General
Thomas J. Donohue Dies at 86; Transformed Chamber of Commerce
Under his 24-year leadership, the lobbying group developed enormous clout in Washington, but he broke with the Trump administration over immigration and the 2020 election.
Thomas J. Donohue, who transformed a moribund U.S. Chamber of Commerce into a lobbying behemoth and who in recent years challenged President Donald J. Trump’s policies on tariffs and immigration, died on Monday at his home in Arlington, Va. He was 86.
The cause was heart failure, his son Thomas Jr. said.
From his perch across the street from the White House, the Brooklyn-born Mr. Donohue was a scrappy can-do cheerleader for corporate America and Main Street as the chief executive of the chamber for 24 years, until he retired in 2021. (From 1997 until 2019, he was simultaneously the chamber’s president, until Suzanne P. Clark succeeded him.)
As the Republican Party shifted to the right, the chamber stood its ground in the political center. Under Mr. Donohue, it split with the Trump administration by supporting free trade and immigration reform, and pledged to “more fully reward” members of Congress who “reach the compromises necessary for effective governing.”
Even before Mr. Trump was elected in 2016, Mr. Donohue, interviewed on Bloomberg television, said, “Donald Trump has very little idea about what trade really is.” On social media he warned that “under Trump’s trade plans,” including higher tariffs on imported goods, “we would see higher prices, fewer jobs, and a weaker economy.”
Without naming names, Mr. Donohue also cautioned that refusal to grant talented immigrants visas to come to America was “morally wrong and politically stupid.”
“If you want businesses to grow and the economy to rebound, you allow skilled workers to come here legally to work and contribute to the well-being of our nation; you don’t lock them out,” Mr. Donohue wrote in an opinion essay in The New York Times in 2020.
