of Harvard University and the UCD Clinton Institute here in Ireland. Good morning, Brett. Very good to be with you.
Now, I think it's extraordinary that a sitting U.S. president represents the biggest source of potential reputational risk.
Yeah, and it was a surprise. We do these reports each quarter, and the first quarter looked at the accelerated adoption of AI and that as a risk. You know, you were just talking about the risk that the AI bubble bursts. I think there's also a risk, quite frankly, that companies go too quickly down that AI path and put some distance between themselves and their customers.
But it was in the last quarter, and because of things we saw with Intel, with NVIDIA, with Microsoft, that Trump was finger-pointing, was making demands that, for instance ā Including the CEO of Intel should step down. Should step down, that ultimately, quite frankly, there was a pressure campaign for Intel to sell over 10% of the company's value to the U.S. government.
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Chapter 2: How does Donald Trump's behavior impact corporate reputations?
Pretty unprecedented. A significant intervention in the free economy ā And yet, you know, at the same time, I think, you know, companies are trying to ingratiate themselves to Trump. And you're seeing this with the likes of Tim Cook and presenting that glass trophy from a cell phone component to Trump.
You're seeing that in the likes of just last night with the Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman hosted at a dinner with Trump. A lot of the big names in business are. Are there and yet, Joe, I think we are going to see some consequences from that corporate cozying up to Trump.
That knee bending that we have seen in the last few months has come as a shock to a lot of us that follow these giant American companies. Is it going to set a dangerous precedent, i.e. going forward, all American presidents will expect that sort of genuflection?
I think so, and if you take the other side of the political spectrum, Republicans would be up in arms if you had companies bending the knee to the will and whim of Joe Biden or Barack Obama. Or Mamdani in New York. Or Mamdani in New York, and I think it's worthwhile to ā Ask ourselves, do we want to have companies who are beholden to a political leader, a political ideology?
Because quite frankly, you know, those who advanced Trump's candidacy last year said this was going to be good for the economy.
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Chapter 3: What role does AI play in the current reputational risks for companies?
There is nothing good about companies having to fork over 10 percent of their value to the U.S. government in tariffs. Well, this is just in pure value. Now, we can talk about the 15% that Irish companies have to pay to Trump. Now, that also raises the question, are we going to see the Supreme Court claw back that power in their decision likely to come in January?
I would forecast that, yes, that decision is likely to go against Trump.
And what does he do then? Because potentially all the companies that have paid tariffs, we're talking hundreds of billions, will say, actually, I want that money back now.
Well, and Trump is suggesting that he's going to hand that out in $2,000 a person checks to working families. Ironically, that's also what's called wealth redistribution. I think it's something that Donnie would like. We would find comfort in. But the then likely scenario is you'll see Trump focusing on sectoral tariffs. And that, I think, for Irish companies ought to be of great concern.
I think the work, the groundwork ought to be going in now as to how do we avoid that scenario where our sectors, where our companies find themselves in the crosshairs as they did in his first term when it comes to Trump's tariffs.
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Chapter 4: Are companies compromising their values due to political pressures?
America appears to be turning its back on ESG and green policies, whereas Europe has not yet turned its back. Does that create a problem for companies that you're advising? Because on one side of the Atlantic, they have very strict rules about, you know, investing in green policies. Whereas on the other side, they're rowing back in this drill, baby, drill.
And this is something we talked about in the second quarter, the divergence of reputational risk between the U.S. and Europe. It is a very difficult chasm to bridge, and yet I think you can bridge it. In many cases, it's about emphasizing different points. If you're a renewable energies company ā If you're a company that's looking at social responsibility, how do I talk about that in the U.S.
in a way that isn't going to raise either regulatory concerns? Because Trump is coming down pretty hard on companies who are focused on whether it's LGBTQ rights, whether it's the environment, whether it's even gender equality. DEI, yeah. I mean, all of this is a very delicate, very fraught path for Irish companies who are increasingly investing in the U.S.
And what we're hearing from Irish firms is they're taking the long view, which I think is a smart strategy.
Chapter 5: What are the implications of bending the knee to political leaders?
You know, a lot of these efforts, including by the Saudis yesterday, $1 trillion, supposedly. By the way, their entire GDP is $1 trillion. You know, these are made up numbers. And if you look at last time when Trump supposedly got concessions from Beijing that they were going to buy $400 billion in U.S. agricultural product, it never materialized.
And that's the key challenge Trump will have is he rolls out these numbers. He and his team are not great when it comes to the actual implementation of these efforts. So I think we should take it with a big bag of caution.
You advise Barack Obama to counter Russian propaganda. What do you make of Russian propaganda now, which, if anything, has got worse? A lot of people are falling for this stuff and the talking points put out by the Kremlin.
You know, I remember sitting in the Situation Room with Barack Obama and presenting him what at that time was an emerging threat. They had just invaded Crimea, later Luhansk and Donetsk. And they unleashed this modern information warfare against Ukraine. There's a really good investigation that CNN did on our efforts, if folks are interested.
Chapter 6: How do U.S. and European approaches to ESG differ?
And I couldn't at that time, unfortunately, convince Obama that this was something that we needed to take with greater seriousness. In fact, in his exit interview, he was asked, did you underestimate Putin? And he said, I underestimated the power of propaganda, which, you know, there is unfortunately no prize for having been right in the situation room.
on an issue when the president came down on the wrong side of it. What I think we're seeing now is, yes, Russia has been successful, and their objectives are to diminish confidence in our institutions, in our ideals, to divide us. I mean, they quite literally say on Russia Today, question more, which is precisely their objective.
Exactly. Thank you so much for coming in, Brett. I appreciate that. That's Brett Bruin, the president of the Global Situation Room and a former advisor to Barack Obama. Breakfast Business with Enterprise Ireland on Newstalk.