Vice presidential candidate JD Vance will represent the Trump agenda at the Business Roundtable tomorrow, a gathering of CEO’s of some of the largest corporations in America.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, will also attend.
Politico was the first to confirm their attendance:
A Vance spokesperson said the Ohio senator will speak Thursday morning. A spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign declined to comment.
“Continuing our mission of engaging with policymakers on a bipartisan basis, we invited both Sen. Vance and Governor Walz to speak with CEOs at our September meeting, and we are pleased that both accepted,” said Business Roundtable spokesperson Michael Steel in a statement.
The CEO coalition originally invited Vice President Kamala Harris to speak at the quarterly meeting, according to a person familiar with the arrangements, granted anonymity to discuss private planning. But the campaign elected to send her running mate instead.
The group includes the leaders of some of the country’s biggest corporations, including Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, and Apple CEO Tim Cook. It spends millions of dollars each quarter to lobby Washington, leveraging a small army of lobbyists of both political parties. Several of the companies involved with the group have worked closely with the federal government to propel the Biden administration’s agenda.
Former President Donald Trump spoke with the group in June where he explained his position against taxes on tips and his preference to lower the corporate tax rate.
Vance, a former Silicon Valley venture capitalist, has encountered many of these businesspeople before in his professional career before politics.
In 2018, he was even invited to take part in a Business Roundtable event, which he credits for his desire to become involved in policymaking.
“The fact that this guy saw me as sympathetic to his problem, and not the problem of the workers, made me realize that I’m on a train that has its own momentum and I have to get off this train,” Vance previously told The New York Times.
