A number of the wealthiest Americans are choosing not to publicly support a presidential candidate in 2024, and new reports suggest they fear retaliation if former President Donald Trump is re-elected. Whichever side you’re on, the solution to this dilemma should be simple: reduce the size of government and limit the powers of the president.

“Many billionaires and other high-profile executives have taken steps in recent months to stay out of the race,” as Jeff Stein, Jacqueline Alemany and Josh Dawsey say. reported in The Washington Job Monday. “Others who previously supported Democrats have remained silent in this election, which some Trump critics and supporters have interpreted as a peace offering to the Republican presidential nominee.”

Warren Buffett supported the Democratic candidate in the 2008, 2012 and 2016 elections, but he announced last week that he “does not currently endorse and will not support any political candidates.” (Buffett also refused to endorse in 2020.)

Meanwhile, the two Job and the Los Angeles Times planned to support Vice President Kamala Harris, before Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong – respectively owners of the newspapers –intervened has prevent approval of any candidate. Each decision sparked considerable negative reactions, with 8 percent of JobPaid subscribers have since canceled their subscriptions. Semaforby Max Tani reported that The New York Times even saw “a small but notable wave of cancellations” from confused subscribers after the Job‘s non-endorsement, including “damn Bezos” emails. » (THE new York Times endorsed Harris in September.)

THE Job The report is clear on the justification, with billionaires “expressing real concerns about the potential Trump administration and whether they will be punished for publicly speaking out in support of Harris.” This could take the form of either unfavorable policies or a more existential threat: Trump has promised to impose double-digit tariffs on all imports into the United States, and he has also openly vowed “revenge” on those he believes have wronged him.

Clearly, the prospect of an executive branch using the federal government as a weapon at its whims is frightening – and as Job As the article points out, Trump was no stranger to this during his first term, “exploiting the power of the federal government to try to punish a wide range of perceived enemies in the business world who he believed were challenging him in various ways.” “

But regardless of one’s political leanings, the simplest solution should be clear: reduce the size of government and limit the president’s increasingly unchecked power.

On the one hand, progressives may believe that it is inappropriate for billionaires to exercise any some sort of influence on politics. (Remember, some think that billionaires should not exist at all.) But a quote hidden in the Job The article provides necessary context: “This is a natural phenomenon for people who rely on government support for their wealth,” according to Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor and Trump defender.

Indeed, as the Job The authors point out: “Amazon has billions of dollars in cloud computing contracts with the federal government, and Blue Origin, Bezos’ rocket company, has contracts with the Space Force and NASA. Soon-Shiong, a biotechnology investor, may have future cases before the federal government. regulators. »

In this sense, if business leaders are criticized for exerting too much influence over the government, a simple solution would be for the government to stop exerting so much influence over the economy. When the government no longer takes care of distributing multi-billion dollar contracts to private companies, their billionaire owners will then have less reason to influence the choice of the next president.

Some also fear that Trump’s anger will take the form of unfavorable economic policies.

“What is alarming is not just the prospect of Trump brazenly breaking the law to punish companies he considers his enemies,” he added. The rampart» writes Andrew Egger. “That’s because he may not even have to do it. Trump’s proposed mega-tariff economic program will give him all the coercive authority he needs to bring America’s tycoons to heel… To punish CEOs who support Harris, all Trump has to do is hurt.” their businesses with onerous new trade policies, then refuse to answer the phone when they ask for relief. »

Indeed, even if the Constitution gives the legislator the single authority to impose taxes and duties, Congress largely ceded this role to the executive. As a result, while the Founders clearly intended for tariffs to be set by Congress – which currently numbers more than 500 people – a single person has almost unlimited power to set trade restrictions as they please.

“Although the sustained implementation of large-scale and harmful U.S. tariffs is not guaranteed, its risk – and the associated economic and geopolitical risks – will remain real and substantial until U.S. law is amended to limit the Presidential Tariff Powers,” Clark Packard and Scott Lincicome. wrote in a recent Cato Institute report. “We therefore recommend that Congress adopt these amendments immediately.”

Some, on the other hand, fear that Trump’s retaliation will be more punitive. THE Job notes that at a recent meeting of business leaders, former President Bill Clinton “warned of the dangers Trump poses to the nation’s democracy and rule of law.”

Although the first threat is more existential, it has obvious real-world applications, namely Trump’s refusal to acknowledge his defeat in the 2020 election and his repeated attempts to overturn the results. During his campaign rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday evening, Trump reference House Speaker Mike Johnson (R–Los Angeles) said, “He and I have a secret, we’ll tell you what it is after the race is over.” Policy suggested that it “could be a reference to the House settling a disputed election.”

This would refer to the pressure placed on then-Vice President Mike Pence in January 2021 to, like Pence later put it“cancel the election by returning or rejecting votes.” In 2022, The New York Times called Johnson “the most important architect of the Electoral College objections.”

But the Electoral Count Reform and 2022 Presidential Transition Improvement Act cleared up some of the confusion that Trump had tried to seize on in the first place. While affirming that it is the vice president, not the Speaker of the House, who is responsible for counting electoral votes, the law further notes that the vice president’s duties are “solely ministerial.” Johnson could rally congressional Republicans to object to the election results, but that would require “at least one-fifth” of House and Senate members to sign on, and a majority in each chamber would then have to uphold the objections. . .

Clearly, one of the lessons learned in 2020 is that taking power far of executive power can be useful in preventing an obvious takeover by a reprimanded candidate. Republicans should also welcome this decision: after all, if Trump wins next week, the 2022 law would prevent the candidate they refer as “Comrade Kamala” to exert undue influence over the vote counting process, as the sitting Vice President.

Perhaps Trump could go even further, opening cases against disadvantaged individuals. In 2020, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta donated more than $400 million to help shore up local elections ahead of that year’s presidential election, which Trump and his allies did characterized as illegal campaign expenses. In a book published in September, Trump wrote“We are monitoring (Zuckerberg) closely, and if he does something illegal this time, he will spend the rest of his life in prison.”

It’s also an argument for limiting the president’s power to attack his political opponents — something Republicans, Democrats and everyone else should be able to agree on.

Clearly, Americans as a whole agree on few things, much less who they would like to be. their next president. But if we can agree on one thing, it would be that the president’s power to punish his political enemies should be severely limited.