Business Roundtable Established as CEO Coordination Body for Corporate Political Power

The Business Roundtable is formally established through merger of three CEO organizations (the March Group, Construction Users Anti-Inflation Roundtable, and Labor Law Study Committee), creating a unique corporate coordination infrastructure where CEOs directly collaborate with government officials to shape policy. Treasury Secretary John Connally and Federal Reserve Chair Arthur Burns urge GE’s Reginald Jones and Alcoa’s John Harper to form this high-level organization to address economic crisis and shore up business support for wage and price controls, representing direct state-corporate coordination. Unlike the U.S. Chamber of Commerce whose members are entire businesses, the Business Roundtable’s membership consists exclusively of CEOs, enabling concentrated decision-making power and direct access to government at the highest levels. The Roundtable’s formation just months after the Powell Memo’s public exposure (September 1972) and concurrent with the National Association of Manufacturers’ move to Washington demonstrates the coordinated corporate mobilization Powell advocated. The organization immediately establishes a Consumer Issues Working Group (1973) to counter regulatory threats and collaborates with state officials to develop policy rather than simply advocating predetermined positions. This state-organized corporate coordination body complements the privately-funded think tank infrastructure (Heritage founded February 1973) and legislative coordination (ALEC founded September 1973), creating the multi-dimensional corporate power architecture that will dominate American politics for decades.