Former President Donald Trump will meet with some of the most influential CEOs in the country next week at the quarterly meeting of the lobbying organization Business Roundtable in Washington.
President Joe Biden was invited to attend, but will be overseas for G7 meetings. White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients is scheduled to represent him on Thursday instead, a Business Roundtable spokesperson said in a statement. The event will be closed to the public.
Trump's campaign said in a statement that the Republican ex-president will tell the gathered business leaders about “how he will restore prosperity to the American economy, like he did during his first term,” claiming that he "built the strongest economy in the world once before, and he stands prepared to do it yet again.”
NBC News was the first to report the meeting.
Business Roundtable is a lobbying group of more than 200 American CEOs, claiming to represent a quarter of American jobs and a quarter of U.S. GDP. Its board of directors includes JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Apple CEO Tim Cook, General Motors CEO Mary Barra and the CEOs of Cisco, Nasdaq, United Airlines, Pepsico, ConocoPhillips, Walmart, Proctor & Gamble, Hilton, Eli Lill and Company, FedEx and American Express, among others.
Zients, who led Biden’s COVID-19 pandemic response prior to serving as his chief of staff, led the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama and made his millions in consulting before that. Between his tenure with the Obama and Biden administrations, Zients served on Facebook’s board of directors and as CEO of the Wall Street firm Cranemere.
The Business Roundtable was clear to say it invited Biden to speak, but he was unable to do so due to his international travel, adding that they hoped he will meet with them soon.
“We look forward to a discussion of policy issues with former President Trump next week and hope that President Biden will be able to join us again in the future,” Business Roundtable spokesperson Michael Steel said in a statement.
Biden was invited to speak at the June 2020 meeting of the Business Roundtable as he ran for president, according to the group, and spoke with its members in March 2022. At the 2022 meeting, he discussed post-pandemic job growth, the then-newly launched war in Ukraine, major corporations investing in American jobs and cybersecurity in brief public remarks before taking questions privately.
“Thank you. My name is Joe Biden, and I come from Delaware, which has more corporations incorporated than all of the rest of the country combined,” Biden said. “All kidding aside, thank you for having me. You're a hell of an organization. I appreciate it.”
The group’s CEO, former George W. Bush Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, also represented the group at a September 2021 White House meeting about a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for employers.