New York CNN —
As vice president, Kamala Harris played a leading role in a very progressive Biden administration that fought mergers and big tech companies and denounced corporate greed.
Harris, the leading Democratic presidential nominee, is caught in the middle of a tug-of-war as she crafts her own economic policy on key issues including taxes, trade and regulation.
Some business leaders and wealthy donors are hoping Harris will adopt more centrist policies when she outlines her policy platform, particularly rolling back Biden-era antitrust enforcement.
“CEOs are very excited about Harris,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, founder and director of the Yale University Chief Executive Leadership Institute, told CNN in a phone interview.
Sonnenfeld expressed confidence that Harris would uphold the rule of law and said he looked forward to overhauling trade, regulatory and tax policy.
Progressive groups, suspicious of billionaire donors and their deep pockets, are already trying to convince Harris to continue Biden’s legacy.
In one example of this new battle, the two sides are clashing over the fate of perhaps the Biden administration’s most influential corporate regulator, Lina Khan, the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission. Some businesses are infuriated by Khan’s unprecedented antitrust crackdown. Progressives support her leadership.
Harris, meanwhile, who is less known for her business policy, has not spoken much about her positions.
“She has a clean slate. She can’t afford to go too far to the left because it would hurt business confidence, and so much of the economy depends on confidence,” said Greg Valliere, chief U.S. policy strategist at AGF Investments.
Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman made headlines last week when he told CNN that Khan should be replaced by Harris, an antitrust attorney who would take on Big Tech, Big Oil and even Big Mattress Companies.
Of course, some of Khan’s critics have a vested interest in the outcome of this fight.
Hoffman sits on the Microsoft board of directors after the FTC unsuccessfully tried to block the company’s $69 billion acquisition of Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard Inc. The FTC is also investigating Microsoft’s recent deal with artificial intelligence startup Inflection Inc.
Billionaire Barry Diller, another Democratic donor, told CNBC on Friday he plans to lobby Harris to replace Khan, saying the FTC chair opposes “almost everything” the companies want to do.
Diller, chairman of conglomerate IAC, is also interested in Khan’s future.
CNN has learned that multiple investigations are ongoing into subsidiaries of IAC, which owns dozens of media brands including Angi, People and Care.com.
It is not clear which IAC subsidiaries are actively being investigated by the FTC.
In a statement to CNN, IAC said it “does not comment on the status of an investigation.”
An FTC spokesman declined to comment on news of the investigation, which had not previously been reported.
Now a coalition of more than 20 consumer advocacy groups, led by the Campaign Committee for Progressive Change, is calling on Harris to “publicly demonstrate” her support for Khan.
In a letter from the coalition first released to CNN, progressive groups including Public Citizen, the AFL-CIO and the NAACP expressed “concerns” about Hoffman’s call for Khan to be fired and about “billionaires picking their own regulators.”
“Removing Lina Khan would only increase the American people’s skepticism of their government at a time of hurt and hope for millions of families, and would set back the Biden-Harris Administration from finishing its unfinished business (and building on its legacy),” the letter, sent Tuesday morning, said.
One of the organizers, PCCC co-founder Adam Green, said in a phone interview with CNN that it would be “a good idea” for Harris to “refrain” from publicly endorsing Khan, suggesting she could face backlash if she did not.
“Confidence in Kamala Harris is high and that she will build on the Biden-Harris administration’s populist economic legacy rather than undermine it,” Green said, “but that confidence could easily be shattered if Harris were to suggest that one of the administration’s brightest stars, Lina Khan, might even be fired.”
Sonnenfeld, the Yale professor who has been dubbed the “CEO whisperer,” predicted that Khan would never gain public support.
“That’s not going to happen. She doesn’t have much time left to live,” Sonnenfeld said.
FTC spokesman Douglas Faller previously told CNN that Khan was “honored to serve in the Biden-Harris Administration, where he has worked to protect consumers, workers and entrepreneurs from illegal and corporate misconduct.”
A Harris campaign aide told CNN last week that “there are no policy discussions taking place” at this time about replacing Khan.
Awaiting comments on taxes and energy
Beyond antitrust, CEOs are also looking to see what priorities Harris will set on taxes.
Former President Donald Trump has called for not only extending the 2017 tax cuts, but also lowering the corporate tax rate from 21% to 20% or even 15%.
President Joe Biden has proposed raising the corporate tax rate to 28% and has promised not to raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year.
Harris has not yet laid out details about what the corporate tax rate should be, but as a 2020 presidential candidate she advocated for the rate to be restored to the 35% rate before the Trump tax cuts.
Another key issue is energy, with President Trump trying to blame the Biden-Harris administration for a period of high gasoline prices.
Trump also highlighted Harris’ previous support for banning fracking, a drastic measure that could deal a significant blow to the U.S. oil supply.
“She doesn’t want fracking,” Trump said at a rally in North Carolina last week. “She’s going to pay a lot of money.”
As a 2020 presidential candidate, Harris did support a ban on fracking, but later backed down.
“Trump’s false claims about the fracking ban are a clear attempt to distract from his agenda to enrich oil and gas executives at the expense of the middle class,” Harris campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said in a statement to CNN.
Hitt noted that the Biden-Harris Administration has not only passed the largest climate change bill in U.S. history, but also led record U.S. domestic energy production, including not only clean energy like solar, but also record U.S. oil and natural gas production.
Yale’s Sonnenfeld said the Harris campaign should do more to discuss this.
“Maybe they don’t want to brag about it because they don’t want to incur the wrath of environmentalists,” he said, “but it’s a very powerful antidote to the mantra ‘dig, dig, dig.'”
