The Business Roundtable and the politics of U.S. manufacturing decline in the global 1970s

As the ‘golden age of American capitalism’ drew to a close in the 1970s, major U.S. manufacturing companies mobilised politically to defend their long-standing hegemony. Despite notable policy victories concerning labour, regulation, and fiscal policy, the self-appointed ‘mouthpieces’ of U.S. industry failed to cohere around a clear agenda to confront the decline of U.S. manufacturing. By considering the trade positions promoted by the Business Roundtable, this article suggests that corporate elites misdiagnosed their own weaknesses and thus mobilised around policy preferences that quickly became outdated. The political and intellectual legacy of earlier battles ultimately prevented the Business Roundtable from developing or defending a pro-active industrial policy. By evaluating this confused rhetoric and stubborn adherence to antiquated analysis, the article highlights a crucial irony at the heart of modern business activism: the very political vision that had proved so important to their initial mobilisation ultimately hamstrung firms’ efforts to mitigate deindustrialisation.